You've Come A Long Way Baby

TL;dr From dial up to Usenet to mailing lists; love for the early Compuserve Live Sound mag group; the birth of the web and forums; big props to soundgirls.org; the next big thing(s) podcasting, YouTube and Discord with some nods to those doing it well. Also shade thrown at Reddit. Honorable mentions of micro blogging.

Many of what are called digital natives don’t know of a time when we weren’t as connected, at least electronically. Social interactions were either in person or on the phone or however rare via a letter. The current implementation of tech and community has been a long time coming.

It started for me in the mid 80s with primitive services. One was Dialcom’s EasyStreet service. It was geared toward music professionals. Stupid expensive for the time not counting the charges for dial-up. I used it for a while until I found the only utility I was getting was an abbreviated text version of Pollstar. I was already getting the print edition at home. I didn’t know anyone else on the system except my PA company employers and they didn’t use their account. They’d call or fax me instead. It was easier (and cheaper) to call or fax.

In the late 80s I was introduced to what has since become the internet. On my many visits to Houston I was able to park in one of the computer labs. There were several NeXTSTEP workstations that were connected to a network that linked all the major universities together. That was 1989 and that network was what would become the consumer internet. Eventually on that NeXT I found my way to Usenet Newsgroups.

Usenet was the original online forum/social media, decentralized, federated message system all rolled into one. It can exist on a server or a suitcase full of tapes in a station wagon. The interface was as crude and unforgiving as many of the participants. Usenet to a degree was populated by an inordinate number of man-children that were more interested in smelling their own farts than fostering a constructive community. The structure of Usenet made it not able to be moderated except by individuals blocking seeing the posts of others using something called a killfile. I managed to stumble into rec.audio.pro a newsgroup devoted to pro audio. The discussions were geeky and verbose. The disagreements could be harsh and rude. A flame war could break out over which was the best mic to use on the kick drum.

Compuserve was a dialup service that could most be likened to a commercial bulletin board system I started using in the late 80s. At some point in the early 90s I found the Live Sound International magazine group. Functionally it was similar to Usenet but heavily moderated by the mag. That made it not only tolerable but informative and welcoming as well. We bonded as a community. I met several people in real life and later worked with/for some of them. It was the first of what I consider a usable, modern pro audio community. It had the application subjects that weren’t as prevalent on Usenet. I’d bet dollars to doughnuts the first question asked in that forum was “which mic is best for the kick drum”.

As word of the the LSI forum on Compuserve spread, in part due to the magazine publishing excerpts and in part due to word of mouth, not all that wanted could join. An advantage of Compuserve was email like inter platform messaging. Cost, which drove the exclusive nature of the forum, was the barrier keeping many off. It was charged by the hour as well as any phone charges you had to call it. Right around that time I’d found a service called GEnie. It offered some of the first commercial internet access. I got it to keep up on Usenet.

Seattle was ahead of the adoption of public internet services due in large part to Microsoft and Nintendo in the area. Public internet accounts became available early on at NW Nexus a scrappy startup across the lake from Seattle in Bellevue. They’re still around today. With public internet access I ditched GEnie. With my halcyon.com account not only did I get my Usenet fix but my other newly acquired fixes of Gopher and FTP. I also got my own first internet email account roaddog@halcyon.com. But as with EasyStreet I had no one to email. It was then I was introduced to a concept called a mailing list or listserv as the software that drove it was called. Basically a gigantic email chain.

Right around then AOL was just starting to take off offering email and a somewhat gated access to the internet at large. With the relative popularity at the time of the LSI forum on Compuserve it was time for something that was more affordable and available. At that point the live-audio listserv was born at live-audio@halcyon.com. It went for a while but wasn’t largely adopted. One notable exception to mailing lists not being popular was the SynAudCon listserv. That was/is great. Still going as a forum today.

There were no more than a few dozen of us on the live-audio listserv though in later years scores more would say that’s where they first found a pro audio community on the internet. Most of the posts consisted of “hey is this thing on?” as well as other sundry greetings. Though I can’t remember for certain I’m sure at some point someone asked what the best kick drum mic was. I can’t prove it but I know it’s true.

Around the beginning of the 90s we started to hear in the computer trade press about some new fangled graphic interface for navigating the what was the internet. At the time PCs had made the transition from DOS to Windows and the Mac was nearly 10 years old so graphic user interfaces had become the norm. The era of the mouse was upon us. The Engelbart mouse not the Walt mouse. A Brit in Switzerland had developed an entirely new ecosphere with which to navigate the internet. They called it the World Wide Web. At least they didn’t call it “immersive”.

The geeks at NW Nexus jumped on the web hosting wagon. I remember when they sent the announcement via snail mail in the monthly bill which now I find hilarious. I downloaded Mosaic, the first and only browser at the time and got to work surfing. But it wasn’t yet called surfing. The pickins were pretty slim but better than Gopher or FTP. The layouts and art work were masterpieces. Or not.

After flogging the mailing list for a year or so and now the web appearing I started looking for a better solution. I found WWWBoard. It was a perl script that generated messages in a threaded forum format. I took advantage of my meager hosting capability with my halcyon account and I was off to the races.

The popularity of the board exploded. As did sometimes the underlying infrastructure. If you had an AOL account you could get there. By now if you had a Compuserve account you could get there. If you were one of the lucky few that had a traditional dialup at that point you could get there. Basically if you were online you could get there. Operating as a standalone entity for the next five years it boomed.

In 2000 the board at this point had about 40k visits and over 2 million page views a month. The forum was purchased by Universal Concept. It was wrapped into a new startup called Prosoundweb.com of which I was one of the co-founders. We had lofty plans and an adequate budget. We began what was to be at the time the portal for live sound then eventually church, install and studio. We had hosted email, pro audio news, live chats in the vein of Reddit AMAs, commentary and educational resources. We burned through the money after about 30 months and sold to, wait for it, Live Sound International who not too long after then sold to trade mag conglomerate EH Publishing. It still exists today in mostly the same form.

Facebook had blasted on the scene. MySpace was dying. While both of those were gigantic a unified pro audio community at scale never happened though several groups did spring up. Between all the platforms the community fractured with many camps settling into different platforms. That wasn’t only true for pro audio but for many other online communities as well. It went from a collective experience to one where personalities were followed and the interaction was one of one person to many or many back to that one or indirect interaction. For example a Facebook feed. There were exceptions but for the most part the idea of a monolithic community had passed.

One notable exception to this is the fantastic soundgirls.org community. It was and still is ground zero for female empowerment in the audio business. It’s played a key part in the acceptance and normalization of females and non binary people in the business. While it was once a rare sight or a curiosity to see a female or non binary person on a touring crew it’s now the norm. As much as anyone this community has been responsible for making the live event tech business more equitable and diverse.

Somewhere along the way podcasting and You Tube channels became a thing. Both of those are great mediums for one to many and a good way to build community as long as the hosts interact with the comment posters. You can find a variety of pro audio topics including the general state of the industry, the business aspect as well as theory and applications.

Some examples of stellar content are Les Goldberg’s podcast (Les is the LMG of LMG) and the excellent Signal to Noise Podcast. Many times it’s a lot easier to show a concept or explain it talking about it than it is to convey that same idea in writing. Particularly in something as complex as pro audio has become. A good example of that is the iconic audio uber-geek Dave Rat’s You Tube channel. Ratty can take complex subjects and boil them down to easy to understand concepts.

Up until this point I’ve neglected to mention Reddit. Reddit suffers from lack of credibility in many circles due to the anonymous nature, shit posting and flat out myths perpetuated. Reddit many times devolves into a johnson wagging contest where the stench of testosterone is strong enough to knock a buzzard off a shit wagon. Without accountability there can be no order.

The opposite of Reddit is the Signal to Noise Discord server. Until somewhat recently Signal to Noise didn’t have a forum type channel. Adding one made so it can accomodate longer form posts and replies that are necessary for discussing the intricacies of pro audio. You need long form (or media) for the tech meat and short form for the social. Both social and tech are important.

I see the Signal to Noise Discord server as very similar to what we were doing way back when. It’s authentic, authoritative and comes from the heart. It’s a positive environment for learning and socializing.

I’ve left off micro blogging as a positive force for the industry or for the nature of the content. It’s too short to do anything of any depth. For just checking in, showing what you are doing or how you’re feeling it’s great. The social factor is high but the knowledge exchange is low. Just not enough space to do it. Plus it’s difficult to keep up with content even using hashtags or searches. There are better ways for pro audio geeks to socialize and share info.

Along the way there will be new technology and platforms on which humans will live, share and enjoy. When that happens I’ll be able to finally respond when someone asks what the best kick drum mic is. It’s a Telefunken U47. With leather…