Bido Lito!

The Problems with Music Blogs pt. 2 (of hopefully 2)

4. Being the puppet of a very persuasive PR person

If, until now, you’ve been under the very idealistic illusion that all music bloggers are exceptionally hard-working individuals who spend hours searching the most scary corners of the internet for good music, let me dispel that largely untrue myth. For most music bloggers, their e-mail inbox is the largest source of new music, as it is filled with the faux-personal e-mails of music PRs. “Hey Pete, how are you? Isn’t it hot today? Ha ha ha. I just read your simply amazing post on Crushed Beaks, it was amazing, I just love your blog, I reckon if you love them you will love this new band I’m working with called Swelling Melons who sound like a mix between Arcade Fire and Radiohead and have had early support from Steve Lamacq”. Disregarding all of the many problems with this e-mail, the truth is that for some laptop-cuddling bloggers this is as much emotional sustenance as they get, and will end up posting almost anything that their favourite PR person sends them.

Unfortunately, the problem doesn’t stop there. You’ll have noticed that some new artists receive an enormous amount of coverage from most blogs all around the same time, and though of course the quality of their hopefully-good music is often the cause of this, it’s just as common that they’ve simply got capital to spend on a well-orchestrated PR campaign. For example, the London based PR firm Radar Maker do their job brilliantly; they take on generally very impressive clients such as Bloc Party, Marina & The Diamonds and, more recently, Theme Park, and build up good relationships with the media. But their impressive track record means that when they send out an e-mail about a new artist, bloggers enter an unspoken, keyboard based war to be the first to post about the artist. Eyes glaze over, visions of unprecedented ad revenue and telling the internet that you “discovered” the artist years ago bounce around their heads, and before you know it half of the existing music blogs have all posted about the same artist before they’ve even listened to their music. Then the other half will assume that they must be a big deal seeing as so many blogs have written about them, and post about them too.

And if you thought that was depressing, it’s worth mentioning that that’s the best case scenario. Because for 90% of naive new bands who have gone through life being taught that you need to put money into things to get money out, they’ll spend all of their cash on an unsuccessful PR campaign from one of the many PR companies who have such a tough times finding clients that they'll accept anybody, even if it's this man playing the sitar. These companies therefore have no personality and no character that the media can trust in, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that just like the e-mails of Radar Maker are sometimes accepted before the music has even been listened to, so it is true that the e-mails of most average PR companies are rejected before listening too. And if that wasn’t a dose of mostly-accurate cynicism to knock the last of that festive spirit out of you, then I don’t know what will. Happy new year?

... Just like last time I should mention that music blogs are a really liberating and positive force on the music media. There's just some bad ones. Maybe even lots of them. But they're outweighed by the good ones, so start the new year with some new blogs that are nothing like as calculated or contrived as what's described above; try Real Horrorshow Tunes, Lost Lost Lost, One For The People or Breaking New Waves. Liverpool even has a couple of top quality ones which are essential reading for Liverpudlian music fans, in the form of The Von Pip Musical Express and Getintothis.