The Web Awards Music Category Is A JokeThe Web Awards Music Category Is A Joke
Here were the five finalists:
The Black Seeds: It's spam. No seriously, there is no music to be found. It looks like they lost their domain to squatters because I assumed they had just linked to the wrong url at first, but a google search doesn't provide any useful information.
Dixie Chicks: Death From Above: At first I was like WTF, it looks like a poorly designed blog that hasn't been updated in 10 months. Then I realize it's just a scene in this interactive flash portal where you can travel in and out of buildings in a city. Cool to play with, not much return value, and doesn't really have anything to do with music.
Just For The F Of It: Created for Fuse TV, this is yet another disposable flash site that overwhelms with animations while being relatively light on content. One cool thing is Mark Hoppus' podcast sub-site, but then again that isn't what's being nominated.
Free Indie: An MP3 blog that has been posting since April 2006 run by one guy. His taste is fantastic but I have to wonder why his tag line is "free albums - guiltless" and that he posts 5 MP3s for every band (as well as a zip for each set). Is it guiltless because he's asking each band for permission? He also only has 33 RSS subscribers (according to his Feedburner badge), which I'm absolutely not ripping on him for, but ponder whether something so unknown can be considered the best music site of 2006.
Woxy: The internet radio station that almost went out of business last year untill Lala swooped in, saved the station, and made new fans for life. Woxy's got it all: fantastic taste, active forum community, exclusive session recordings, and a blog.
So who won?
Well if it were up to me, there'd be no contest, Woxy would. And that's not just because there was no (real) competition, Woxy could hold their own against real competitors (like Last.fm, Hype Machine, Yadda Music, Tourfilter, Pitchfork or even Podbop).
Who actually won? Just For The F Of It. Why? Don't ask me. Maybe it's the fact that you have to pay to enter your website into the Web Awards (which hypothetically would weed out unserious competitiors, but doesnt). Maybe the judges are just out of touch with music on the web.
In related news, Pitchfork Media wins The 2007 Bloggies for best weblog about music. Ha!
Photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid. Automated screenshots by the awesome Sitesnat.ch.
