Blogging In The USA

Hi guys. I'm still processing all the incredible new bands and industry news I came across during In The City here in sunny Manchester last week. Probably the most fascinating debate I watched during the day was Blogging In The USA, a debate involving Ryan Schreiber of Pitchfork, Ollie Russian of My Band's Better Than Your Band, Dev Sherlock from Hype Machine, and Drowned In Sound.

Ollie kindly posted the debate on his blog, so here it is in it's entirety. There were various themes, including the huge, ever increasing number of blogs, the need for bloggers to create a unique voice, and the blandness of just posting a different song each day. As the US representatives Ryan and Dev stressed the need for blogs stateside because of the lack of media covering new and upcoming music, as opposed to the great radar media we have here in this small country (Radio One, NME, etc). Ollie also said he thought music fans were looking to blogs to find out where the cool music was coming from, as opposed to Jon Peel, or Steve Lemacq.

The idea of underground / emerging musical tastes being crowdsourced by aggregator blogs like Hype Machine and other means was also stressed. The panel also felt that targeting underground media such as blogs for promoting their new artists, as opposed to being perceived as uncool by breaking their acts in mid level mainstream meda, was the way forward., to make them cool enough to climb the greasy pole of fame. Anyway, enjoy.

In The City: Music Blogging in the USA panel, 10.13.10 by rawkblog