What's The Point?
So I just noticed over at Hypebot that b5media has launched no less than thirty new music blogs today.
Why? Well, b5media's CEO, Jeremy Wright explains that, "[s]ince b5media first launched in September of 2005, we've felt the music scene was being vastly underserved by professional blogs."
That's just about the silliest thing I've ever heard. Why exactly does the "music scene" need professional blogs? The so-called "amateur" blogs, such as Brooklyn Vegan, An Aquarium Drunkard and Largehearted Boy, among many others, are fantastic. Sure, there are a lot of fair-to-middling music blogs out there (you're reading one now, kiddos), but I find it hard to believe that the "music scene" has been suffering because there aren't more "professional" blogs. Besides, there are plenty of professional music blogs these days, from Rolling Stone to the AOL/Time Warner folks at Spinner to the Gawker Media folks at Idolator. Do we really need more?
Even more dubious is the content of b5media's new blogs. One blog, called The Hotel Yorba, is dedicated to all things White Stripes. Umm, hasn't The Modern Age been news-central for the White Stripes for about 5 years now? Then there's Our Digital Music, which seems to be a mix of music industry and music tech news. Thanks, but I'll stick with Hypebot, Coolfer and Engadget. And there's about 28 other blogs, many of which seem to have serious identity issues and lots of cross-over with one another.
Yawn. I'll be sticking with my current daily reading, thanks very much.
posted by Steve @ 1:47 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
Kind of funny seeing as a friend of mine is writing the New York centered one Big Apple Music Scene. He was a fairly unestablished blogger who rarely updated his own site, but now is getting paid to blog. He is also begging people like you and me to link to him so that it ups his hits. So now these "professional bloggers" are going to be relying on us amateurs. Well good luck.
That's hilarious. Professional, indeed.
Well, such stuff as this will certainly put a damper on one's blogging spirit. But so be it, eh? To each his own.
Hey, blog away. Far be it from me to tell people not to blog.
My main problem with the whole b5media thing really boils down to Jeremy Wright's statement. Any idiot can and should be able to blog - hell, I've got two of
'em. But unless you're truly adding something new and/or different, don't pretend that you're bringing "professionalism" to the blogging world. (I realize that these aren't your words, Jason.)
As for a White Stripes blog, well, I'm not a fan of the band, so it doesn't really affect me one way or the other. That said, even though I haven't met you Jason, I've seen Miss Modern Age around town and I'm gonna go out on a limb and say she's cuter, so I'll have to pick her in a head-to-head.
You're probably right about the talk of "professionalism" being empty marketing rhetoric. I don't claim to be a "professional blogger" (after all, I'm still green in this business - only been working for two or three months at this sort of thing). I also don't concern myself too much with the business of networks-at-large, even though I worked for 451 Press before and b5media now.
I simply try to focus on providing interesting content for my readers.
And you're also probably right about Miss Modern Age. No, strike that. Definitely.
Hey, thanks for the warm welcome to themusic blogging scene ;-)
To be honest I'm confused... Is your issue with the word "professional"? If so, scratch it out!
It's just a keyword journalists search on. Press releases are for journalists. Totally sorry if its use elsewhere got under your skin.
As you can tell by reading my writings around (or emailing me, jeremy@b5media.com), I'm a huge fan of the music world. Which is why I'm so excited about this.
It isn't because there's nothing happening, but because there's bery little happening in blog networks (this was the wording "professional blogs" was replaced by in the press releasey.
Anyways, most of our blogges are "young" and new to music blogging. Which to me, is pretty cool. Regular people, writing about something they love, being part ofa community, and getting paid to do it.
If you don't like some of the blogs because you aren't interested in that subject, no worries. But if you are and don't like'em, shoot the author a suggestion or two.
Anyways, just hopping on a plane to head back to canada, but basically we want to be a part of the existing music blogging community, not separate from it. If we fuck up, call us on it or email me.
Adter all, we're all really just doing this because we love music and we love blogging :-)
Jeremy:
Thanks for joining the discussion. To answer your question, yes, the primary impetus for my post was your comment about "professional" blogging. Without that sentence, I probably wouldn't have said anything.
As I'm sure you know, there are a lot of bloggers out there, professional or not, who've been doing this for years, and who have done an incredible service to the music community by spotlighting new music and providing excellent writing. (One such site I forgot to mention yesterday is the excellent Said the Gramophone". It bothered me to think that you were denigrating the work that these folks have done.
It also bothered me that you might be denigrating the content of these non-professional blogs given that, in at least the very early offerings from your blogs, I didn't see anything of particular "professional" value to the music scene. In particular, the thought that the music scene was "underserved" by existing blogs, yet several of your own blogs covered the exact same territory as those un-professional blogs, seemed a bit out of whack to me.
All that said, I have no personal grudge here or anything, and I hope your blogs become a source of interesting information down the road. My personal blogroll of daily reading is sitting at about 85 right now, and I'm always happy to more quality blogs.
I'd just ask that you be mindful that music blogging isn't new anymore, and a lot of really talented, hardworking people have been down this road before.
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