The internet's free distribution of music destroyed the record-shop economy that had incubated dubstep's scene

Artwork describes watching the internet transform from a curiosity (‘the CIA has a website’) to a scene-killing distribution mechanism: ‘I watched it go from sending emails, to within a few years seeing people rip records and put them on dubstepforum.net. It was the death of Big Apple, frankly: you go from selling 2000 records to 200 records, because who the fuck wants to buy a record when you can get it for free?’ Big Apple Records, which had been the physical hub of dubstep’s development, could not survive the loss of record sales. The same communication infrastructure (the internet) that spread dubstep globally also destroyed the economic base of the shop that created it.

Examples

Artwork: ‘I remember going round to my mate’s house and he said, I’ve got this thing over here where you can look at anything in the world. I was like, Fuck off.‘

Assessment

Explain the irony of the internet’s role in dubstep’s history — what it enabled and what it destroyed — and describe how this mirrors patterns in other music scenes.