I was reading a four-part exhortation by Scott Tennent called Can’t Talk; Hyping (via Ryan Catbird) about how blogs have become the new marketing scheme for the music industry. Tennent makes some valuable points about how so many blogs are more about staying on top of the daily buzz and bringing in traffic — becoming a “news feed,” as he puts it — rather than actually affecting music by discussing and uncovering music that’s worth listening to.
Because I have a passion for finding music that touches the soul, but also write for a blog that fits Tennent’s formula (more or less), I’d like to think I’m at least somewhat equipped to respond.
I was originally going to post a series of Tennent quotes and respond to them in turn, but I began to realize a trend in each of my responses: the shortcomings of human nature.
What I mean by that is this: Any time a man looks to someone else to do his work for him, it must be accounted for that there’s a very large possibility that this person will have unspoken motives apart from serving his desires. Humans are selfish. Combine that selfishness with the ego and laziness that are inherent in each human being at some level and you will realize that, over time, you will be hard-pressed to find a music blog that isn’t willing to write as little as possible (for they are lazy) because that’s what their readers want (for their readers are also lazy) in order to get the ad revenue they want (for they are selfish) and the popularity they desire (for they have ego) and you will see how easy it is to “streamline” a blog to meet these self-serving needs.
Certainly there are bloggers out there, such as Said The Gramophone, that are affecting music, but finding the writers with the integrity needed to stick to what they originally intended is no easy task.
We could talk and wish and hope that people will change, but human nature dictates that it never really will. The best one can hope of others is that they at least stay true to whatever niche they write about and, even if unintentionally, show new music to their readers, albeit in as few words as possible.
It sounds hopeless, but it’s a fact of life: If you are passionate about the discovery of music, turn the selfishness in on itself and find the tools necessary to do it for yourself.
If you want to write and share your discoveries with others, blogging is clearly the easiest method, but it can’t be done without the awareness of your own human nature, so do it with no intent that it will be read by anyone other than the occasional passerby. It’s a painful place to be for those that want others to see what they’re finding (trust me, this blog is there in that place), but it’s probably better, if for no other reason than that it keeps you humble.
