This post originally appeared on Angela Tyler's Muddy Paw PR Substack
Today The Wild Honey Pie announced they’re bringing back their music blog, citing “algorithms and AI have completely hijacked the experience of music discovery, and we want to do our part to restore its human touch.” Out with the algorithms, in with community.
And I’m all about that. And that’s a big deal.
For someone who looked to sites like TWHP and others when I was building my own now defunct music blog, Infectious Magazine, it elicits a certain nostalgia. (And you know I love to talk incessantly about that). But it also brings about an important question.
In a music industry where we have everything at our fingertips, why are we turning to the nostalgic past? Why are we going backwards in pursuit of progress?
I have a few ideas.
We miss the simplicity
Choice fatigue is real. Think about going to a Cheesecake Factory vs a small, local restaurant with one page menu. You might think Cheesecake Factory sounds better because who doesn’t want twenty five pages of choices?!
But it turns out that the answer to that is: everyone.
We’re completely overwhelmed by choices online and off and the pressure to remain constantly relevant is exhausting. To do things offline — act a certain way, perform a certain way — just to have something new to post. It’s not bad enough we have the internet assaulting us 24/7 but now even our offline lives are consumed by it.
My advice to artists: Simplify everything in your process. Don’t overcomplicate it. The more you can simplify, the more likely you are to do the things you want to do, and honestly, your fans will likely thank you. If you don’t want complicated, odds are they don’t either.
Don’t want to post three times a week? Then don’t! Make one really amazing posts and get in Stories. Don’t want to be perform live a bunch? Fine! What do you want to do and how can you showcase that?
We miss actual opinions & knowing who to trust
I love that the internet has birthed the ability for everyone to have their voice heard by their people. But it is (see point one), overwhelming. Back when music blogs first began emerging, there were a handful of major indie outlets you would turn to. TWHP, but also Brooklyn Vegan, Alter The Press, Alternative Press, and Property of Zack, to name a few.
After that, another wave of less prestigious but still well respected and trusted outlets. And so on and so forth. Everyone sort of had their ranking and as a music journalist you might aspire to become the next tier. So that motivation felt both attainable and exciting.
Part of the problem is over-saturation. I don’t have a solution for this because I both want more music blogs and understand the complications of having more. So I guess I’d say I want more quality blogs. Quality interviews. Thought provoking reviews. What I don’t think we need more of is journalists feeling overwhelmed and pressured into posting 8 out of 10 PR requests they get so that 90 percent of indie bands featured are basically just the press release copy and pasted without any real opinions.
My advice to artists: Have an opinion. That’s always what made the greats stand out.
We miss human decency
People have always been hit or miss. Sometimes, we’re great. Sometimes we suck.
But I will say, there was a much deeper sense of community back in the 2009-2012 music blog era. I think this has a lot to do with the fact it was just less saturated. Everyone kind of knew each other or at least, knew someone who knew that person.
And so, we grew together. We traded contacts with the people we trusted instead of gatekeeping. Put in a good word. Shared links with reckless abandon.
We were a community.
My advice to artists: Build your relationships. Be mindful of your interactions. Noone is too small for you and while not every opportunity will be right for you, each one is worth considering from all angles. Including (maybe especially) the ones that don’t pay off right away.
Some of my greatest and longest standing relationships in the music industry started fifteen years ago.
So are music blogs back?
Listen, no one is a bigger advocate for the return of the 2009 music blog scene more than me. I miss it terribly, and I can often be found in text messages saying things like “maybe I should start doing artist interviews again…” or “I really miss when…”
The truth is, we can’t go back. But we can certainly learn from what worked and what didn’t. The latter of which TWHP describes wonderfully in their post. But I hope we can move forward with the lessons of the past close by. Number two on here, the bit about music blogs going back to having actual opinions? Being kind but constructive?
That really resonates with me. Maybe with you as well.
And I don’t know. Maybe The Wild Honey Pie has inspired me to start doing artist interviews and more artist-centric pieces like that down the line. Who knows.
All I know, it’s a good sign. And I hope people want this as much as I do.
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