Track Changes investigates how Canadian music hit the internet | Georgia Straight Vancouver’s source for arts, culture, and events

1 of 1 2 of 1 Get the best of Vancouver in your inbox, every Tuesday and Thursday. Sign up for our free newsletter.It was the internet revolution that changed the music industry forever or, at least, until the next internet revolution arrived shortly thereafter and changed everything again.Chalk it up, as Toronto-based author Cam Gordon writes in his detailed and informative new book, Track Changes: The Origin Story of Canadian Music on the Internet (1990-2010), to the “fleeting nature of technology and the impertinence of the internet.”Those who forget our digital history are not doomed to repeat it, it would appear—just lose it forever in a time of digital decay and a metaphorical pile of dead URLs.Gordon, a self-described music obsessive, music writer, communications pro, and a veteran of big tech in his late 40s, was determined not to let that happen. This dynamic period mattered. He set out to “curate a central narrative of how everything about Canadian music changed and evolved during the early years of the internet”, starting from 1990. (At that time, only around 3 million people could get online.)“It did hit me very quickly that this was a mission of archiving the past,’’ says Gordon, who brought the zeal of an archaeologist and the meticulous habits of an archivist to the required research. “I realized how much information that was lost to time would need to be unearthed to tell this story properly.”For Gordon, the era was pivotal.“The things that happened in the 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s,” he says, “are the origin story for our relationship with tech today.”For someone to acquire the latest effort from their favourite artist in a time before the internet required a journey to a physical place called a record store and purchase music in its physical form (by the late ’80s, likely a compact disc). The CD was loaded in a player, and the listener more or less sat in place to listen to it.Massive record labels, promotional infrastructure, and retailers existed to make this happen. These were profitable industries with office and retail spaces, warehouse inventory, manufacturing deals, and shipping and trucking routes to handle their products.In the late ’90s, we all started to go online and, as was the case across so many industries, the long-standing, enormously profitable business model dedicated to selling music started to break apart. It happened quickly.“Everyone could see it coming from a mile away, and they weren’t really sure what to do about it,” Gordon says.The author carefully documents the time when music became available online—the era of Napster, file-sharing, and the existential threat to music as a physical product—and the creative, innovative ways that industry, artists, and fans found to connect and adapt to a new digital reality. Gordon recreates a “cultural online history built on mailing lists, message boards, fan websites, homepages, e-commerce startups, online record labels, blogs, podcasts, and social media platforms.”The profound tech shifts inspired a new online world of music, conversation, and community—not a bad result.Gordon gives a shout-out to Vancouver’s Nettwerk Music Group, perhaps known best for its long partnership with Sarah McLachlan.“Nettwerk is the gold standard of using the internet to merge tech, music, and media in a smart and logical way,” he says. “Nettwerk understood right from the start the power mobilizing this tech could have for connecting with fans.”Many of these innovations came and went, and we are reminded again and again of the “fleeting nature of technology”. Does anyone remember the incredible excitement when the iPod arrived in 2001? This “historically important product” started to fade, says Gordon, with the mass adoption of the iPhone.Gordon says the period after Track Changes, from 2010 on, is the era of the smartphone, social media, and “no barriers to hearing any music you want at any time for any reason”.We now await the AI era.“It is going to define itself much like social media defined itself and the internet defined itself,” Gordon says. “And we are going to be along for the ride.”The online archivists of the future already have a new period to document, and another on the way soon. GSTrack Changes: The Origin Story of Canadian Music on the Internet (1990-2010) is available now from FriesenPress. Join the discussion Facebook comments not loading? Please check your browser settings to ensure that it is not blocking Facebook from running on straight.com