For some, there was still a sense that maybe the internet would live up to its potential as a liberating force for culture. But more importantly, this was a time when the independent music world still had its own thriving media ecosystem, before so much of the music press was swallowed by the shifting digital ad landscape and streaming services. In 2009, there were more alt-weekly newspapers in the U.S. than ever before—135 of them—and these papers tended to cover local music in a way that to date has never really been replaced.
