While this was a nuisance, it made listeners take in new music that they might have skipped otherwise. I discovered artists like Best Coast, Daughter, Tegan and Sara, and many more sitting through tracks that I might have just skipped otherwise.
While the unlimited skips system allowed by most streaming platforms today is convenient, discovery suffers when any song can be ended in an instant.
Even if no skips meant suffering through some terrible tracks, it also shines a light on gems that one might never hear otherwise. But none of these aspects of 8Tracks could have been possible without the community that surrounded it. Results will include jokes about listening to The in middle school, the meme of the indie kids standing on the wall , and people reminiscing on the hyper-specific playlists they dedicated to fictional characters.
It was a hotspot for Tumblr kids, budding indie music fans, and those looking for a reprieve from what the radio had to offer. This community of listeners with similar interests created a passionate fanbase for the site. So where is 8Tracks now? Well, the site has become a shell of what it once was for several reasons. As Spotify and Apple Music grew, many users left the site left in favor of the greater convenience those services provided. But 8Tracks itself is to blame too.
The site later enforced listening limits up to one hour a day in a bid to gain subscribers for their 8Tracks Plus service, making listening to more than one or two playlists nearly impossible. However, the service seemed to have a hard time making a profit. In , 8tracks tried to switch to crowdfunding , hoping to raise money from users interested in owning shares of the company.
According to the Forbes article I just linked, 8tracks calculated that they could get as many as 40, supporters to fund the platform; their goodbye blog post indicates that they managed to get only 4, total investors. In , 8tracks was stopped by legal concerns from offering services outside of the United States and Canada. In late , 8tracks limited users without a Plus account to only 1 hour of streaming a day , and users who were completely logged out would only be able to listen to a single track.
In , that decision was reversed , bringing back unlimited streaming. I wish it was surprising that the service had these issues; while 8tracks offered some truly unique opportunities, the reality was that it went against the increasing trends for on-demand, totally custom experiences. But I loved 8tracks with my entire being.
More than any computer algorithm, people know what makes music sound good together. Playlists were often made around moods—exercise and studying and writing playlists, but also fall playlists, playlists for looking out your window as it snows outside.
Playlists could earn ratings of gem, silver, gold, platinum, and diamond, based on how much other users liked them. It was uniquely suited to the way I listen to music, where I prefer to hit play and let feelings wash over me, to hear familiar favorites but to be surprised in turn. It has been an essential component of my musical life for almost the entire decade. So even though I will be able to rebuild something similar from other services, it is still heartbreaking to see it go.
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