The Pros and Cons Of Music Blogging

This post originally appeared at themusicaldivide.wordpress.com in November 2017.

Some recent tweets have irked me, speaking as a music blogger. I’m not going to get into that, because it’s not worth it. Instead, I’m going to go in a different direction and talk about what I believe are the pros and cons of music blogging. Seeing as how I’ve already beaten this into the ground time and time again, you’re not just going to hear from me. I asked some blogger friends for their thoughts on the matter. I’m hoping to shed a light on why people continue to write about music despite it seeming worthless, and by the end, hopefully I’ve brightened someone’s day.

Also, I’m targeting music bloggers with this, but perhaps other bloggers can agree to some of these points as well.

The pros:

• Your music blog can be whatever you want it to be.

While standard review blogs such as mine are the most common types of blogs around (seemingly), it’s easy to differentiate yourself from that model. Some people have a niche system. Highway Queens reviews only female artists. Country Exclusive reviews good and bad music and leaves the in-between ones for their “Memorable Songs” feature. If you want to get rid of the word “review” for a minute, Michael Rauch of the Cheap Seat Report only writes about something when he truly loves it. Sometimes it takes an entire month before you find another post on his blog, and when he loves it, it’s called a spotlight, not a review.

Even if you want to go beyond just talking about albums or songs, you can do other things. Robert of Robert’s Country Opinion Blog posts short posts about a range of topics from his personal adventures to the history of country music to news about truly underground acts. Beyond that, you can make it whatever you want. If you want to be anti-mainstream and only focus on good independent country music, go ahead. If you like the Texas scene, go ahead and blog about that. If you think there’s more to the mainstream than meets the eye, go ahead! Post once a day, or a week, or a month! Set a goal. Do you want to reach a bunch of people or are you just writing for yourself? What do you want out of this? There are so many routes you could go with this.

We’re all different individuals, so naturally that carries over to how we structure our blogs. Even the traditional review blog can be differentiated according to who the person behind the keyboard is (odd phrasing, I know, but I’m basically saying, “different personalities lead to different thoughts”). As long as you’re happy, that’s really all that matters. As long as the passion is still there, that’s what matters. It sounds cliched, but truly, your happiness in regards to how you operate your blog is the most crucial element of all.

• You don’t answer to anyone

In a more professional setting, you’d have to answer to an editor and wouldn’t have nearly the same freedom you could have simply from starting up your own blog. Anyone can be a writer now. What’s better is that you can take your time developing your blog into whatever it is that you want. So what if you only got 1 view today? You’re making the same amount of money you would have if you had gotten 1,000 views — $0. The key question to always ask yourself is not, “how do I get more readers and views?”, but rather, “how do I keep this fun for me so that the passion never dies?”

• The music supply is seemingly endless

Granted, I’m really only educated on the indie-country scene, but surely other genres always have something to talk about as well? It could be a recent news event, new album, new song, or even just a new artist who you want to help expose to the world. The point is, there never should be an issue of not being able to write about anything. Most bloggers will tell you they’d like more TIME just to cover it all. I myself would love to have more time to devote to news events, but I’m also happy doing reviews and other miscellaneous opinion pieces.

• You’ll meet a lot of cool people

Believe it or not I’m not talking about artists here. You might interact with a lot of artists if that’s what you’re going for, but I’m talking more about the passionate music fans. It’s really not cool to like country music in my hometown, not even a lot of the newer stuff. I had two interests growing up — video games and music, and the latter portion didn’t kick in until my teenage years, so I never really interacted much with people about those subjects. With the online world, somehow you end up finding people out of the blue. You might not ever meet them in person, and it’s easy to forget there’s an actual person behind that screen talking to you, but it’s a lot easier to make friends and bond over like-minded interests this way. It’s not like real life where two people meet each other for the very first time and try to find common ground. You’ve already got it!

Sometimes I find cool new bands and music not from reading other blogs, but from interacting with other everyday individuals who either comment on the blog or interact with me on social media. Even if I don’t find cool, new music, I always love a good conversation.

Thoughts on pros from other bloggers:

• A couple pros worth mentioning — 1.) writing about something your passionate about without reporting to an editor. Basically choosing what you want to write about and which topics you cover. 2.) Building connections with like-minded people who care about music as much as you do. Spirited discussions, discourse and debate. Overall great conversations about music. I think that’s the best part. — Nathan Kanuch (Shore2Shore Country)
• For me, personally, there are no real cons. I write about what I like and ignore the rest. I’ve never had a bad experience with PR. I thank them for reaching out and usually say that this isn’t for me, but keep sending stuff and something might click. The pros are many. I get to share my music finds and if even only one person gives it a listen, that’s new exposure to an artist I enjoy. I do this entirely for my own amusement, if others find it entertaining/enjoyable/useful, great. If not, I have a readily available journal of what I was listening to at any given time. It helps me remember albums I like. Personally I don’t care what anyone else thinks of my taste in music. No such thing as guilty pleasures, I like what I like. If I didn’t write about an artist’s latest album a) I haven’t heard it, or more likely b) make better music. — Michael Rauch (Cheap Seat Report)
• I think music blogging is important because, just like music, it’s a means of creative expression. It provides a fairly objective means of evaluating, and taking pulse of the music consumption scene. — Markus Meyer (This Is Country Music, The Shotgun Seat)
• “The pros are the friends, the community, the ability to tell even one person about an artist they don’t know, and sometimes when that artist does appreciate what you wrote.” — Megan Bledsoe (Country Exclusive)
• “In the end we are all just out here doing our best to share the love of music. How can that ever be wrong?” — Michelle Lindsey (Highway Queens)

The cons:

• The expectations

I said before that we live in an Internet age and only have to answer to ourselves. That ultimately means we’re playing in someone else’s backyard, because many professional blogs have already beat us to the punch in what we’re trying to do. We’re expected to fall in line with the expectations set by those writers. Of course, good writing and grammar should be essential elements to all writing, but you can’t fault bloggers for not conforming to AP Style.

Once publicists start contacting you (if they contact you), those expectations also play a role since you have new guidelines to follow. Plus, once you pick up on readers, things start heating up. . Let’s say you wrote something about an artist. Maybe it was a review or an interview or just something else that was really cool. They share it on their social media feeds. Who sees it? THEIR fans. Maybe they become your fans too, but pretty soon you’ve got an eclectic mix of people viewing your stuff, and let’s be brutally honest — even the smallest blogger out there enjoys getting some attention for what they wrote (notice that that’s different from actually blogging for clicks though). Still, it puts even more pressure on you, the reviewer, critic, writer, whatever you want call yourself. There are certain bands and solo acts you’re expected to like and dislike. At this point, being “yourself” gets a lot harder.

• Fatigue

Of course, the most expectations come from the place they shouldn’t — yourself. Now, I’m only speaking from observation here, but I’ve talked to other bloggers. There’s always a pressure to write about something as soon as it hits the market, and if you don’t, oh well, too bad. Moreover, there’s a pressure to write something every day, or else the views decrease. Again, it’s not so much that bloggers are doing this for views, it’s just a common lesson from basic psychology. Everybody wants to be liked, and when we latch onto a working formula … well, we have to make sure it keeps working to our benefit. If not, we panic. All of a sudden, something you used to do for passion turns into something you hate, and what good is that? Again, for most bloggers, $0 is what we walk away with at the end of the day every day from all of this. Why bother making it into something it’s not?

Here’s the thing though — even bloggers who DO still have that passion can suffer from fatigue. Perhaps it’s just a bad time of year, or perhaps the pressure is too much. Perhaps you’re not satisfied knowing what you put in isn’t what you’re getting out. In that case, remember, YOU HAVE A REAL LIFE. Take a walk, read a book, count the dots on the ceiling, watch grass die…I don’t know. Just get away from it all (and by all, I mean the Internet) and smell the coffee. Do something for yourself. Remember, it’s a music blog. It’s nothing to stress yourself out over.

• Drama will ensue

Don’t think that just because you only write about music you like or do completely positive reviews that you’re excluded from this either. Sure, people who also do negative reviews are the most likely to be subjected to this. It makes sense. After all, if an artist sees it, they might not take it the best way. In addition, when you do run a music blog that offers commentary, naturally you’re likely opinionated, and when something heats up in the country universe, you know you have something to say about it. As for those who only write about the stuff they like, well, it’s harder, but it can happen. Think about year end list season — even if you love and list tens of thousands of albums, there’s still going to be that one person in the comments section telling you about Joe Gussie and The Dirt Pickers from Nowhere, Iowa and damn it, why didn’t you list them? You could even get ridiculed just for liking something (granted, the group-think culture that ensues from the music scene kind of prevents that but it can certainly happen…).

Even beyond that, I’ve heard of bloggers receiving death threats over certain posts. Really? Do one person’s thoughts really anger you that much? If so, you’re in the wrong business, and if it’s your family or friends making them, better buckle up, because you’ll hear much worse things behind the scenes as you’re trying to make it.

• The percieved relationship between artists/PR firms/other management representing the artist and the critic

Before I get into this, read this post from Country Perspective because it perfectly sums up what I’m about to say better than I can. I’m going to take a controversial stance here, mostly because a lot of reviewers often tag artists when they post about them on social media. Also, a lot of bloggers are trying to get artists’ attention in general. Look, the sad fact of the matter is that they don’t owe us anything, and we don’t owe them anything. I’ll give an example here that I’ve given before. Let’s suppose you’re a critic in 2014. Marty Stuart just released a cool double album that centers around sin and redemption. It’s cool, but you don’t like it, so you talk negatively about it. Nowhere are going to criticize Marty by saying “well, it’s good, but it would have been even cooler if he had gone with a different concept…say, the West!”. The artists are ultimately the ones who come up with the cool ideas and present them to us. I’m not saying certain criticisms can’t help little things get better along the way, but really, what do we do?

You might counter by arguing that smaller, independent artists need our help, and I don’t think that’s necessarily true either. Blogging is 1% of the promotion cycle really. What artists need are good people working with them, and that includes an umbrella of people such as publicists and management among others. Look at Margo Price. Her sales aren’t that impressive compared to other indie darlings in recent years, and yet she’s already hailed as the next Sturgill Simpson or something along those lines. People know her even if the music is another question. I once posted a review on a band called The Whiskey Gentry, and in turn, two more bloggers wrote about that band after hearing what I had to say. Let’s get real though, I didn’t help them break out or likely help at all in terms of selling a record. I just spread the word because I believed in the music.

I’m not entitled free albums weeks in advance before they arrive, nor are the artists required to share my post just because I wrote something nice about them. I used to tag artists on social media until about September, but since then the only times I’ve interacted with artists are when they’re thirsty enough to search their own name out. That’s their prerogative, not mine. I always just say I could hate the next thing an artist does, and keeping a healthy distance anyway helps me to stay honest, unbiased and stress free from doing this. It may sound selfish, but as I said before, YOUR happiness comes first and foremost. What good are you to anything or anyone else if you can’t even make yourself happy?

• The percieved notion that we have so much free time and likely live in our mothers’ basements.

About a week ago I got into a small Twitter fight with Chase Rice’s tour manager for writing a fair, balanced “haterish” review of Chase’s new album. He told me that I was doing too much work for someone with (at the time) only 91 followers to see. I replied that I didn’t care and that I was just doing this for fun anyway. He replied sarcastically that he got it, some people have more free time on their hands than others. Uh ... no. I’m a normal person just like you, buddy, as are ALL writers. We have families to take care of, work or school to attend, other random, unexpected events that pop up, other interests, you name it.

Everyone’s got a story, and despite the existing stereotype, I don’t believe anyone is doing this just for hatred. How can you hate music? It’s like hating puppies or kittens. I often write at night and stay up late to write posts, and I’m happy to do it. It is a lot of work, but neither I nor anyone else ask for much in return. I just don’t want to be viewed as guy with no life who’s staring at his wall every Saturday night.

• It’s made out to be a competition, even for non-professionals

I didn’t have this one present until Billy Dukes of the blog, Taste Of Country decided to say how album reviews are “useless” because they don’t generate hits. I understand this is his job, but there’s still just something wrong about posting just for the clicks and not the passion.

And before I move on with this, let me state, yes, I understand certain blogs like Taste Of Country, Whiskey Riff, and The Boot are out to actually make some money with this. They hire people and treat it as a profession. That is different from simply treating it as a hobby (which is the whole point of this piece). Still, if you’re upset about it, here’s a thought. You’re in a position of power — do something. Don’t try to whine and moan or try to justify it as alright. You don’t get to do that. You have the power, so make a change and be a leader!

But you know, this isn’t specifically about Taste Of Country or one writer from that outlet. It’s about not understanding why it matters how much weight your opinion should hold. Remember my incident with Chase Rice’s tour manager? He told me I was doing it “wrong” because not a lot of people were seeing it. Really, it doesn’t matter if I have one follower or one thousand followers. My opinion remains the same. I’ve even spoken with certain bloggers who’ve told me they were denied interview coverage until the management team representing the artist could “see their numbers” (blog stats). I don’t read every blog or even like some of the styles certain people use. It’s like taste in music. Still, I don’t look at other blogs as enemies. I look at them as friends who are just trying to express the same kind of passion I am — even if it’s in a different way. I would always fully support someone who was doing this for the love of the music. Still, it’s that mentality that you need to stand out that I think (meaning I’m just talking out of the blue once again) causes many blogs to crash and burn and stop before they even get going. I talked with one blogger one time who thought that making a podcast would help him to stand out. Maybe, but several blogs are doing that now. Several blogs are doing lots of creative things. It’s important to reach for the stars I guess, but why kill yourself trying to be different when you can just be yourself instead? We have enough of an echo chamber in the music writing scene as it is. I’m not saying to not try, I’m just saying, make sure it’s what you want, because people are more than capable of reading more than one country website. It’s not like milk or something where you only buy one brand per week and ignore the rest.

Wow, it would seem the cons far outweigh the pros don’t they? There are certainly more of them, so naturally it’s time to pack up and quit, right?

Absolutely not.

I truly believe that that one pro — making your blog whatever you want it to be has more strength and power when done right than all of the downsides combined. Actually, I should be careful about saying “done right”, because really, it’s hard to know when a blog is done “right”. With that said, it’s completely impossible to run a music blog the “wrong” way (unless you call it a music blog and proceed to post pictures of cat memes or something but…why would you do that?). My point is, country blogging can absolutely suck sometimes, even as a non-profession. Still, the value that can come with the new friends and discoveries of an endless world of music make it all worth the ride.

Thoughts from other bloggers regarding cons:

• “A con obviously is producing good content but not being able to reach as wide an audience as you’d like” — Nathan Kanuch (Shore2Shore Country)
• “The biggest cons I can think about for music blogging are the same for any blogging. You’re putting a lot of hard work into something that you’re 1) not making a profit off 2) not many people are reading” — Julian Spivey (The Word)
• The cons are the bullshit. The publicists, the pressure, and then when one of the artists you’re bloody trying to promote says something shitty about what you’re doing.” — Megan Bledsoe (Country Exclusive)

Thanks to everyone for reading, and thanks to the bloggers who had something to say about this!