About eleven years ago, a few friends of mine and I started a music blog called Discobelle.net. It was a spin-off from what was originally a house music club, a radio show, and then eventually a Swedish house music blog. The .net-version was in English, and thus had the possibility of reaching a bigger audience.

And it did. In fact, it was a part of launching a whole genre of electronic dance music.

This was pre-streaming, and MP3s were the format of choice. This combined with the speed of blog posting created a shortcut to the DJ community that hadn’t existed before. It happened several times that I posted an exclusive track during the day, and heard it being played in the club that same night. This could happen because DJs were switching from strictly playing vinyl, and incorporating digital music into their sets. The timing was perfect.

Last week we announced that we are going to close the site down. Since then we have received an outpouring of love and appreciation from the community that we were a part of for so many years. Here are a few examples:

Discobelle was never a commercial venture. And it serves as a reminder that passion projects can matter deeply and become hugely influential. From the backrooms in Southern Sweden, to the rest of the world.

I leave you with a nostalgic mix that A-Trak put together a few years ago. The sound of Bloghaus!