How Music Blogging Has Changed
I keep a very close eye on traffic to A Journal of Musical Things because I obviously want to see if anyone cares. Fortunately, things are good, but I’m always looking for more readers and contributors.
And it’s not because I make any money from this site. Advertising brings in just enough to cover hosting expenses and domain registration for the year. It certain doesn’t even begin to offer me any kind of income.
Because I spend so much time with this site, you can understand why this article in Hypebot on the state of music blogs/websites caught my attention:
Over the years, I’ve written about music blogging and interviewed music bloggers. It’s an interesting sector. However, having grown up on a farm next to a town of 200 people in North Dakota, I can’t recall anyone mentioning music blogs or discovering music on the Hype Machine.
The awareness of music blogs is so low that a friend of mine, who worked at a coffee shop, loved Young The Giant, and long-boarded to college class had never heard of Pitchfork.
“But it’s for you,” I protested. “How haven’t you heard of it?
To this day, the closest that I’ve come to reading a music blog is opening Pitchfork’s Spotify app or checking out Shuffle.fm, which curates and ranks content from music blogs. It’s just not how I listen to and discover music. But I have several friends and colleagues who know a lot about music blogs — where they came from and where they might be going. So I asked them a series of questions about music blogs. I started with this one: How has the music blogging and curation landscape changed in recent years? Talk about some of these changes and then bring us into present day. What does that landscape look like right now?
I don't find much music on blogs (although http://www.nodepression.com leads me to different places). I find music by going out and listening to it live, four or five nights every week. Folk festivals are also places to find amazing talent you've not heard before, although I can imagine the shudder pop folk reading this might experience!
Once every six months or so I discover a stone winner — someone special, someone with unique songs or a "different" voice or a live performances that rocks the room. Unearthing the "it" factor can only be found when you hear an artist live — and then, if you discover later that the artist has focus, and ambition and energy you know that you have a winner on your hands!
What i look for in a music blog is someone or a site that can save me time and money. That means a filter for the mass volume of music / info. that is part of our world. When it comes to new music, i have so far found little but what i have found has been satisfying. I'm a big believer of the "cream rises to the top" philosophy of music. This new "American Idol" view of music, that we have to go through the 95% of music to get to the 5% (cream) of talent is a waist of time for myself. When a "ADELE" or "AMY WINEHOUSE" appear on the world music stage (the other 5%), seemingly full – formed with no doubt as to their talent or genius, you want to be nice to the 95% who have dreams of being rock royalty – maybe another line of work is your true calling. . . . Also that large mountain of music, video, history, style etc. grows day by day and only with the help of some archaeologist of music who can sift through the many layers for those hidden gems of music culture. . . . After hundreds of years we are still discovering lost or forgotten operas / music by Vivaldi but because of some ones obsession for that composer they bring them to the light for all to hear. . . . Music archaeologists – start your digging.