While out on a walk I thought of the last piece I quoted here, about the author wondering if editing a podcast or doing graphic design, that perhaps it is an “amateurization” of tasks that some people get paid lots of money to do.
“For his part, David says he doesn’t begrudge my amateur podcasting, and points out that the medium started as a homegrown endeavor before traditional media got into the game.”
Sara Eckel from The Amateurization of Everything
THAT’S RIGHT.
I couldn’t write for MTV.com, but I could set up PHP-Nuke and try to set up a music based Plastic.com (I’m really showing my age here). Thankfully tools like Blogger, Movable Type, and WordPress came along.
That’s when we started HXC.com, Absolute Punk, Pitchfork, Stereogum, and Idolater.
The medium (music blogging) “started as a homegrown endeavor before traditional media got into the game.”
AOL Music re-launched Spinner.com in 2008, pulling it out of the clunky CMS and moving it to something even more horrible, from what I can remember (I started Noisecreep for AOL Music in 2008).
I’m sure other corporations co-opted the music blog world, but I can’t think of any right now.
There was an ocean of music blogs out there, a vast ecosystem of writers and interests and genres covered, sometimes catering to certain cities or regions.
Point being – these things WORKED. If they didn’t, corporate nerds with all their “forward-thinking ideas” (HAHA) wouldn’t have swooped in, co-opted the whole market with big budgets, and siphoned off exclusive interviews and video premieres from the little guys…
Holy shit, as I write that… damn, we destroyed it all, didn’t we? Damn.
Then it became too expensive to keep the house of cards upright, so they shut it all down and sold to Yahoo or Verion or whatever and made their yearly bonuses.
In the end we’re led to believe that music blogs (or blogs for anything) just can’t work anymore. The internet has moved on. And I think that’s bullshit.
Corporate interests moved on (hello, Conde Nast) and left us with… AI generated Spotify playlists, huh?
Re-start your blog. Go to a show. Buy a zine. Make stickers. Invite some friends over for dinner and put your phones in a basket – corporate interests ain’t welcomed at the dinner table.