Website Of The Week – Dotmusic
Dotmusic is a snappily designed site that gives clear and easy access to all the news in pop, from this week’s chart to the Millennium Dome’s performance space through to an interview with Blur. Obsessive fans of major pop bands could look up everything to do with their heroes, while the rest of us can flit around between reviews of singles, profiles of artists and all kind of other musical stuff.
Probably the best thing about Dotmusic is how interactive it is – this gargantuan site lets you chat with other music fans, e-mail in your own news stories, buy any one of over 200,000 CDs, and even tell the webmasters exactly what you think of them. And the site’s visitors have repaid the trust given them well; the discussion groups are exceptionally busy and taken very seriously. So if you want to talk earnestly about why girl groups are miles better than boy bands, or whether Mariah Carey is ‘trash or class’, this is where to go.
You’ve probably guessed by now that Dotmusic is definitely more interested in contemporary mainstream pop than in any other kind of music. There’s everything for a George Michael fan, but I wouldn’t bother looking up the Silver Jews, and even the Beatles only get occasional, passing mentions (apparently they were almost as successful as the Spice Girls once).
Dotmusic definitely targets the kind of music-buyer who rarely notices an album before it gets into the charts, but wants to know absolutely everything about the current pop favorites. That said, it does devote a whole section to dance music, and still finds space for a country music chart, a piece on Elvis songs being recorded in the ancient Sumerian language, and another on Bizzy Bone’s legal difficulties.
Basically, it’s a new media version of a glossy, lightweight music mag, with lots more information than the press-bound versions could ever carry. Perfectly entertaining for the casual visitor, and essential if you’re obsessive about pop.