music blogs in 2009: does anyone care anymore?

So The Morning News recently recently featured a "five years later" roundtable interview with prominent music bloggers David Gutowski (Largehearted Boy), Sean Michaels (Said the Gramophone), Andrew Noz (Cocaine Blunts & Hip Hop Tapes), Matthew Perpetua (Fluxblog), John Seroff (the Tofuhut), and Oliver Wang (Soul Sides).

In addition to some depressing thoughts about how difficult it is for musicians to make a living, the roundtable is pessimistic about the state of music blogs, with nearly all expressing disappointment with what music blogs have become. Seroff: "So much of what an 'mp3 blog' became is just so much file sharing devoid of independent intellectual content or context[...] I thought this would be a real billion-points-of-light intellectual and critical movement and it seems to have settled instead into a gazillion people putting up Michael Jackson albums on MegaShare or hipsters copy-and-pasting press releases, URL and all."

Personally, I love music blogs and they've done a lot to shape my tastes over the years, but I expect I'm in a tiny minority. That said, I'm burnt out and don't really read them much myself these days.

So, will anyone care about music blogs in 10 years? Any great ones out there that give you cause to be optimistic? Or has the moment passed for music blogs?

Oh yeah, link to the article: Music Bloggers Roundtable Redux

there's already a retarded thread about this

that sounds like some dudes whining about the fact that people like music more than hearing dudes' thoughts about it

I'd like to see a poll about the best thread about articles about people writing about music writers.

if any of those guys showed up around here i'd give them a piece of my mind

that sounds like some dudes whining about the fact that people like music more than hearing dudes' thoughts about it

that's maybe sort of true, but i think sean makes a good point with this

I had John’s same hopes for music blogs—Finnish hip-hop fans, explaining how their favorite music makes them feel; Havana jazz blogs, describing their Friday night out; Japanese avant-gardists, writing about new noises. That really, really, really hasn’t materialized. Instead it’s hundreds of bloggers writing the same sort of things about the same sort of songs.

this is pretty sad, and basically the reason i don't read more than two or three blogs.

xpost

being called retarded for starting a too-earnest thread on ilm is a rite of passage. I'm kind of proud of myself now.

If anyone has a link to that other retarded thread, link to it and I'll drag myself and my retarded non-insights there. (I googled for possible pre-existing threads before posting this one, but being a retard, I didn't find it)

the reason ppl blog for free nowadays (no disrespect to forks, flux, et al) is so they can get "close" to the industry--tickets, CDs, interviews, whatev. So when labels start pushing out press releases, everyone feels pressured to cover the boring Panda Bear/Atlas Sound collabo or Silversun Pickup song in their inbox because they want to maintain that relationship. It's a snake eating its own boring white asshole. Fucken saddos.

there's already a retarded thread about this

― congratulations (n/a), Tuesday, July 28, 2009 1:28 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

Has ILM always been this rude and I just haven't been around long enough? How is this attitude productive?

Anyway, great thread idea sciolism.

iawtc (except I actually kind of like that Panda Bear/Atlas Sound collabo). xp

ilm is actually less rude than it was: Annie Sprinkle C/D

whiney what are the advantages of tweeting free

xpost

that Annie Sprinkle thread is ile, actually, but you get the idea

the other retarded thread about this: Now this is a good one (MP3 blog/aggregator thing)

^^^beat me to it.

not much in the way of substantial conversation over there but of course that has never been the purpose of ilx-- I say that lovingly

mods, lock this thread if you have nothing better to do

ok, locking as per request.