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.
(MB)
There is definitely a fine line to how you approach being a taste maker and grow with success in todays age. Before the explosion of music blogs it was easier to stand out among avid music junkies because the few people that actually searched the internet for music, not only had an understanding for music but really did not have that many options as you have today. It was so much harder to discover new music because a really small percentage of bands were using the internet to market themselves. So in essence the few sites that reported about these bands would get all the traffic and automatically become taste makers.
Now fast forward to 2010 and both the demand for discovering and consuming music, has increased exponentially. This increase in demand and the supply of easier blogging technologies has given birth to what we call the music blogossphere. Anyone can be a critic and anyone can post mp3′s.. no longer are people judging you based on the quality of the writing/music discover, but on your site design, the frequency of your posts, how easy it is to navigate and discover more music on your site, what music player you are using, how relevant these songs are compared to the million of other blogs.. list goes on. More and more you will see great sites with great content being buried by more technologically savvy bloggers that know how to market their site whether through word of mouth, SEO, using social media or even finding ways to make it on the hypem charts. Granted that “taste makers” are defined by their “taste in music” and NOT the amount of page views they get but in order to have some type of credibility it is necessary to have the reach/influence to back it up. You can be an amazing taste maker but if no one is listening to you, you are not relevant.
In a perfect world people that work hard on discovering great indie bands, great editorials and amazing resources would make the obvious candidate to become popular among music readers/consumer but in a sea of sites offering so much content, the ones that will most likely the ones that will grow are the ones that can balance their content with their marketing/brand.
While I am a strong advocate of keeping my site clean, rich in writing and always trying to feature the most genuine quality mp3′s I come across.. I have to agree with the person in the panel that talks about posting one popular track to get traffic so that it filters through the other posts of low profile bands.
Obviously it really depends on the musical niche you are targeting.
The fact that Electro/House blogs automatically become more popular than an upcoming obscure indie/dream pop sites is because the Electro blogs can post pretty much anything and get away with it without losing their integrity and readership. They have an incredible loyal readership of dj’s and ravers that as long as you keep reporting about the latest, they will keep coming. Indie blogs cannot use the same strategy because the audience is completely different. All these things have to be taken into consideration and the ones that find a balance are the ones that will cater a bigger audience.
It will definitely be interesting to see what the next 5 years will hold for the music blogosphere. Will streaming mp3s become a crime and be highly persecuted? Will labels completely dump all their resources on music blogs ultimately converting it into their advantage? Are the taste makers the ones that will eventually be on top? or Will the tech savvy bloggers that reinvest their advertising money into their site be the ones that can come out on top?One thing is for sure, we do not live in a fair world.
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