| Once upon a time, the internet was a different, more imaginative place. To explore its depths felt freeing rather than deadening; cultural tastemaking was in the hands of obsessive nerds rather than corporations; and, writes journalist Lina Abascal in a story on Backchannel, "dance music felt truly alternative." In the early years of the new millennium, before Facebook, Soundcloud, and Spotify, music was powered by individual fans, who acted as unofficial scouting agents, promoters, and distributors for their favorite artists. The music they were passing around sites such as Myspace was nicknamed "Bloghouse," and as a genre it was defined less by any coherent sound than by the free access to remix and rerelease. Abascal's new book, Never Be Alone Again: How Bloghouse United the Internet and the Dancefloor, remembers this early-aughts scene with fondness, as when The Killers cameoed on The O.C., Kanye West released a tribute to Daft Punk, Steve Aoki wrote a song to soundtrack throwing cake on his fans, and dancefloor couture meant day-glo American Apparel. "Bloghouse might've been a drunken, neon-slathered mess," she writes, "but it was our drunken, neon-slathered mess." Camille Bromley | Features Editor, WIRED |
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