We thought it worth posting about this as it’s an insightful industry talk about music blogs at this year’s In The City Festival, currently residing in Manchester, plus they give our blog a mention, but before you consider us a bunch of self-serving wankers, please note that they genuinely raise many talking points that The Recommender is interested in. They gathered a quality selection of online folk for the panel, including Pitchfork‘s Ryan Schreiber, Drowned in Sound‘s Sean Adams, Hype Machine‘s Dev Sherlock, My Band’s Better Than Your Band‘s Oliver Clueit and Rawkblog‘s David Greenwald.
Sean was supposed to be the moderator but he was stuck in traffic, so for the initial period Rawkblog’s David covered. Topics on the table included the transatlantic difference between music blogs in the UK and USA, the evolution and history of music blogging which proves particularly interesting with veterans of the game like Pitchfork’s Ryan involved, the style of blogging and what makes a blog successful, the relationship between labels/PR and music bloggers, the filters like Hype Machine and the exhaustion of finding those truly enjoyable blogs and ultimately the influence that music blogs have on the industry and it’s audience.
We particularly enjoyed the issue of creating blogs with a genuine voice – which is something The Recommender has always stood for – to actually give a fuck about what you are doing and not just hand out mp3s. As they mention, “The blog’s I really admire are the ones out there looking for new stuff…that really have a ‘voice’, because there’s a lot of blogs out there that are just like bulletin boards…those that actually take the time to write about the subject…and give the reader something a bit more nourishing“. It’s great to hear others talking about the endless list of “shortsighted” blogs that seem to care less, or post “everything”, or “chase hits”.
On this blog we are a strong believer in good editorial, interesting features and developing relationships with the readers, however, with so many millions of music blogs all over the world it’s a very noisy environment, but Oliver from My Bands Better Than Your Band talks of how there’s a natural filtering that will go on. “It’s still very much in it’s infancy…the good blogs will rise to the top…if you’re not reading the content of a blog then people are going to realise“, before he states that this will also in turn help the relationships between the industry and the tastemaker bloggers.
As a blogger who feels very well networked with others, it’s great to have these discussions and connect the dots that we see on a daily basis. There’s an evolution that’s occurring online and it’s important to not just be in it, but be a part of it. Have a listen and let us know your thoughts. In the mean time, ahem, we’re off to write up that latest remix of Lady Gaga.
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