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Umbrella Closes Up

By Joshua Errett

umbrella_header.gif
Canadian music is a strange fruit. We’ll finance Fefe Dobson’s album with government grants, but we let slide the infrastructure that helps musicians in greater need. UmbrellaMusic, a site rich in bandwidth but not in advertisements, was a part of that infrastructure. And finally, after a few months of inactivity, UmbrellaMusic.com will officially close on Tuesday – six years after it launched.

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  • http://www.paved.ca mw

    Let slide? What about keeping afloat an unread site with a format stuck in 1999?

  • Josh

    oh come on, mw! the design was functional, and user-friendly at the least. there was a lot more to the closure than simply design. the unread part might be true, because there was more focus on the media than copy. and even still, i think we both can name of a few unread sites that manage to stay afloat.

  • http://www.paved.ca mw

    So that justifies keeping alive a music site that doesn’t acknowledge the advent of file sharing, blogs, MySpace, etc.?
    Problem with you crazy kids is, even as you mock these olde media ideas, you still consider them sacred. Free your mind …

  • http://brokenengine.blogspot.com brokenengine

    I’ve been an indie musician in Toronto for 17 years, and I’ve never heard of this site. There’s a problem right there…

  • Oat Globe

    brokenengine -
    How is that even possible? Seriously, you’re a musician in Toronto and you’ve never heard of Umbrella?

  • http://www.boyreporter.ca Ron Nurwisah, Boy Reporter

    Josh, at least this gives you more time to focus on Torontoist!

  • Josh

    free your mind and the rest will follow – dawn from en vogue
    umbrella came after file-sharing, and was constantly linked to by blogs. myspace doesn’t have the same editorial and your ‘ect.’ example is to vague to comment on. the idea here, mw, is for a media-rich site dedicated to canadian music (this has nothing to do with myspace, which is not strictly music let alone canadian). it was a good site in the day, but ultimately needed more resources than were available (site design included). okay?

  • http://www.photojunkie.ca photojunkie

    Wow, it will be sad to see Umbrella go. In it’s hey day, It covered a lot of artist that weren’t getting coverage elsewhere. It was cutting edge when it first started and was one of the main source to hear about new music, before the blogs came around.
    I don’t know this for sure, but I am assuming that part of the reason for the closure, is because Scott, the mastermind behind the site is probably too busy to keep it up, especially since he and his group controller. controller have just released their first full length album.
    RIP

  • Josh

    i believe you were one of such featured artists on umbrella, were you not, p-junkie?

  • http://www.paved.ca mw

    You’re implying certain musicians aren’t helped because of some lacking infrastructure. Well, there is an infrastructure of support, and a non-entity website is better off not benefitting. You obviously are connected to the thing more than most people, but if it did its job, it would have survived and thrived in those six years.

  • Josh

    it did survive and thrive in those six years…and i think it could have been included in the same funding that keeps that dobson girl around, as it did a great service for many artists and musicians. it was one-of-a-kind and well-read at its peak. alas, the resources weren’t there to sustain that peak, which dipped to the point where the site had to close. a familiar story, no?

  • http://slapdeebarnes.blogspot.com Dave M.

    free your mind and the rest will follow – dawn from en vogue!?!?!? i hope you were making teh funny. don’t make me bust out the p-funk on you tonight.

  • http://brokenengine.blogspot.com brokenengine

    Oat Globe: For real, I’ve never heard of the thing. But probably thats my fault; After constantly being bombarded by hyped Toronto bands (by Now, Eye, word of mouth, etc), going to see them, and inevitably shrugging my shoulders, I guess I stopped paying too much attention, and concentrated on doing my own thing.

    Not that MY band is any big envelope pusher or “Da Bomb” or whatever the kids are saying these days. I’m just telling the truth…

  • http://www.photojunkie.ca photojunkie

    Hey Josh
    Yes I was featured on the Umbrella site back in the day. It was kind of amusing actually considering that I am not even a musician.
    But I did a lot of work with musicians at the time.