Another one bites the dust. Last week, music website Paper Thin Walls announced that it would cease to post new content, and bowed out with a roundup of their best original articles, lists and other typical (though excellent) music mag content.

What made PTW unique, however, was its Bullhorn, a music news aggregator that informed the reader of the news with a usually brilliant quip. (My personal all-time favourite, about Kim Deal delivering a riposte to Stephen Malkmus: “Jick-Slapped: Kim Deal Airs Funny Malkmus Beef.”) The Bullhorn was more entertaining than most of the leading music news sites (Pitchfork, Idolator) and more useful: you knew whether you wanted to read more from their one-line summary, and either way, you got a laugh out of it, making PTW a kind of Daily Show of music news. So what happened?

One possible answer lies in the parent company — according to editor Christopher R. Weingarten, PTW was bought by photo licensing agency Getty Images in ’07; further research confirms that Getty was bought out earlier this year by a private equity firm, which could be a factor. But another might be the public’s general lack of interest in the aggregator model. Not long ago, Critical Metrics dropped its innovative aggregated song chart feature. The Hype Machine and elbo.ws live on, but they appear to be used more as search engines for MP3s than as content-providers —?nobody’s using them to read about new music, they’re just searching for songs (or remixes of songs) they’ve already heard.

The message in PTW’s demise, if there is one, is that even if the aggregate is more interesting than the individual, internet users don’t want someone to filter a bunch of different voices for them. (www.paperthinwalls.com)

MP3 OF THE WEEK
Final Fantasy, “Horsetail Feath­ers”: A delightfully jazzy taste of Owen Pallett’s upcoming EP of songs by Alex Lukashevsky. As the lyrics say, “smarter than a can of paint” indeed. (www.zoilus.com)

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