Yesterday marked my 20th Oggsday. I’ve been a member of discogs.com for two decades.
Discogs was once as much a part of my daily online regimen as checking my email or Twitter feed. No other site grabbed my attention in the way that Discogs had, nor did any other online resource infuriate me in the same manner. Those days are over.
Email has become something for old farts who read words instead of swiping to the next TikTok video, and Elon has effectively flushed Twitter down the toilet. Yet Discogs remains, as fascinating as it can be frustrating. Despite all its changes and niggling irritations, it continues to do what it does well: Satisfy data entry geeks, researchers, record collectors, and those who sell them.
In the early days, forum denizens got terribly excited whenever it received any kind of mention — online or offline — because, back then, Discogs was just an obscure little site about the niche obsession of collecting physical media (especially the outmoded vinyl kind). We were proud of the beast we were collectively building and populating with minute details. It was more about librarianship and camaraderie than commerce.
Today, Discogs sees mention in publications like Forbes, the Financial Times, the Guardian or the New York Times — although mostly in connection with its marketplace and the items that sell for ludicrous amounts — and not necessarily always in a good light. A higher profile comes at the cost of attracting scammers, spammers, fraudsters and hackers who have taken to targeting the site for their own malicious needs. It is complaints from buyers not receiving the exact version or not in the advertised condition as well as fee hikes due to post-pandemic inflation that now make the biggest waves.
Measures against vandalism have been implemented, and potentially offensive images are blocked from casual visitors. Both are responsible and overdue moves.
Not particularly popular changes in recent times, however, were the redesigned artist and label pages, the shutdown of the unofficial Wiki as well as stagnation of further database development/features and the outdated “help” pages. The closure of offshoot projects VinylHub as well as Bookogs, Comicogs, Filmogs, Gearogs and Posterogs alienated many users. Earlier this year the developers did a good job of fucking up the “lists” function.
At least, that’s what I remember and know of.
Despite a renewed interest in music, I’ve been preoccupied with other projects that ate into my time. Then this whole AI thing came along and derailed me even more. Although there are always new toys to play with and old stuff that needs to get fixed, I do poke my nose in occasionally.
So, for this anniversary I sat down and submitted five new CDs. Perhaps, maybe, hopefully someday soon I can spend more time with the site again because I’ve recently picked up yet another collection of obscure CDs. Then there’s an increasing stash of notes, images and other factoids collected over several years waiting to be processed and nerd out over.
Although the CEO remains steadfast that the database will always be free and open, Discogs has become more commercialised (free costs money) as many of us old farts seem to be dying off and a new generation is discovering vinyl as well as other physical media (read: merchandise, as saleable investments for the future). It’s delightful to find the same old arguments about who to declare as an album’s main artist, whether stand-up comedy DVDs should be in the database (officially yes, personally no), and whether random/unlicensed DJ mixes found on the internet are eligible.
The removal queue is quite the battlefield.
While some of the old crowd is still there, much of the silly fun and banter from the days of yore is gone. It’s all become rather serious business; even the official blog has been replaced by a magazine format called Digs (an appropriate move, in all fairness).
Let’s see what the next five years bring.
Images via the personal archives and tumblr.
