UNIVERSITY OF NOVA GORICA GRADUATE SCHOOL ...

also provides a genre distinction and, moreover, more insight into the blogger‘s personal (albeit
highly music-dominated) life.
When it comes to specific music posted on music blogs, there is an aspect that should not be
neglected: the origin of the records. From what can be gathered from navigating a number of
music blogs, in many cases the music in question (or the records at least) is fairly old and not
easily obtainable (as opposed to many other blogs, where music is plainly ripped from CDs). This
is particularly apparent when looking at music blogging that focuses on pre-celebrity music
fandom and sub-cultures and particularly musical rarities—that emerged after the rock‘n‘roll
boom in the 1950s, and particularly after the 1960s—that saw comparatively little or none
digitisation. 175 An acute under-digitisation—due to the break-up of the country and the ensuing
wars—befell the music from the period of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia (and
also the pre-WWII Yugoslavia). Much of the former Yugoslav music available via music blogs is
in fact fairly old and in the offline world only available on vinyl.
After the disintegration of the country, Yugoslav music industry collapsed with it and several
national industries and markets emerged in its wake. The political, economic, social and cultural
‗de-prochement‘ meant, in the field of music, that the cooperation, particularly in the early 1990s,
was considerably hindered. Records from other parts of the former country were not re-issued both
due to issues with copyright and the changing market characteristics (e.g. in early 1990s Slovenia
there was a general disliking of former Yugoslav music, and Slovenian music was never hugely
popular outside its borders). The consequence was negligible number of vinyl records digitally
remastered and released on CDs. Effectively, it was for a long time all but impossible to buy any
of this music in legally (with the exception of second-hand shops or flea markets). Thus, along the
illegal releases and later on a market driven increase in reissuing former Yugoslav music on CDs,
these blogs provide by far most accessible links to music that would otherwise be practically lost.
These music bloggers/lovers, however, who go to second-hand record shops, flea markets, browse
old collections of records in the attics etc. in search for rarities and oddities of a musical past, are
the crucial preservers of significant portions of Yugoslav popular music which would only survive
in a fairly limited, private collections of the lucky few who have had the chance or the will to get
those records, or in the commoditised (hence selected according to anticipated sales criteria)
reissues of ‗popular‘ music.
175 See for instance, sa starog gramofona – old gramophone, http://starigramofon.wordpress.com/, accessed 19
September 2011.
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