Fifteen years ago: Alien Ant Farm Anthology

California rockers Alien Ant Farm's Anthology came out fifteen years ago today. This album is notable because it came out when so many people were discovering social music sharing apps like the infamous Napster. The track "Movies" was a song that an anonymous user recommended to me. I listened and I liked. It was the first personal experience I had with the power of social music sharing and how recommendations can drive discovery in a real, effective and powerful way. The missing link, unfortunately, was the exchange of money for the music.

Making recommendations and sharing cool music has been part of my life since my early days borrowing records from the local public library, through high school, trading tapes, to my college radio show, to this web site. Alien Ant Farm is notable as being the first internet recommendation for me, personally. The challenge, of course, is how to make sharing recommendations work along with making sure that the artists that bring us joy, and others in the music industry who discover, produce, promote and indeed recommend music, get paid. That saga continues...

Here are a couple of prime tunes from Anthology, "Movies" and Alien Ant Farm's cover of Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal".

Pic from Myspace.