I don’t read music blogs.
It isn’t that none satisfy my taste and thirst for new music - I’m sure many would! Neither is it from any lack of quality in the writing - every site reads like its editors are English PhDs. I don’t read music blogs because they suck.
They’re holdovers from the time of Cream and Rolling Stone. They’re quaint. We look back on the .com bomb, where people’s business models were literally “let’s take what we do offline, and put it online!” That mentality and result is exactly why music blogs don’t succeed.
Not everyone can be Pitchfork.
The problem became clear to me when I joined a private music community. A group of editors post their favourite albums on a daily basis. Members then download the albums they want. It’s all very shady.
And, it’s all volunteer. Both the editors and the members cannot commit extravagant amounts of time. This scarcity of resources has succeeded in acting as a paring force for the ingredients to music discovery.
- Artist and album name. (Identifier)
- Genre and similar artists. (Will I like it?)
- Artwork. (Eye-catcher)
There is never an long-winded and pretentious “review” to wade through. None of the editors pose superiority. Their shred tastes are simply that - take it or leave it. And if you leave it, tomorrow will be another bevy of albums to glance over.
What prevents this model from scaling? Copyright. Artists, or at least their representatives, need to feel they aren’t being stolen from. If communities like I described are truly altruistic sources of free advertising, then it seems reasonable there is a middle ground.
I think I found it.
OkayPlayer has drawn me into the hip-hop mixtape scene. Blogs like Rappers I Know post full albums from relative unknown artists. But, the quality of the music is consistently high! From there, I started researching many of the independent labels. Their websites often contained dozens of albums for free download.
Is there a place where the latest demo albums are aggregated?
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