Various Artists – Alt.Music.4-Track Compilation III 2002 (CD, 2002)

No.5174

The Alt.Music.4-Track newsgroup was active for several years around the century mark. This was a compilation CD organized by one of its members, following the success of the group’s admittedly ad hoc first two compilations.

Newsgroups were popular gathering places for like-minded folks at this time. They worked similar to how Facebook groups work (it’s where Facebook got the idea) except they were self-policed by the group’s most active members.

Google brought newsgroups onto its server at some point and they are still active and can be access today. Going down the alt.music.4-track group hole through 20+ years is entertaining, but you’ll need to ignore the last 17 years and dig down to 2006 to see the real group.

In late 2006 and beyond you can see the group’s final struggles to survive and then quickly succumb to spam and then to years of porn spam until now it’s basically the regular automated post from a songwriting competition that evidently still has the newsgroup email on its mailing list.