Question for bloggers

It's not like my cooking is affected by knowing that others are making money with their cooking.

I've never seen any MTV affiliated blogs, where are they?

I don't think blogs should necessarily be setting trends and naming names, but that's because I'm almost 33 and largely incapable of doing those things. I'm happy with my 'contribution' to online music stuff.

I've never looked to make money out of the stuff I do online, but to be self-indulgently honest, I do sometimes wish I had a larger audience, so part of me wants to do Popular (for instance) as a column in some bigger place. On the other hand I like being able to flake out and not write anything for months sometimes.

I only listen to the voices in my head.

what they don't realise is that to -overtake- Apple (and not just clumsily compete as Napster/Yahoo are doing), it won't just be by being cheaper than Apple (Napster/Buy.com/etc have tried that) - they need to be cheaper than what the cheap alternative to Apple is. (Namely, allofmp3 and those impossibly cheap russian folks.) Which isn't gonna happen.

HOWEVER there's obviously room for more than one player in the market, so who knows, maybe it will be successful.

also - it looks like people hate you and are trying to get you spammed... unless you're one of the spammers! :)

Lots of real magazines are dropping their rates like crazy. I can't imagine anyone would pay a lot of money for the type of writing that requires no editing, has no overhead, and the writer does for free in their spare time anyway.

Just a guess, I have nothing to back this up.

I'm continually surprised that my weblog has an audience. Expectations don't really figure into it.

This whole thing reeks of "Hey, you know that kind of thing the kidz are into these days Jerry? I'm sure we could put together something like that". It's gonna be The Bravery of MP3 blogging.

i didnt mean bloggers, I meant writers for Village Voice, Seattle Weekly etc who only write for the webpages

hahaha I think the admins of straightup.no are pissed that I snagged "straightup" as an early gmail handle

either that or somebody from ilx got fed up with my occasional instigating

working P.R.-retail for a company pushing WMAs?

That's my experience - I write for smaller, specialist mags like e/i, Grooves, Signal To Noise, Jazzwise - those first three pay nothing for reviews and only Grooves pays a nominal amount for features. It's a hobby, wish it would pay, but it doesn't.

Isn't Jessica hopper a top-ish press officer in the US? Conflict of interest?

that conflict-of-interests hasn't stopped her from writing for a bunch of pubs: alt-weeklies, venus, village voice, marooned, etc....

has this been announced somewhere? first i've heard it. even if she has gotten out of the PR business, the point above that being a music publicist and a music journalist at the same time is a bit of a conflict. still, if she's gotten out of the PR business to pursue writing, that's cool.

Anthony, I can't see URGE taking over the market any time this decade; Itunes is hangin' on like a tick.

I'd happily do work for anybody who'd like to hire my pen, but I've long trumpeted myself as a writing whoreforhire to anyone who would listen. For some reason, I can't seem to become a lickspittle no matter how hard I try. Where is my rainbow?

Anyway, as regards my buhlawg, I mostly spend all of my time feeling guilty for not updating. Except lately, since the music ejector seat was pulled and since I can't seem to access my host company. A lesser man might suspect dark forces; I'm just assuming God's trying to tell me that the world is full enough with my variety of bullshit already.

I never said that they'd be successful, but I do assume that it would be a goal.

I share the concerns about wma, but I'm optimistic about MTV/Viacom/Microsoft's ability to market this thing, so that could compensate. If they can get people to feel like their ipods are failing them for not being able to play wmas rather than wmas sucking because they are not playable on ipods, then they've got it made. Lord knows that there are lots of products on the market that play wma AND mp3.

But either way, it should be pretty interesting. It's going to be a huge audience no matter what, and I'm excited about that. It's going to be a nice monthly paycheck, and that's great for me obviously. Also, if something is not available for posting, I can have them work out deals with small labels and international majors (think Girls Aloud, Rachel Stevens) to make sure that I can post what I want. Also, if things sell well on the blogs, there's a strong chance of them graduating to other parts of the MTV organization, so that's exciting too.

And for paid bloggers: if you used to blog for free and now you're on salary, with quotas or however they manage you, is this basically just like your regular writing jobs, except that you're writing in your "casual, voicey" style instead of your "1,500 feature style" or "blurb style"?

I won't be writing in a very different style than what I do on Fluxblog, though I will be writing with the knowledge that my audience is a little less knowledgeable/younger. There's going to be some differences in format/house style. I'm only doing three posts per week. I'm not going to stop with Fluxblog - I intend on keeping that daily. With the URGE thing, I'll be able to write about super popular hits without having to worry about major labels getting weird about it, and I'm glad about that.

Anyway, it'd be nice if it works out, and if it doesn't, it's a good platform. I mean, how damaged are freelance writers if they write for a publication that goes under? Not too much, usually.

Xpost: I wish you two wouldn't fight. Can't we all be friends in our big internet playpen and scrawl happy faces with our feces rather than a frowny mouth with what comes out down south?

Sing along and make it real.

I know that. But to take the motivational speaker riff, "You're selling them you."

“All that’s really exciting in music writing right now—in terms of style, content, delivery, form, function—is coming from either blogs or the interzone between blogs and ‘professionals.’ I’d be surprised if the landscape and its organisms didn’t look completely different in five or ten years” seems as if it is from your end and basically sums up what you seem to be getting at here much more succinctly.

And for the record, I agree with you on the editing bit. Blogging is less like professional criticism or fiction and more like Victorian letter writing.

A lot of magazines also specifically look for newcomers that they found on blogs. I don't mean the Fluxblogs or Wonkettes, but inexperienced, promising writers. I've been specifically directed to troll blogs for new writers myself. As more bloggers figure this out, some of them will act even more professional.

x-post

Forksclovetofu, about the landscape changing: that's the part I don't believe. Bloggers are either professional writers waiting to happen or they really are just some idiot talking about their cats and what they ate for breakfast. I don't see much sustainable middleground. Saying they have a new "style, content, delivery, form, function" thing just means that they write funny, but a lot of people have written funny or pretended they were on drugs, for newspapers and magazines, for many, many years.

if they were being edited they would just be "columnists" and then they wouldn't have the sexy "blog" thing to hang this shit on.

OTTM

Jess: Yeah, but what if they actually LIKE U2? Disapprove of what you'll say but I'll defend to the death, etc.
And there's nothing sexy about blogs from where I'm sitting. I still find it embarrassing when people refer to mine when we're in real world settings... unless they are similarly dork-oriented. It's like bragging about your comic collection.

or how you got beat up in high school.

I could see where that would lead to some unsavory writing, but there are times when that's a much more appropriate style. F'r instancethis astonishingly lame article from Monday's Times ("A user called Yams also added 'Yams yams yams yams yams.'") sure could've done with a bit more of that.

BTW - up above I should've said "some guy posting about his cat," not "some idiot" - I'm not trying to judge people's blogs or blogging in general.

Suggestions:
Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
Try different keywords.
Try more general keywords.
Try fewer keywords.

'jumbo shrimp'