Deep-internet bubbles: How microgenres are taking over SoundCloud

As the internet continues to decentralize culture, letting us choose which streaming services and video games and social media we want to base our lives around, some of the most intoxicating new music is coming from these tiny SoundCloud pockets, which you can only access if you already know to look there. This is music you won’t find in mainstream... See more

What’s striking about these internet microcosms is that despite how insular they appear, there are no geographic limits. Online music is both incredibly localized and universal, simultaneously confined to small Discord clubs and capable of being transmitted through electric signals to vibrate speakers around the globe.

Online music is both incredibly localized and universal, simultaneously confined to small Discord clubs and capable of being transmitted through electric signals to vibrate speakers around the globe.

The proliferation of “-core” style nicknames reminds me of what Kaitlyn Tiffany described as a staple of digital life, dating back to MySpace, Tumblr, and BuzzFeed quizzes: the urge to identify with esoteric aesthetic subcultures such as “cottagecore” and “romantic academia” and “pastel goth” because you want to locate your niche and belong somewhe... See more

It’s impressive that in 2022, when it feels like everything we’re doing is being mined, lumped into categories, catapulted back at us in the form of ads and content, the world is being NFT-ified, yada yada yada—that you can still fall down rabbit holes on the internet and discover something no algorithm has found. A sound and scene that’s still lea... See more

In a SoundCloud landscape teeming with off-the-wall musical experiments, it makes sense that artists are anointing themselves as genre-generators. It’s a way to compete in the attention economy, a tactic to distinguish your sound from what could otherwise be perceived as another set of weird noises in a sea of bizarre bleeps and bloops.