Welcome To The Rise Of Underground Apps

About twenty years ago, I used to be webmaster and music critic of one of the highest-traffic music portals in Romania. Their success was not incidental. The strategy wasn’t just having good articles for people to read, well-informed critiques on new albums, singles, and artists, or even their solid partnerships with the likes of Universal Music. What made them special beyond all that was their focus on underground music. An artist could record a song, upload it to the platform, get visibility and feedback. My job was to look for plagiarism. But what does this have to do with apps, you ask?

Even two decades ago, making music was relatively easy and accessible. Sound tech was already booming. Stromae famously demonstrated how easy it was for him to create the hit song “Alors on danse”. I was just nine or so — that’s 1995 — when my cousin already received a fancy keyboard, with beats, different instruments synthesised, recording capabilities and many other bells and whistles. In contrast, what I “inherited” from some old guy at Church was a “portable” electric harmonium that made an awful lot more noise than music. Regardless, the point still stands, making and recording music was easily accessible even decades ago…