There’s a school of thought that rests with some music bloggers that there’s little point in posting a song if a number of other blogs have already featured it, the suggestion being that the blog lacks voice and originality. It’s certainly a philosophy we’d agree with when blogs are simply posting the latest buzz band for a few hundred hits off Hype Machine with nothing else to say. Yet here are three reasons why sometimes it is important to post about a ‘buzz’ band, irrespective of how many other music blogs have written about it.
1. Not every visitor to a music blog reads lots of blogs. In fact (shock horror) sometimes they may only read one or may have never read one before.
2. Blogs by their very nature can work effectively as a pack. It’s all very well one music blog shouting that such and such a band are amazing / the next big thing / awesome, but the reality is that more often than not an individual blog won’t have that much influence (despite what the sometimes egotistical blogger may think). However as more blogs talk about a track that chatter becomes a noisy shout and there’s more chance of someone with bigger influence (radio producer, record label etc) taking note. A phrase that you’ll often hear is "X new artist is big on the blogs", not "X new artist is featured on (insert name of trendy blog here)"
3. If as a music fan we’ve discovered something that we adore then to not post about it just because every other music blogger has already posted about it seems to defeat the object of loving music. Imagine if we applied the same philosophy to gigs and decided that we weren’t going to see a particular band because lots of other people were going and we wouldn’t be original just standing in a crowd with everyone else. If everyone thought like that gigs would soon become a thing of the past.
1. Not every visitor to a music blog reads lots of blogs. In fact (shock horror) sometimes they may only read one or may have never read one before.
2. Blogs by their very nature can work effectively as a pack. It’s all very well one music blog shouting that such and such a band are amazing / the next big thing / awesome, but the reality is that more often than not an individual blog won’t have that much influence (despite what the sometimes egotistical blogger may think). However as more blogs talk about a track that chatter becomes a noisy shout and there’s more chance of someone with bigger influence (radio producer, record label etc) taking note. A phrase that you’ll often hear is "X new artist is big on the blogs", not "X new artist is featured on (insert name of trendy blog here)"
3. If as a music fan we’ve discovered something that we adore then to not post about it just because every other music blogger has already posted about it seems to defeat the object of loving music. Imagine if we applied the same philosophy to gigs and decided that we weren’t going to see a particular band because lots of other people were going and we wouldn’t be original just standing in a crowd with everyone else. If everyone thought like that gigs would soon become a thing of the past.
At Breaking More Waves our criteria from day 1 has been simple. We don’t care if the artist has never been written about before or featured on 100 music blogs. We don’t care if they are on a major label or are unsigned. All we care about is if the music moves us in some way. This is our definition of good music and it’s what we feature here.
Fitzpleasure by Alt-J cropped up on a number of blogs over the last few days. It would be easy to decide not to feature the track because others got there first – we could be seen as just following the herd and have no true unique voice.
However for the 3 reasons above, we’re posting it, albeit in a form that is really an opinion piece on our philosophy of music blogging with a track that justifies our views.
Released as a double A sided single with another song Matilda on February 27th through Infectious, Fitzpleasure is a wickedly warped track. Dirty, rhythmic, packed full of invention as if it’s played and sung by a gang of South American gypsies or lost African tribes people - in fact anything but a bunch of guys from Leeds. Which of course is where the band originates from. Fitzpleasure is nothing but a pleasure.
However for the 3 reasons above, we’re posting it, albeit in a form that is really an opinion piece on our philosophy of music blogging with a track that justifies our views.
Released as a double A sided single with another song Matilda on February 27th through Infectious, Fitzpleasure is a wickedly warped track. Dirty, rhythmic, packed full of invention as if it’s played and sung by a gang of South American gypsies or lost African tribes people - in fact anything but a bunch of guys from Leeds. Which of course is where the band originates from. Fitzpleasure is nothing but a pleasure.
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