Yesterday BBC 6 Music revealed the 20 most blogged acts so far in 2014, compiled from data from Hype Machine. If you don’t know what Hype Machine is, it’s a blog aggregator which pulls together all the MP3s that the music blogs it features post and allows you to stream them from one site. If you register you can customise the site to suit your own preferences, for example choosing to just hear music from your favourite blogs (such as Breaking More Waves of course) by following those particular sites. You can also vote for the songs that you really love and these votes count towards the Hype Machine chart, a fluid chart that identifies what songs are getting the most love at any particular point. If a song gets near the top of the chart it guarantees the artist a huge amount of extra plays for that particular song. Rather than explain Hype Machine in detail the best thing we can recommend is that you go and visit the site (here), register with it and then of course don’t forget to follow Breaking More Waves as one of your preferred blogs!
From the data Hype Machine has gathered here are the 20 most blogged acts of 2014 so far. It’s no surprise to see Banks at number 1, she has been the queen of all things blog related for the last year, including being joint winner of last December’s UK Blog Sound of 2014 poll voted for by UK music bloggers.
You can debate the value of this list till the cows come home. From our own UK perspective we’d have liked to have seen more acts from our own country featured (we thought Jungle might have sneaked on there for example). There’s also a big debate to be had about if the more established artists on this list really need the exposure of music blogs – but that’s a highly complex debate and not one which we’re sure we can draw any firm conclusion to. Ultimately the list is what it is – a representation of what the 800+ music blogs across the world (many of whom are American) have been writing about over the last 6 months.
Here's the list:
1) Banks
2) Little Dragon
3) Chromeo
4) Caribou
5) London Grammar
6) SBTRKT
7) Mac Demarco
8) Todd Terje
9) Yumi Zouma
10) Sharon Van Etten
11) Sylvan Esso
12) Tycho
13) Lorde
14) Chet Faker
15) Mø
16) Cloud Nothings
17) Drake
18) Sam Smith
19) Lana Del Rey
20) Glass Animals
3 comments:
Disappointing. It does seem there's a lot of blogging of obvious tunes for traffic rather than real discovery
I guess the question is then are music blogs just about discovery or also for those who want to write about music in a wider sense than just new or underground acts? And what are the implications of what they choose to write about?
Or are they writing purely to get hits? Are they dancing with the devil in the pale moon light ? Will they sell their soul for a seat at the big boys table or do bloggers really love Sam Smith ? And if so whom.. I want names...
I have no money but what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for bloggers like them. If they stop- now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for them, I will not pursue them. But if they don't, I will look for them, I will find them, and I will kill them. ..
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