The Power Of Blogging
Jan1909:30 AM
Filed in: Music News
I'm a huge supporter of blogging for the independent musician. There's a zillion articles on the internet espousing the benefits of blogging for artists, fans, and businesses.
Blogging is true feedback, from the people to the people.
If you're an aspiring artist, are you taking full advantage of what the internet has to offer? Are you connecting with your fans on a regular basis through blogs? MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter make this incredibly easy for anyone to do. If you're not communicating with your fans, why should they follow you?
Today's fans are much different from what they were even ten years ago. A music lover's appetite for new songs can be satiated immediately from a thousand different sources, leaving your band forgotten about unless you stand out from the crowd and leave yourself as someone worthy of being remembered. And this can all be accommodated through the simple task of blogging.
Ok, back to the original point of this post. I just stumbled upon an article about a blog (by Canada's very own Alan Cross, from The Ongoing History Of New Music) that spread virally around the world in just a matter of hours, as rabid fans anxiously awaited the news of someone's first hand opinions on a music critic's first listening of U2's first new single in over four years.
What follows is a perfect example of the power of blogging...
Read the full article below, or from the original source.
EDMONTON - U2's new single, "Get On Your Boots," is finally hitting the airwaves.
It's from the group's first album in four-plus years, No Line on the Horizon, due March 3, and will be available on iTunes today.
Toronto music geek Alan Cross, who hosts two syndicated radio shows (ExploreMusic and The Ongoing History of New Music), recently posted a review of the single, causing quite the sensation on blogs, Twitter, and U2 fan sites.
"That was absolutely fascinating,'' he says. "It was done as an experiment. Here we have, arguably, the biggest band in the world with the biggest active fan base who have gone years without a record. They're ready for 2009 to be the year of their band again. They've heard all the rumours, they've went through all the forums, they've looked at all the websites, so they're primed and ready to go.''
Here's a chronology of his online experiment:
*Thursday, Jan. 8: Cross posts on his Music Geek Blog, available on www.exploremusic.com.
"Highly encrypted copies are now being distributed to Universal Music outposts around the world,'' he writes. "I may get to hear the song as early as Monday. I'll report back ASAP.''
*Friday, Jan. 9: Cross updates his Twitter account. "I'm going to get to hear the new U2 song "Get Your Boots On" in about an hour,'' he writes at 10:51 a. m."Will report back.''
At 3:01 p.m., he listens to the song on "an unassuming, unlabelled CD- R'' -- in the company of a Universal Music rep. He then sends a quick description of the single to his Twitter account. The number of subscribers more than triples.
*Sunday, Jan. 11: Cross receives e-mails from U2 fans -- he says 1,200 were waiting in one particular online forum to read more of his views. He sends an e-mail to Zoo_Fly, a member of Interference.com's forum.
"(Cross) has said that he has prepared a long blog about "GYBO/GOYB" for Monday,'' posts Zoo_Fly. "No other details were given, except for the link to the blog, where the info will presumably be up sometime tomorrow!''
A few hours later, Cross posts a longer analysis on his blog, which attracts more than 10,000 hits from around the world -- particularly Toronto, London, New York, Germany, Eastern Europe and Chile.
"This is NOT a back-to-basics guitar/bass/drums track like 'Vertigo' or even 'Beautiful Day.' There's some definite sonic evolution going on here,'' he writes.
"... Bono manages to rhyme 'submarine' with 'gasoline'' and says something about 'don't talk to me about the state of nations.'"
"There's a portion of the melody that somehow reminds me of the cadence of the verses in Elvis Costello's 'Pump It Up,' but as I write this, I'm not completely sure. Still, part of the song reminded me of . . . something else.''
* Monday, Jan. 12: Universal Music officially announces "Get On Your Boots" as the first single.
*Wednesday, Jan. 14: I talk to Cross about his experience.
He says he's so intrigued by the reaction to his online review, he hopes to blog about the rest of U2's new album -- if Universal and the band will let him.
"This is what I would like to do -- I would like to sit in a room, with a representative of the label and the album, and I would Tweet or blog first impressions in real time as the album plays,'' he says.
"Let's see what kind of response results. It's not ego gratification, I'm just fascinated by how music fans are communicating with each other.''
© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service
BY SANDRA SPEROUNES, CANWEST NEWS SERVICE
