I've always had a problem on the internet, and that problem has always been excessive honesty. It worked pretty well about ten years ago when I ran a different blog, and my honesty combined with my teenage angst created a torrent of traffic from other websites linking to me after I insulted them in some way. That's always been my second problem: I've never really liked other blogs, personal/web/music or otherwise. I usually think most people should just shut up or at least turn their site over to someone with some design sense.
So of course, when I got an email from another music blog---the first in a year and a half---asking me to link to them, I was apprehensive. Most music blogs I've landed on, that aren't already big and huge (like the word on the wall that the man made with the circle and line*), tend to follow these very specific guidelines toward being as garish as possible. It's not enough to just have a link that says, "Hey, follow me on Twitter!" you have to have, like, eight of them, with a thing that bothers you when you first get there, plus some sort of bar stuck at the bottom. On top of that they can't ever just have images that are a normal size, they must be huge, with sidebars so long they stretch on for thousands of pixels, full of other images and links to god knows what and it all just makes my head hurt.
I was right to be apprehensive as the site fit this bill exactly, complete with a title image so large you have to scroll even in 1280x1024 to get to the post content, and even then the images on the posts themselves are so large you have to scroll to read it after you see the title. I groaned and archived the email. There was no way I was going to link to that from this. (Though days later I'd bite the bullet and take one for the team.)
I don't want to say this site here is uniquely attractive among the rather dreadfully designed standard that is the norm among music bloggers, but I don't have to: we just know it's true. Notice how I don't have advertisements trying to sell you purses? I don't have some weird "Twitter bar" that tells you how many people follow me and begs you to follow me at the bottom of every page. You know why I don't have that? Because I don't have advertisements, so it doesn't matter all that much to me if you come back and click on them. This is also the same reason I don't really link to other blogs (aside from that most hurt my eyes) and only just started recently. The 'traffic' doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is that you trust my opinion and enjoy what you hear.
I was thinking the other day about what makes music bloggers want to blog, and I had a small epiphany where I realized that, at least in my case, I'm writing about the music and trying to spread it to you because this is how I involve myself in the musician's work in some minor way. When I thank someone for linking to my website, I thank them for helping promote the song they linked to, not for exposing my writing. In some way I am co-opting the song for my own self-esteem building ways: I like this song, and if I can make other people like it, then I've done something good for both someone else (the musician whose music gets heard) and myself (the person with taste who gets to feel like they made a good recommendation).
I'm really into music. When I saw Harvey Danger live, Sean Nelson prefaced this song, which I always assumed was about a girl addicted to cocaine, by saying that it was about "someone who likes music a little too much," and then I felt really stupid listening to it and realizing that it is about that. The line about how "someone who takes what they make twice as seriously as they could ever hope to do" is at the center of it. Now, am I at that point? Maybe when I was 12 and had just discovered Nine Inch Nails and to be apart from my CDs was to be dead inside, but now? No, I don't think so.
But it's a romantic way of thinking about it: I post this music here because I have to. After doing this for as long as I have now it's almost an automatic, necessary reaction. Look, I said yesterday that I was going to take the week off, and here I am, typing away at the internet about a song (and myself, natch, which is the true motivator here but shhh don't tell anyone). This chocolate milk tastes like shit. This much is the truth, not the romantic notion of it all.
So when I see a website like Ohhh So Famous!, who I insulted for being ugly on Twitter and has since posted a rather incoherently snarky semi-rebuttal or something (the big joke of which seems to be that Parker is the same last name Spiderman has), which is covered in social media widgets, banner advertisements (which seem to revolve around telling women to be skinny and to buy purses, totally music related), images that are about 30x larger than they need to be, and centered post titles, I just kind of wonder what their angle is.
Is this person really a fan of the music they're posting? They never really say they are. Who is this person, even? I don't know. I can't find a name or any personal info. Everything written on the site sounds like a re-worded press release or copy from the band's website. I just don't know the purpose of this sort of thing: if you just wanted to advertise the band, you could just link to their website. It doesn't seem like there's any passion, here, and I suppose maybe there isn't. Maybe the banner advertisement gives the whole con away.
By regurgitating the same copy, posting huge flashy images and plasting social media widgets everywhere, it becomes pretty clear that the site is no longer a labor of love and fandom---and sure I guess there's nothing wrong with that---but an attempt to gather advertising dollars. Link to a hundred blogs, and hundred blogs link to you. Post a hundred nondescript and unoriginal blog posts and you've got a hundred pages to post advertisements on.
But doesn't this all seem rather disingenuous?
For a brief moment I had advertisements on here a little over a year ago, but then I felt dirty: I'm here to expose the music to people, not to make money off of it. The money should go to the musicians. So I took the advertisements down and I've felt better ever since (though, I do have an affiliate ID code on the Amazon links, and have made a total of $3 in the 19 months I've been doing this). I pay for this out of my own pocket. It's a labor of love. I don't mean to say that it being that way makes my website better, but at least I'm sincere. I shoot from the hip, even if it's embarrassing.
And I will never, ever bother you to follow me on Twitter in a hover-over fade-in pop-up window thing.