Online music blogs are your bands best friend!

Well (deep inhale),

This weekend I've been shamelessly spamming the good people of the music blogging world with links to my new Girl Muscle tracks. I've been kindly asking the numerous blog and online magazine editors to spare a few minutes of their time to have a listen to my new songs in the hope that they like them and then decide to spread the word about my music to their readers and online communities.

In the process of searching the vast array of online music blogs, (mostly looking for indie/garage rock/lo-fi type blogs) and in the true spirit of a lazy time waster, I've been often easily sidetracked by how good some of the content on these blogs is. I don't just mean the quality of writing, but also the quality of new music being shared to the readers. I've heard a load of new bands I really like and I've now subscribed to a load of blogs through various means (such as Tumblr/Blogger/Facebook or direct email subscription in some cases) as finding new music that actually interests me is becoming incresingly very hard, even as a now avid 6 Music listener.

I've had a rant about this before, in the context of the loss of My Space as a great and simple promotional tool for bands, musicians and alternative music fans alike. I really do feel that the alternative music scene (comprising a great many genres such as indie rock, punk, hardcore, lo-fi, garage rock, noise and any non-commercial based or DIY music) has fallen apart and the once stable DIY infrastructure that existed to allow certain bands decent gigging routes and access to potential fans is now spread so thinly across the world wide web that knowing where or even how to start spamming (marketing for want of a better term) your new music is increasingly becoming a daunting, frustrating and time consuming task.

It would be very easy if all bands could get record deals and let the marketing department of whatever records handle the magazine and TV advertising, music video promotion, arrange T4 interviews and just generally throw money at making your new music sell. That's not going to be the case though, as not all bands are good enough or popular enough to warrant someone else spending any money on them unless they think they'll get it all back.............plus a large profit. Business is after all business.

So, in the initial stages of being a new musician or being in a new band and trying to get some form of coverage to get more fans, more gig offers, maybe sell a few demos and generally let people know you exist, where do you go? Well you still go to My Space, in most cases, as it's still free and kind of useful (although only bands seem to use it nowadays, all of your potential new fans are more spread out or locked away on Facebook). There are also a myriad of other sites that will allow you to host and stream mp3s with the two major sites being Sound Cloud and Bandcamp (Tunecore is also quite useful in terms of getting music into iTunes and Amazon Mp3 etc.). I like both sites for different reasons, I'll keep it brief below as I'm wandering off subject.

Sound Cloud lets you share tracks across the internet fairly easily, it generally loads quickly and has a few linking and sharing options (a bit like You Tube for music). Bad points with Sound Cloud are that it's hard to search for any other musicians and bands that you may like to find, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think you can search for bands from a particular location for instance (which was great on the old My Space as meeting other local bands online really helps with getting gigs booked). There are groups you can join for specific music genres or local music communities, but I find they aren't great at generating many new listens and they don't let you do much interacting with other group members. Connecting to other people by using Sound Cloud is still really up to you to figure out. Bandcamp is similar to Sound Cloud but to me seems less useful than Sound Cloud in terms of helping you to connect to new people, but it does allow you to sell music and receive payment through pay pal, which is nice.

So, why am I thinking that online music blogs are so important? I'm not 100% sure that they are yet, that remains to be seen. My logic is that providing that you have some online content, on Sound Cloud or Bandcamp for example, you'll need someone else out in the wider world to give you some coverage before other people will start listening to the music you have online. I generally find that I like to know the opinions of other possibly slightly obsessive alternative music fans before I check out a new band on Sound Cloud. If a band contacts me directly telling me how awesome and original they are, then I'm not really going to believe it (of course most people would have to say good things about their own creative outpourings, a stranger can disagree). Plus, there's a good chance I would never find out about some of the bands and musicians being mentioned on online blogs as they haven't quite got popular enough to get radio plays on 6 Music (which is where I find out most new music that I like).

I think it helps that a lot of the blogs and online magazines are run by self-confessed music obsessives. Not all of the blogs are as DIY and alternative as others, some feature artists I would almost call 'pop', but most have new band reviews or new music showcases that sat alongside the new Lana Del Ray video would make you look pretty important and worth listening to (I'm not singling Lana Del Ray out as her music isn't too bad, she just seems to be very well groomed for a supposedly DIY musician who lived on a trailer park for the last few years, I'm probably wrong but 100,000,000 You Tube hits seems a little suspicious for her first single). It also helps that the authors and editors really know their stuff, albeit within a certain niche in some cases, if you do get a mention on one of these blogs there's a good chance your music will be compared to or reviewed alongside other good new (or old) bands that you may never have heard of, which starts getting you some connections and maybe some fan crossover. A lot of the blogs are fairly easy to get contact details for and are very open to emails and submissions of new music. I think I emailed about 25-30 blogs and magazines yesterday so I'll wait and see if I get any responses or mentions.

I think providing the music obsessive blogging communities keep working hard and shouting about new music then there's hope for some kind of new alternative infrastructure to materialise. It seems that some blog authors have already made steps into managing small record companies and promoting local gigs. I hope this trend of alternative music blogger to real world alternative music industry promoter continues as in my eyes obsessive alternative music fans tend to make the most fun and decent gig promoters and tend to run the cooler labels, which makes sense I guess as it's called the music industry.

Online blogs! I salute you! Please feel free to salute me back once in a while.

Keep your eyes peeled I'll be chucking links up to online blogs I like as I get to grips with a few of them over the coming weeks. Here's a link right now to A New Band A Day (ANBAD) check out the Black Polygons preview a little bit down the page, I really like their music and I've downloaded it as it's free on bandcamp (see! it works!).

Over and out,

Lt Meat