We all know the Internet Archive is a precious resource, but let me tell you about my favorite part:
Back in the 60s and 70s, the Grateful Dead established this rule among their fans: you can record and share our shows, just please don't sell them. This led to a huge following of 'tapers' who would record the shows and a network of trading tapes among fans. Peer to peer sharing! A lot of other bands followed suit, especially in the same lineage as the Dead. When the Internet happened, this moved online and became way easier, and in contrast to many other bands the Dead were still cool with online sharing of their music (at least, the live shows - and since the Dead were dedicated to touring/made poor financial decisions that kept them on the road (delete as appropriate), there were thirty years' worth of hundreds of shows a year to listen to). And guess who stepped up to host this? The Internet Archive, because one of the songwriters for the Dead, J.P. Barlow, also founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Anyway, that's a lot of background to tell you that the IA has an amazing archive of live music. Because of the history and cultural norms, lots of it is jam bands or otherwise Dead-adjacent, but even if that's not your cup of tea there's a broad section of bands in there.
For instance: Death Cab for Cutie, The Mountain Goats, Tenacious D, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, ween, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Built to Spill, The National, The Decemberists, Mogwai, 311, Buckethead, the Steep Canyon Rangers, etc
I like to go in and dive into some band I don't know, and see if I'm into it at all! It's a cool way to check out new weird music, and an ad-free way to stream lots of good tunes.
As someone who used to work at IA, I can assure you that the Wayback Machine is great
And
There is so much more to the Archive. Everyone with any sort of special interest can put anything they want up there. Yes, there's Barlow's involvement with EFF, but also Brewster just fuckin' likes The Grateful Dead! Edison Cylinders? Check. Decades of television recorded by one woman with dozens of VCRs running non-stop? Check. Audio versions of public domain texts? Check!
If you have your own special interest and have anything to upload at all, you totally can. Putting PDFs of my books on the Archive lets people check them out through Open Library, even. How cool is that? :D
There's a complicated reason why I don't work there anymore, but I can tell you straight up that it has nothing to do with their mission. I'm still deeply in love with that.
