We didn’t always stream music. Spotify and Pandora type services didn’t always exist. Yes, at one point the only way to hear music was to buy it in physical form. And perhaps I’m now old-school for continuing with that paradigm, but that’s aside from the point. At one point people only bought physical and where we’re at right now has people “owning” very little. But the transition wasn’t smooth or cut and dry.
There was this big transitional period. It started with stuff like Napster, torrent services where you could download your favorite music directly from someone else, digitally. It spawned the digital music era, really. Services like Napster flourished from Napster’s conception in 1999, through the early 2000’s. However, a few lawsuits soon put an end to the illegal torrenting. Sort of.
As the P2P networks began to fade, other options, such as file sharing servers, began to emerge. These were different in that it was much more shielded from legal prosecution. There weren’t seeds and leeches; instead, there was a place online where arbitrary files were uploaded and then were downloaded directly from the 3rd party server. Rapidshare, Megashare, and a host of others ruled those times. They’re similar to today’s DropBox, except all files were available to everyone. And up until the fall of Kim Dot Com a few years ago, these services flourished.
But what so many of these services lacked was an interface for discovery. You could search for your favorite bands and download entire discographies, but these rarely helped you to discover something new. Most of us relied on friends for direction in that area.
But the thing with friends is that they’re so often too similar to you. And they think they know you. So you get a list of recommendations that are probably all bands that have been floating around your friend circles for quite some time. And the second a friend recommends something you don’t like, you discount their future recommendations. They know that risk, so they play it safe. We have too many sources of influence to pursue something that’s not sure to wow us. And it only takes a few songs of wasted time to set us off. Today, now that YouTube has grown, it’s relatively easy to pull up a new artist’s video, but it only takes a few minutes of disappointment for us to start ignoring a once trusted source.
And there are a number of services that currently allow you to discover. But this is all based on “similar artists.” You rarely discover genres by similar-to-what-you-already-listen-to. If you’re truly looking for something revolutionary, you don’t have great outlets.
But once upon a time, there was something that seemingly trumped all other sources. There was this label, Sordo Music, that, in addition to having their own releases, also had a database that allowed users to post links and short descriptions to hosted music. There were pages upon pages of links and descriptions, covering genres from the most common to the most obscure. On a single page, you could find anything from Australian pop to Sweedish death metal to British math rock to Japanese acid rock and every weird niche in between.
And you could download as many or as few as you wanted. It was still not the most legal of ways, but it was about discovery. You didn’t go there to find something you had heard about; you didn’t go to find that one song from the radio. You went there to find something you’ve never heard of or could even conceptualize. These were bands and artists that you would, otherwise, have never come into contact with. And with no expectations and only a sentence of description, you had little to compare it to, aside from whatever you thought music to be.
Sordo was a reliable source. Sure, it let me down a few times, but the sheer volume of gold that was found far outnumbered the duds. It was all low-risk, relying on the desire to discover.
Unfortunately, as file hosting sites started to get governmental pressure, Sordo closed its doors to this tool. And I haven’t seen anything like it since.
Thought of all of this while listening to some of my favorites throughout the day.
Here are just a few of my Sordo finds from years past, with my best attempt at a Sordo-esque description. Check them all out, or only those that sound enticing, just like the original Sordo:
65daysofstatic – Electronic post rock with elements of glitch; heavy, fast, and energetic.
This Town Needs Guns – British soft spoken, guitar-driven math pop.
Foals – British vocals with heavily rhythmic dancey pop melodies and rock vibes.
When Icarus Falls – Epic, slow-building, orchestrally big metal with big, textural vocals.
There Will Be Fireworks – Scottish dynamic, story-telling rock.
So Many Dynamos – Dancey, energetic math pop-rock.
Phantods – Rock with amazingly haunting female vocals.
And if anyone knows of any modern version of Sordo, let me know!
