Artist-side research

I guess it's reasonable now to talk about why exactly I'm doing my best to find out a little bit about artist-focused resources on the web, considering I'm not exactly a musician myself. It all has to with understanding a musician's mindset, background, and environment to further my music-listening and music-finding endeavors. I've generally considered myself a digger rather than a mouthbreather when it comes to finding out about music new and old, and I've found the thing that helps me understand historical (as in, like, the 1970s) and modern trends is little bit of knowledge about the conditions the music developed in.

For instance, take the DIY hardcore culture that developed in the late 70s and early 80s in, among other places, California and DC. It's well-accepted that listening to that music without any knowledge of its context can only take you so far, considering those scenes were so focused on show-going and community-building. There are a plethora of other good examples, from British post-punk to Nigerian afrobeat, and the same logic even applies to more well-known periods like the rise of the Beatles in Britain in America. By this logic, having a deeper understanding of how musicians are coping with a post-music purchasing and post-mega label world will grant me (and anyone else interested) the knowledge we need to keep on digging for great new music, to support upcoming musicians, and to stay on the cutting edge of hearing (and hearing about) music.