Sadly, more things I loved left the internet this year than came along to replace them. Here’s what we lost in The Great Shedding Of 2008:
Paper Thin Walls
Founded by music journalist Christopher R. Weingarten, this site rounded up the latest music news and treated it with the proper (dis)respect. We’ll never forget headlines like “Jick-slapped: Kim Deal airs Stephen Malkmus beef.”
Muxtape
It wasn’t the best interface in the world, but the sheer number of people uploading batches of MP3s and collecting them into “muxtapes” made browsing the site worthwhile. Founder Justin Ouellette canned Muxtape in September, but the anonymous Bollywood “indian Billie Jean” I purloined from it lives on in my hard drive.
Wired Listening Post
Eliot Van Buskirk tipped me off to so many great stories via this music tech-oriented column in Wired Magazine’s online hub, I felt like I should be sending him royalty cheques.
ON THE BRIGHT SIDE…
There were some highlights of ’08, and not all of them were Radiohead related. But most of them were.
Best Radiohead
Radiohead’s camera-less “House Of Cards” video remains one of the more stunning pieces of web art we’ve seen, and you can use it to look up Thom Yorke’s nose. PS: most of their Radiohead.tv special is still up on YouTube.
Best New Site
Pitchfork.tv is still great-looking and plays the music we like, whether it’s loads of live performances from their own festival or one-week-only documentaries. It hasn’t yet dominated my browsing, but with AppleTV and the like gaining ground in the market, Pitchfork.tv could be an essential by the end of ’09.
Best Single Download
Really, nothing can top David Lee Roth‘s a cappella “Runnin’ With The Devil.” Haaa-yeaaaaah!