fimmusic:

We thought a nice flashback for FIMM today would be looking at what happened much earlier in the fandom. Fim Music (our blog dedicated to new and underground brony music) is really not a brand new idea in the fandom, after all there have been various music blog sites that have been here much earlier. Most have stopped production at some point and its a shame if these sites (which are still on the net) are forgotten.

One of those was Equestria Rhythm which started on blogspot way back in September of 2011 by Multifish (and later Sonic30). It started off doing in depth look at music from the fandom at a time when Equestria Daily was still a driving force. It included in-depth reviews of single tracks, covering new tracks now regarded as classics, like Alex S - Party With Pinkie, to now forgotten tracks like Dj Ekelburg’s Art of the Dress. They also compiled their own top tracks lists settling on a Top 7 tracks format. What remains on the site is a wonderful archive of what came out during the first wave of brony music.

As would be expected the biggest danger to a blog about the entire fandom was that one man couldn’t do it alone. Multifish eventually shut down the blog on January 2012 just when the second wave of brony music began taking off (with such musicians as Archie and Aviators leading the way). What happened next was a surprise; people began speaking up on how much they missed the blog. With additional support and some new authors (Glitchhog for articles and Soggy_doggy for banners and graphics) the site reopened 6 weeks later in March 2012.

The site continued with gusto, covering the same key site features, and covering quite a few of the classic collaboration events like Balloon Party and Seeds of Kindness. Eventually it folded under internal staffing issues and a marginal audience. Adding SellyMe as an author in June 2012 did not stop Multifish from stepping away from the blog in July 2012. In the end, Sellyme had to run and try to re-staff it, but by September 2012 even he had to toss in the towel.

What is the takeaway? Besides getting a chance to look at how the first and second wave of brony music unfolded in real time it also shows how hard, even back then, it is to keep a fansite popular in the community. Equestria Daily being the predominant site for all things brony has always had a unique size advantage, both in readership and later in staff. Opening up the music of the day on EQD made it less important in 2013 to find the only other avenues for underground music fansites and has made the community a more fair place to showcase their music (even if batching tracks in large motd are still not ideal spotlights). Other small brony music blogs often don’t have the network, staff, or audience in place to keep people tuning in each week, especially when people use EQD exclusively.

While Fim Music plans to be around awhile it’s really up the community if being a small independent voice, for new and more underground musicians, is a cause worth supporting. Certainly people can take steps to make sure they support such actions, and our presence on tumblr is very instrumental in how you can help. Subscribing on tumblr and going the next step and help favorite and reblog posts gives our site a chance to grow within tumblr. It gives us more of a voice in a cluttered fandom and says what articles you like from us, and hope to read in the future. We hope you’ve enjoy Fimm and look forward to getting our feed of track picks, news, reviews, and interviews for the future. Like every fansite that opens and closes it’s really up to you whether we’re succeeding at what we do and you appreciate our content. We hope to continue at this for quite awhile longer through your support.

By the way as an additional thanks to Multifish, for his years of service to the community, here’s his interview with Triple J (big australian radio station). Nice little find here.