Ok, provocative title, got your attention. Let’s talk.
Before I launch into this mostly pointless and irrelevant tirade let me make a couple of clarifying statements, disclaimers if you like.
Firstly, I hope I’m wrong. I really do, I like music blogs.
Secondly, I probably am wrong. Though I’ve been chewing this over for a while, this article will still be a mixture of ill thought opinions and half baked ideas. No great journalistic investigation has taken place and I have limited experience, too limited for some of the statements that will follow.
Now let’s get started with me laying out my contention, which is; music blogs are dying. Slowly.
Eh?
SGTMT has been going for just over a year and up until the summer it was all growth, growth, growth. SHOW ME THE TRAFFIC. But then after a holiday and a brief respite in August I began to notice that our growth had plateaued, flatlined, whatever.
Now, let me state, at SGTMT we’re not driven by traffic, we post music we like, not music that will get us hits. Having said that, traffic is obviously an easy indicator to show whether or not your activities are in anyway worthwhile. Plus, I can get a bit geeky about stats so I find google analytics oddly fascinating.
At first I assumed it was just us and then I picked up on Twitter that a few other music blogs were finding traffic hard to come by. This prompted some research on the probably unreliable Site Analytics website and I discovered that not one or two but pretty much ALL the major blogs / music magazine sites I entered were all in decline. Oh.
Back to my own analytics I noticed the slow decrease of traffic from the major aggregators (Elbows, Shuffler & Hype Machine) and punched them into the possibly libelous Site Analytics. This showed even more stark declines, up to 80% year on year. Oh.
So, like, why?
Well this is the big question and if I’m right about the above then I’m sure they’ll be lots of opinions floating around (feel free to comment below of course).
My theory is as follows: It’s all about music discovery.
I don’t believe people are listening to less music (there is no evidence to suggest this) and I don’t believe people are searching for music less online. But, the way people are discovering music is changing and surely that’s what most people read music blogs for anyway? For the more nerdish new music fan, music blogs are a must, an unmissable lunch time activity. That won’t change. However, for the average new music fan accessibility and usability are influencing factors and that’s where the behemoths come in: Pandora & Spotify (launched in the US early in the summer). Punch those bad boys into the aforementioned site and a different, upward pattern emerges. Are they killing our blogs?
What next?
As I said at the top of this article, I’m probably wrong. However, if I’m not, what does the future hold for music blogs?
I’m not wholly convinced by my speculative Pandora/Spotify argument so I wont delve into their future too much, though Spotify’s tie-ins with Facebook are ominous.
What we can say is that money talks, or at least, pays staff/costs on aggregators. I imagine either the big aggregators will fade into extinction or they’ll have to jump the shark big time to draw back their traffic. Shuffler’s upcoming iPad app and Hype Machine’s iPhone app and recent homepage rebirth suggest they’re already making moves.
If the aggregators keep shriveling (which would be sad, I love those sites) then music blogs will feel the heat. Most bloggers are hardy, passionate souls so they’ll press on regardless but it could be that a sort of Digital Darwinism will kick in. On one hand they’ll be a survival of the fittest, those bloggers that just MUST keep going. On the other hand those bloggers that can evolve will stand tall.
Can we get our blogs ‘tablet ready’? Can we fine tune our writing and music choice to keep appealing? Can we keep on the front foot of new and newer social media? Is this all just crazed hyperbole? Should I check into the nearest institution and leave you all in peace? We’ll see.
Comments welcome.
Your line of thought is on point: it’s all bout the music / discovery. For most, however, that’s too much effort and that’s where the Pandoras come in doing the work for you (if you’re content with that selection that is). I think you’re onto something, but your traffic may be down due to the rising # of all the other blogs out there….
True, or perhaps we’re just highlighting dull music at the mo! I guess a depletion in the number of blogs maybe no bad thing for the rest of us. Thanks for your comment.
This is an interesting thought to be sure. I think the most notable thing, though, is the total dearth of compelling music/music stories this summer. Everything that seemed like it might be big seemed to peter out quickly. I’m much more inclined to think that we’re merely in a slump than suffering a great shortfall. Music blogs have always held a fairly small niche in the grand scheme of things and as long as there’s WordPress or Tumblr or Blogspot there will be new blogs popping up every day. Unforunately, I’m not quite sure where that heads in terms of overall quality of content, but that’s just another problem of the internet.
Of course, some of those statistics are a little unnerving. I’ve never been a fan of aggregators (I prefer my music with some words and thoughts) but they’re still one of the biggest traffickers for music blogs and one of the few markers of a “legitimate” blog.
Yeah, I guess that could be a factor, the summer is never great for big new releases or breaking acts. Great blog btw.
Blogs are being plundered much more quickly by larger commercial music sites (RS, MTV, SPIN, NME, etc), ad agencies, and other such gatekeepers with more money and larger audience. I think the larger question is, how much longer will bloggers sit around giving away their time and expertise for free while someone else cashes in on it?
Interesting premise here. I don’t think Pandora, Spotify are the only culprits chiseling away at blog traffic. I think in the “multi-channel” interwebs world if you look broadly at other sources and tools for music discovery you’ll see a more thorough picture, I am sure. Over the last “X” period of time, music curators/bloggers (whatever you want to call them) are using tumblr, Facebook and twitter more effectively. I think this discussion needs to be framed differently. For example, when Blogger shut me down 9 months ago I moved to WordPress. Sure, my numbers went down, but I also decided to focus on twitter and tumblr and Facebook at the same time. If I look broadly at my “audience” I’m reaching more people than ever before, the blog included. But a lesson I have learned from radio is that it’s not always about reach. Sure, you need reach to leverage the revenue piece of this (especially if you’re a blogger who wants to get paid/make a living out of it) but I really think when building community or strive for engagement of some sort, it’s about using all the “tools” most effectively to have a conversation. My numbers may be down on my blog, but via twitter/tumblr/FB I have also developed more meaningful conversations and relationships with my curator colleagues. Make sense? I think it does. I’d rather have 30 people who I trust and can share things with all the time than 3000 people who just make my “numbers” look good. One other thing I’d add is that blogs, twitter and tumblr and FB have “people” behind them. Pandora doesn’t. As for Spotify – I think it’s too early to tell although in the last couple days I’ve discovered a lot of music from Spotify on Facebook. We’ll see if it remains the shiny new toy. You make a lot of good points in your piece. I’ll finish by telling you a story: the other day a good pal of mine who is as much a music freak as I am told me he cut his RSS feed of blogs/music sites down from about 200 to 15. I asked why? He told me that 175 of the sites he follows all basically blog about the same stuff. Couldn’t argue with that. I may follow his example! I asked him if he could only go to five blogs/music sites a day which ones would he go to? He said, Hype Machine, Pitchfork, NPR Music, Paste Magazine, and i Tunes.
“My numbers may be down on my blog, but via twitter/tumblr/FB I have also developed more meaningful conversations and relationships with my curator colleagues.”
Agreed.
Some great points. I agree generating meaningful conversation and relationship is more important and beneficial. I could 200 hits from Shuffler but are any of these people actually reading the sites as they skip through from track to track? Thanks for commenting.
I sort of had the same worries upon beginning my own blog. I worried that the world wouldn’t end until I got the premise that in my country no one actually cater to such music and cover events here. The larger world (outside of the Philippines) could not care less about what I write, or so I had thought, so I try so hard to tap into local news/ music/ cultures so it happened that these “outsiders” are the ones who frequent the blog. In the issue of content, in my four months of blogging (a total noob!) it seems a little disheartening to see tumblr blogs rise less texts/ discourse but relying more in visuals and audio widgets— the thing that I try to shy away from. The death of blogging would only come to that point when “serious” bloggers themselves rest to that style of writing, where it would only intensify people’s depreciating attention span, and the integrity of writing would come as a secondary concern. On the fight of traffic, up until now I have no clear idea of what a decent site visit/ stats are exactly, I had decided to confer to some bloggers I know but I worried it might be over the fence. Personally I try to get my mind off that stats game but of course it is hypocritical to state that I do not get affected by it. Sites/ services offer more of what people generally need, a quick click-here-tag-there-then-listen functions that disregard different exponents of writing and of what blogging is about. The threat imposed to bloggers by what’s happening now is alarming, all I can aspire to is that artists continue to see blogs as crucial venues for their music and for “serious” readers to contend us fairly against big music sites.
I’d agree with pretty much all that has been said, but the friend of Bruce Warren who said “that 175 of the sites he follows all basically blog about the same stuff” stands out as hitting the nail on the head for me. Both the cause and the effect of this is what I perceive as the increased cut-throat vicious competitiveness between bloggers to be writing about the newest thing that has appeared in their inboxes/soundcloud feed/hype machine profile in the last couple of minutes. In fact, since we started ours nearly five years ago now it’s got a lot nastier out there with people slagging others off for being literally a couple of hours behind the trend if you haven’t posted about said latest thing (if you follow twitter feeds of certain blogs and see their interaction with other bloggers you’ll see plenty of evidence of this) God help you if you’re a day behind. And a week? Might as well do the decent thing and end it all (both on and offline)
That’s why people who take time and care to listen to an artist and their work before spouting off is always the best form of music writing (a ‘slow-listening’ movement akin to slow food, as Simon Reynolds has put it). This is not some claim to ‘authenticity’, rather a way to gain some respect (in my eyes anyway). Also, and this is equally as important, a mutually supportive blogging community is key – one that reads and comments on each others posts, does things like your excellent A to Z and keeps an active blogroll. This all has the danger of sliding into a clique, but it doesn’t have to if you keep an inclusive disposition to the venture.
I agree with that. Reviewing an album at a pace that some blogs (notably famous ones) are just too fast and rattles me sometimes.
You’re right; its seems the point of blogging is being missed. There are too many people out there craving to be ‘the first’ to uncover a new band or find ‘the next hit tune’ (When I say hit, i mean amongst 20 people in some club you’ve never heard of, and 20 because anymore than that its a sell out and too mainstream)
A blog should not revolve around stats, but quality of content; and more importantly, content that is relevant/important to the person writing it. It is ultimatly pointless to try and compete with the likes of pitchfork etc, they have an army of writers and a million contacts. If you strive to annouce every peice of news as and when they do, your blog will become a chore and you will burn out. I have been guilty of this myself; but from now i’m going for quality not quantity.
Thanks for making my dinner at work more interesting. Posts like this and the coments that followed are the reason we should blog!
A great reply. I totally agree the culture of having to be ‘first to post’ is so ludicrous. Blogging should and can be so much more than that. I come across so many blogs that have no discernible taste as they were just pumping out whatever they just got emailed. I like a blog which seems curated and considered. Thanks for commenting.
I want to believe that what makes bloggers different from the so-called “real” writers of successful publication is their freedom in preferencing what to write. Being caught in the hullabaloo of what’s pressing demeans that pleasure, I wouldn’t lie I was caught in that fever (and once in a while) but more now of seeing my own taste and favorites get written on my blog. As poetic as it sounds, blogging is more of a personal resolution in our music journalism ambitions and passion for music than anything else. If that’s not it, then I don’t know what is. Just to share, I was offended when I watched the movie Contagion, Elliott Gould’s character said to a blogger (played by Jude Law) that “Blogging is not writing. It’s graffiti with punctuation.” Stings.
I think it’s true that our options for music discovery are being overrun by the instantly accessible streaming options across all of our devices. These new applications seem to cover 2 distinct types of music discovery: 1) passively discovering new music via algorithmic or social filtering, and 2) actively searching for specific music. The Pandora’s and Spotify’s of the world are getting much better at both forms of music discovery.
To me, however, the blogs still fulfill a type of music discovery that Pandora and Spotify have yet to crack, which is that 3) many people like to follow another person’s specific taste (DJ). It’s not algorithmically or socially filtered, it’s filtered by the personal preference of the person you’re following. The other role that music blogs still fulfill is 4) the “preview”, or in the vinyl days the “promo”. College and pirate radio were the traditional outlet for songs, artists and albums that were not officially announced, released, or put on iTunes. Music blogs will live on….at least for a little while.
Thanks for the comments Joe. In the UK there is still quite a strong set of local and national radio stations that often get to new music before us blogs do, however I agree with the rest of your points. Definitely still a place for blogs.
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Some very interesting points in both the article and the comments so far.
Firstly – the role of Spotify/Pandora – I don’t see them eating into the music blog traffic that actually matters. Spotify may be the goto place to hear a specific tune rather than HypeM these days – but people who came to your site just to download a specific track rarely stayed anyway. This may well eat into traffic numbers but will have no effect on the influence or relationships of blogs in my opinion. It will have much more of an impact of the aggregators themselves.
The comment “that 175 of the sites he follows all basically blog about the same stuff” comes up all the time and is partly true. However, if that’s you – you are following the wrong sites. I follow maybe three “hipster” blogs like this, and that pretty much covers all the most blogged tunes. Find the ones at the top of the food chain and bookmark them. Let the others wallow in the obscurity that will eventually come with not having their own voice and being utterly replaceable.
I may have a more positive spin on all this than others though, as our traffic has been steadily increasing all year. Maybe we’re the ones stealing yours?
Thanks for the comment Tim. Wise point, most traffic from Hypem, Shuffler etc probably isn’t ‘real’, however some people do discover blogs through that route.
The same as you I usually only visit a handful of blogs but every now and again It’s good to slip off the beaten track to find something a bit different.
I haven’t seen traffic slide, if anything it has grown recently. I’m Canadian so Spotify/Pandora/Turntable.fm don’t work here yet. I’ve had traffic from others that do use those and somehow found me because of this. “Heard this on Spotify, I love it” etc. I agree that while Pandora and Spotify may aid in music discovery, I don’t think music blogs will die because of the personal connection behind it. It’s not like iTunes killed blogs with their “suggested purchases” system, which is sort of similar to the recommended music that Pandora and Spotify have to offer.
I tend not to blog about some of the typical hipster stuff that gets you “hits”. I think the ones that chase what’s popular are the ones that are seeing the plunge in traffic. People are starting to realize that if a lot of blogs post the same things, than they don’t have to follow so many daily. I tend to follow blogs that write great articles and interesting tidbits about the songs they post.