Ever loved a band so much that you've gone rooting through their trash, just to feel close to the mundanity of their everyday life? No? Me neither. But I bet there's a couple among you who have hosted embarrassing, Geocities-esque fan sites.
That's the premise behind Fans Forever and Ever, a fun little hack created by Greg Sabo during this year's Music Hack Day in New York.
The hack, which uses APIs from The Echo Nest and musiXmatch, basically creates a crazy-as-hell fanpage for any artist you choose. Type in, say, the name of my favorite band, Man Man, and you'll receive a disturbing enthusiastic webpage featuring poems (which are sometimes murderous, sometimes fawning), quotes from a fictional web master, lyrics, photos, etc.
"These fanpages weren't interesting because they were informative," Sabo says, referring to Geocities fanpages of yore. "They were teeming with personality. Most obviously, they had a strong 'folk design' aesthetic, with people hacking barely functional HTML and CSS with sometimes hilarious results. We've moved towards a web where normal users exert less and less control over page design, and I think something's being lost there."