Can't Talk; Hyping Part II: Check My Stats!

[continued from Part I]

“It’s officially October 1st, which means I’ve got 10 days to hype the crap out of Radiohead and their upcoming new album In Rainbows.”

When I read this post on I Guess I’m Floating, I took it facetiously; but guess what: that’s just what he did. As of the day I’m writing this post (Saturday) IGIF has done six Radiohead posts—all of which have been at best tangentially related to the new album. They’re b-sides, covers, videos, etc., all for the old stuff, with no real context other than ZOMG RADIOHEAD IN RAINBOWS ZOMG.

Compare IGIF’s week of Radiohead posts to Ned Ragget’s. Faced with the same anticipation for a new album that hasn’t leaked, Ragget wrote about Radiohead. He’s done a post apiece on each of Radiohead’s previous albums, intertwining personal reminiscences with discussion of the albums themselves. Ragget, like IGIF, supplies some instant-gratification youtube videos as well. The difference is that IGIF's posts are pure instant gratification, no meditation. To each his own, I suppose. You know which I prefer.

Of course, there’s little doubt which blog is getting more hits. I don’t doubt that IGIF is a Radiohead fan, but his series of arguably irrelevant posts is obviously calculated. Catbirdseat cynically made the same observation on the day the Radiohead announcement happened.

You know, I could give two shits about what, if anything, is going on with Radiohead, but I figured posting about the announcement of this In Rainbows thing, hoax or not, would be an interesting experiment for the old referrer logs. Let’s see.

A day or two later he posted his results: “something like this, times a gazillion.”

If posts like IGIF's (or the many other blogs that did Radiohead posts last week—he was hardly alone) are not calculated to get hits, then he and the other blogs have gotten wrapped up in the pressure to hype, rather than the desire to share. To what end? Are all of these bloggers big fans of Radiohead who are just way totally stoked and want you to be way totally stoked too? Or, as Ryan Catbird identified, is it all just a ploy for blog hits? These posts are only nominally intended to pump u up 4 radiohead. There’s a certain narcissism—a desperation to be noticed—inherent in these posts.

There’s even more cause for suspicion when it comes to the more popular blogs that are supported by ads. In a comment to a post I did here earlier this year, Catbird spelled it out even more explicitly:

The fact of the matter is, whether consciously or unconsciously, there are quite a few music blogs (and I’m not talking rinky-dink ones) that are almost surely motivated just by the struggle to stay on top, get super-high traffic numbers, and, by extension, get higher and higher ad payouts, side-deals, perks, swag, etc.

I mean, I’m not talking about $20 here or there, there is BIG FUCKING MONEY going out via ads to blogs. Thus, it becomes all about making sure there are many posts regularly throughout the day, *GUSHING* about everything (I mean, Christ, how can every other post be about THIS IS DEFINITELY A CONTENDER FOR TOP ALBUM OF THE YEAR?), securing “exclusives” and “premieres”, etc. etc.

I’m not gonna throw out figures here, but if you’re curious, go to blogads.com, click on “choose ads a la carte,” look up some of the blogs you want to find out about, note down their current number of ads and their rates, and then multiply that out over the course of a year. You might want to figure in a few hundred, upwards to an extra thousand per mo., if the site has other, non blogads ads running too (banners, etc.).

When we’re talking about thousands, even tens of thousands of dollars.... is it still just “all about the music?” I highly doubt it.

Money or no, the hype often seems to be driven by a need for hits—for status, for potential influence. (That, or the need to not seem out of the loop.) Between hyping the "right" band—the one you know people are searching for—and the pressure to post new content daily, if not multiple times per day, most mp3 blog posts lack the more modest ring of guys, i like this band!

You forget that half these blogs are outsiders in shitty apartments in Pensacola or Indianapolis, who likely started their little blogs because they loved music. Worse, they forget.

They post about multiple new bands per day with little articulation of what’s worthwhile about them, aside from an audio clip, myspace link, a list of tour dates, and—not always—a perfunctory they’re grrrreat! I guess they’re assuming the music will speak for itself. Ultimately it does, of course, but rarely are mp3 blogs a true reflection of one person’s tastes. There was a time when it seemed like most blogs were digging for new music. More recently, the passion seems to have been replaced by some kind of faux professionalism. At best they tell you what’s good, not what’s great. They’re giving you all the dirt: you do the digging.

Tomorrow, Part III: The Perpetual Debut Album

Comments

[Matthew]

Gah, right, I have some whinges here too!

I wholly agree with you about not being impressed with the blogs who lazily copy and paste from promo material. But then, they are occupying their own niche in doing this, and provide a welcome sink to pull the 'OMG! LOLZ!!1!1!!' commenters who are dragging down the conversations at places like Idolator and so on.

That said, if the blog is a new part of the magazine/written word landscape, which I presume it is, then different models within this little corner of the critical world are inevitable, and no bad things. Not, of course, that I have any desire whatsoever to be one of these blogs. I do write about mainstream indie music though, but that's if and because I genuinely like it and I hope that comes across.

Although I would have completely distanced myself from a lot of these hit machine blogs you are talking about, as a blogger how do you glean satisfaction from what you are doing?

Well their are internal and external ones, I would say. Internally, writing the kind of blog you would want to read is a big one, as well of the satisfaction of finally expressing that mammoth internal music monologue that you tend to suppress at home, for the good of your marriage.

Externally, that comes in a few forms, chief amongst them hits and comments. I get external commentary on my own blog which has thus far been almost entirely complimentary, albeit sparse. And record labels and artists have been really rewarding to interact with as well - they really make you feel like you are helping them, which is what most of us mp3 bloggers want to feel.

But that said, I will not deny that I find it brilliant and exciting and flattering when people leave lots of comments on my post. It swells the heart more than just a little to get that impression that people are interested in what you are writing and want to participate in the discussion that is for the most part one you have with yourself alone.

Hits count that way too. I know a large number of my hits are mp3 croppers, and yes that does sadden me a little, but I am finding people saying hello on Last FM and Facebook now because they read the blog, but don't feel up to leaving a comment. I have had people tell me this in person too.

So deep down you know you get a lot of pointless hits, but you always hope that those are outweighed by the people who occasionally come out of the woodwork to shyly tell you that they love your writing, even though there's little way to really know what the proportions are.

I would dearly love to ask how many people actually read my blog and how many people genuinely use it as a way of finding new music, but I doubt this would prove to be an instructive exercise.

I also have to confess that when Beirut, Band of Horses and Babyshambles all released albums together I knew I was going to get a lot of hits just because I like those bands easily enough to write about them, but they are also popular enough to bring me an awful lot of hits. And so, inevitably, it proved.

I also have no intention of denying the fact that every time my daily hit counter rises above 1000 (not often) I get a little thrill, even though I secretly know half these people (possibly way more) really just turn up, download an mp3 and then bugger off again.

"Over a thousand people, reading my writing", I kid myself. But it is flattering. And exciting. And it actually does feel good, even though that little voice in the back of your head tells you you should know better.

It's like being the geeky kid in high school movies who everyone suddenly realises is quite pretty. The attention is still intoxicating, even if you are suspicious of it, and hate yourself a little bit for being flattered by it.

But how else do you measure the quality of what you are doing as a blogger? People who want to link to you, people who say nice things about you and how many people 'read' your stuff. For most bloggers these numbers are pure. For an mp3 blogger, the free music muddies the waters an awful lot. So we get excited by hits, some of us even court them, but most of us know better than to entirely trust them.

But deep down, you look at that four figure number and think 'Wow, people like what I'm writing.' And even if you know there's more to it than that, there's not much else to go on and it does genuinely feel good.

[scott pgwp]

Wow, lots to respond to here. A very thoughtful post, too.

>>>as a blogger how do you glean satisfaction from what you are doing?

About getting satisfaction from hits and comments, you're totally right. Shit, I've never had as many people read my blog as have come from this series of posts. I've been seeing anywhere from double to six times my regular stats in the last ten days. And yes, it does give me immense pleasure. Even more so all the comments that have been left here and the handful of other bloggers that have posted on their own sites in direct response to me. It's thrilling, and to feign otherwise would be totally disingenuous.

But what I'm talking about in this post specifically is that these blogs are posting specifically to get hits. There's an ocean of difference between people like what I'm writing! and people are coming to me for what they need!. The former speaks to your personality, the latter to your function.

Of the four posts I did on this subject, this particular one gives me, personally, the most pause. Who am I to presume what each bloggers' goals are or should be? I'm nobody, of course. That said, I think that a person's passion, or true motives, can be gleaned from what they write (whether from the heart, on the fly, or ripped from a press release). If an mp3 blogger shows genuine love of what they post, it shows.

[scott pgwp]

Oh and one more thing - sometimes it's not always about the number of hits, or even whether comments come. Some of my personal favorite posts got zero comments didn't seem to attract any hits, and really just died as they moved further and further down the page. But every so often I'll see a google search for "graham greene and alfred hitchcock" or "kim jong-il movie director" or "glenn branca 100 guitars" and honestly, that is the most thrilling. That there is one person out there with the same esoteric interests, looking for content that I supplied.

[Matthew]

That actually brings to mind another part of blogging that I can find frustrating: it moves so incredibly fast.

I can spend ages writing something and be really proud of what I've done, but it vanishes down the page and disappears into the archives so fast that it can seem sometimes to be a bit of a shame - all that work and that nicely turned argument gone. But then, that's just the nature of the medium, so no point moaning about it.

And as to satisfaction, well I like hits and lots of comments. But really, it's the considered comments I like best. And the times people tell me that they've gone off and bought something quite obscure because they heard it on my site - I like that too.

And, to top it all, a band once got signed because some big cheese at Universal was reading my blog and liked the sound of them - now that made me swell with pride!