Asgard Mendizábal
Entrevista a www.dihh.io
Marzo, 2015

ASGARD: So, first of all, what’s DIHH? Where is it from? Who’s behind it?
DIHH: ’’m Valentin, I come from Lyon, France. I started working on the first version of DIHH two years ago. I'm working alone on this but, as it is an open source project, I'd be glad to receive contributions, ideas or suggestions from other people. 
What’s the purpose with this project? How does DIHH became alive? Why begin with a short list of old tunes?
The purpose of DIHH is to adapt an actual crate digging experience to a digital context, allowing the visitor to be guided by his own curiosity and intuition. Digging in a record shop is an experience of pure discovery : in a crate, every record is at the same level, whether it is a big production or an independent release. I wanted to do the same on a website and, in some ways, DIHH is opposed to the traditional channels of music discovery online : there are no ratings, recommendations, filtering or sorting tools. 
Your description on the home page says that DIHH is about 90’s hip-hop. Why that restriction?
I decided to focus on this era because that's the period I know the best, and that I want to introduce people to. Most of the records come from my own vinyl collection. 
How and why are the tracks or albums added? What’s the criteria?=
There is no real criteria, but I try to offer a consistent selection of tracks which belongs to the same culture. I also try to alternate between big classics and rare indie gems to ensure that everyone will come upon something unexpected.
 Can the users contribute to add them?
Originally, I tried to create a 100% collaborative platform where anyone could create and share their own selections. Unfortunately, this project was too ambitious... I finally decided to shift towards something more like a "musical blog", where I'll regularly feed a database of tracks. This gave me more time to work on the user experience and the interface. However, I'm waiting for tracks suggestions from the visitors !

What would be the difference with following the recommendations or shuffles that other platforms like YouTube, Spotify or Soundcloud gives you when you listen to a track or an album?
All of these platforms are great to discover and listen to music (I use YouTube intensively). But personalized recommendations rarely try to bring the visitor out of his comfort zone. By bringing forward trending artists or artists who exactly match my musical tastes (determined by an algorithm), recommendations rarely achieve to provide me a complete and unexpected digging experience. I rely much more on other persons to discover new gems, like record store owners, musical blogs authors, forums... So I tried to create something hybrid, between a streaming platform and a blog.
 What are the plans in short and large term for DIHH? It would be real cool to enter the site and found a lot of crates of old hip-hop tracks. Would it be only about american hip-hop?
First, I'd like to quickly add a few more crates because, as you said, it currently lacks of content. Then, I may be able to think about expanding its scope to a wider area (Digging Into Jazz ??). But the website is not actually limited to American hip hop. A few Canadian, French and Swedish tracks are already on DIHH, and more are coming !
 Anything you want to add to our readers?
If you want to share your latest dig (or anything else) with me, feel free to contact me atdiggingintohiphop@gmail.com or on twitter !
 Thanks Valentin. Again, thank you for your time to answer this interview. Wish you the best with the project.
Thank you too !