When someone asks me about my favourite grime albums, I bristle. It’s not that I can’t rattle off old-school favourites from Dizzee or Ruff Sqwad or recent projects by Bashy or Ghetts, it’s just that 90% of my grime listening has always been live sets. From Wiley declaring war on the world over Christmas to Slew Dem’s classic Sidewinder Raw session to a teenaged Novelist shelling on NTS during the Grime 2.0 era, the majority of my favourite moments in the genre—the ones that elevate it into a truly unique form of music—involve that live element. That already struck outsiders as strange during grime’s heyday, but today, in an industry dominated by Spotify and Apple Music’s walled gardens, I may as well tell people I listen to music on wax cylinders. That grime’s history, in its true form, is completely absent from the way most people consume music today, is a problem.

Grime’s rise was definitively shaped by the rise of the internet. It’s not that prior genres didn’t have live sets—from jam-band concert bootlegs to Reggae Sting’s VHS releases to jungle rave tape-packs—it’s that their distribution was inherently limited: you had to know someone, or at least know the right local record store or barbershop. As 2-step garage evolved into grime however, online filesharing became a force multiplier: suddenly a kid in London could tape Skepta on Deja Vu and curious fans halfway around the world could hear it within hours.

This freewheeling exchange was only amplified when YouTube debuted a few years later: now you didn’t even need to store the file. This even extended to video: grime staples like Lord Of The Decks and Lord Of The Mics took the genre from the physical era of DVDs to our current model of podcasts and streams, with the genre making the best of it whenever the format switched. For all of the music industry bellyaching during the illegal download era, it empowered listeners worldwide to access and trade incredible music and culture that the majors just didn’t understand. If only we knew it wouldn’t last.

By now, everyone knows the basic issue with streaming: for all the good it did in monetizing music again, precious little of that revenue makes its way to the underground artist, as the model serves mostly as a way to funnel money into the hands of major label superstars. More insidious however is the way platforms like Spotify shape listener tastes towards more conventional and industry-approved sounds. That’s partially active, like when algorithmic playlists recommend songs catering to the lowest common denominator, but also passive: if something’s missing from a streaming platform, the only way to list your local files is a cumbersome, buggy process that few people bother with. Meanwhile, YouTube has turned into a library where stuff constantly goes missing with little recourse.

When Dizzee Rascal reissued Boy In Da Corner for its 20th anniversary, listeners were thrilled to hear rare B-sides like the “Street Fighter” instrumental… until they realised that the newly copywritten dubs meant about a dozen rare sets from the early aughts got flagged for infringement. Then there’s the DVDs, uploaded in low-res, highly-pixelated form, if they’re remembered at all.

To be fair, grime isn’t the only genre suffering from such issues: even mainstream forms of dance music, like house and techno, have to navigate the legal grey space inherent to mixing two records together on platforms that were never built with that in mind. The danger, however, is massively heightened in grime—a genre built on the foundation of live emceeing, that only receives corporate buy-in when it’s hot: when the company that financed your promo video owns the rights, there’s no telling when it might get taken down for a tax write-off. Meanwhile, it’s cool when grime’s on Boiler Room, but no one’s confusing that brand with Rinse, and the recent Boiler Room sale means even that archive isn’t safe from the whims of capitalism.

That leaves archiving and storing grime’s greatest moments up to the community and, thankfully, a dedicated few still step up. The Grime Archive is the longest-running of these projects, and serves as a place where fans can share dusty MP3s and new sessions alike, with an emphasis on self-recorded sets from the genre’s earliest years. Complementing this, the newly-minted Grimey.IO collates mostly sets on YouTube, serving as a potential hub for the genre’s video era—as well as Solomans Archive, a passionate media platform that recently opened an online store selling classic tape-packs. These projects have vulnerabilities given rising hosting costs and the risk of YouTube videos going down at any moment, but they’re crucial resources nevertheless. And then, of course, you have platforms like TRENCH and DaMetalMessiah consistently bringing HERITAGE moments to the masses.

While grime’s earliest history will most probably remain in the domain of dedicated heads (it’s not realistic to expect a kid today to hold a 96KBPS upload of a cassette tape up as the holy grail), the newest wave of grime is thankfully being preserved and documented in high quality. Beyond established brands like Rinse FM developing a robust video presence—presumably with the means to back up their files in case YouTube starts acting sus—newcomers like Travs Presents are combining the best of the old and new schools: well-recorded sets in high fidelity that capture the raucous energy of mid-00s pirate radio sessions. DJ Mak 10 and DJ AG are doing their part, too. When even veterans like DJ Maximum are posting hi-def performance videos to their socials, it’s safe to say that the future of the DJ will involve not only exclusive dubs and innovative mixes, but also video edits and camera angles.

So, what’s missing for the future?

Apart from a more robust presence on mainstream streamers—which doesn’t look likely for the near future, given these platforms would rather you listen to AI slop they won’t owe royalties on—grime still needs to monetise to its full potential. We need as many grime sets as possible available to the most people for the genre to keep growing, but there’s also plenty of room for more exclusive physical media, aimed at die-hard fans. Why not press a Blu-Ray of an exclusive set, priced for collectors at an exclusive price point? For that matter, why not press sets on CD again, or even vinyl? That’s the ultimate way to ensure that tech giants can’t just delete the culture.

That might sound heretical in a genre that is essentially by the people, for the people, but grime is over 20 years old and in a state of balance between its core audience and the mainstream, which means it needs to juggle accessibility and exclusivity in equal measure. Besides, it’s no less deserving of the arthouse treatment than American acts like Mach-Hommy or Westside Gunn, purveyors of $700 vinyl pressings and $500 hoodies, respectively. The next time someone asks for my favourite grime album, it’d be great to point them to a set they can stream... or pay a couple of stacks to own.