Little Hits Meets “The end.”

Jon Harrison’s Little Hits music blog, which has provided fantastic, unheralded music since 2004, called it quits yesterday. All of the writing is still there, but the MP3s are all gone.

The farewell post read, in part:

I realize now, belatedly, that once I put an MP3 on our server, anyone else might use it in any way they wish. I am quite concerned that the next person who finds one of their old tunes being used as a ringtone will not be so cool.

It is probably a good time to stop doing this. I’ve probably been lucky to get away with it as long as I have, and while I always assumed that my motives for doing this blog were fairly pure, I find myself second-guessing now.

Jon Harrison and Stewart Mason have brought to my attention scores of bands I’d never even heard of—bands that, for lack of attention, poor label sales, or just putting out the wrong kind of music at the wrong time, never rose to the level of any other bands usually trumpeted in online blogs.

Harrison and Mason celebrated good music. It wasn’t cool music, it wasn’t transcendent, and it wasn’t woefully obscure. The music on Little Hits was just good music that hadn’t gotten the credit due it. It’s a sad loss, and a gap in my musical education that won’t soon be filled.