Topic: Culture
So it turns out there’s something even cleverer to do with your blog than just babble or fail to affect the outcome of a presidential election. Music blogs — weblogs that post a few MP3s every day or three — are providing a marvelous public service by introducing mostly obscure artists, old and new, to wider audiences. They fit a paradigm I’ve been talking about for a long time, which is the shift in importance from distributors — record companies, publishing houses — to editors and critics who can help us sort through the vast mass of cultural product.
So far, these music blogs are still flying under the radar of the recording industry and its lawyers, but I don’t know how long that will last. Enjoy them while you can.
Some personal favorites:
- the of mirror eye, an eclectic mix
- Teaching the Indie Kids to Dance Again, featuring mostly indie rock
- Fingertips emphasizes atmospheric chamber pop
- soul sides digs up fabulous soul and R&B obscurities
- cocaine blunts & hip hop tapes is the hip hop blog
- Fluxblog is all over the map, but with lots of good rock and other stuff
- Sticker Shock is a new one for me, but it’s the posting home of New Yorker pop critic Sasha Frere-Jones
- Music for Robots is also new for me