Been thinking a lot about this too. It’s easy enough to socialize in chat rooms and on social networking but making that whole record shop experience live is what i think Beatport et al are missing. It seems “simple” (sure it would be quite an investment) to make a pretty good virtual 3d store in Second Life or something? I would love to bump into you there and ask about your thoughts on the latest deep tunes.
Keep up the lovely productions and DJ sets, All the best, John

Thanks for the great comment!! I completely agree with you that my post was biased towards someone living in a big city rather than a smaller town. Having grown up in Europe myself i understand your frustration completely.

I think that social networking sites like soundcloud.com are on the cutting edge of music sharing and discovery. The only i miss mainly is the ability to interact with people on a personal level where possible. I think that Skype may become a way for people to interact that way more, even if still in a virtual space (i.e. video conferencing and therelike).

I am particularly alienated because of my addictions to breakbeat and drum and bass, which are so ridiculously niche that anyone who has heard of either genre (well, new school breaks, anyway) live two hours away. I registered on a dating-type social networking site (meaning you can adjust your settings to only look for friends, which I did) just to look for someone, ANYONE, who also like breaks and d&b.

…I found one person. Or rather, that person found me. That one person, though fond of my top genres, does not listen to the same artists. So we’ve been undergoing some musical exchange to foster some overlap.

The other matches that closely mimic my musical taste are in England and Australia. Not shocking, considering I listen to BBC Radio 1, Kiss FM, Sunshine Live, Resident Advisor, JJJ MIxup, and the like.

So for someone like me, who gets nothing but blank looks, “Who?”s and “Huh?”s every time my music is brought up… what’s the difference? I have to get online to find anyone to talk to about the my music anyway!

Which is where social networking sites based entirely on musical taste come in. I recently found two guys who have staggeringly similiar taste in music to mine… and guess what. One is from a town in western Scotland. The other is from Manchester, England.

The only place I can hope to find some cameraderie in person is shows I attend. And then, I have the best luck at shows of breakbeat artists. If I go to, say, a trance show… usually those in attendance are trance heads, and won’t go near the rest of my music.

My only comfort is that breaks is a niche genre anywhere, quite frankly. So while living in Europe would increase the chances of me finding people with my taste, I couldn’t exactly throw a rock and hit a few of them on the street!