Top five tips for music bloggers

Just finished reading Brenna Ehrlich’s music blog about writing music blogs. As a blogger myself – albeit a retarded, late-starting, somewhat aimless and elitist blogger – as soon as I saw the link on NAMM’s daily news email, I clicked on it…

Actually, that is completely untrue. I saw it and I thought, ‘yeah, right, thanks very much. I really need someone to tell me what a fart in a hurricane’s chance I stand of ever attracting anyone’s attention’.

But then I thought, ‘hold on, what if it tells me that I have more than a fart’s chance in a hurricane?’

My cursor moved slowly away and then...

Ehrlich has five top tips: 1) know what you’re talking about; 2) be prepared to work for nothing; 3) get your own URL and start your own blog; 4) be aware of the social networking and other dissemination websites and services out there (ie, ‘tweet’ and ‘facebook’ your blogs – at the very least); and 5) don’t just dis everything. Be as positive as the music you are writing about deserves.

How did I do? Well, number one, although I would claim to know what I am talking about in certain areas, you can bet your favourite pet I don’t know much about anything. As Jeremy Hardy put it in his recent Radio Four show: “I don’t read blogs. I don’t want to read the opinions of the uninformed. I have Radio Five Live for that.” (UK-centric gag, that one – apologies everyone else.)

The whole purpose of blogs is to get stuff off your chest, let the world know you have an opinion and get that opinion out there. If you’re lucky, someone will be right on your case telling you what a clod you are, but most of the time, your opinion will float about in the ether arousing precisely no feelings whatsoever… But you’ll still pop back to read it from time to time, just to see if you still agree with yourself – and wonder why no-one has made any comments.

Second: goes without saying. I’m actually lucky enough to earn a living from writing, but that means squat to the wider blogosphere. I earn money writing what people want to hear (or read). My opinion rarely, if ever, comes into it and when it does it tends to be just as ignored as this blog. Of course the aspirant is going to blog for nothing. If the blogger wants to be a writer, having a blog won’t hurt, but it probably won’t help, either. Best advice is to tout your skills as a writer – and be sure you have some sort of qualification or experience to back it up or you’re on a hiding to a nowhere that is a long and painful journey away.

Number three – same as above, really. A blog spot such as this is free. So are facebook, myspace and twitter accounts (to name but three). Get on them, sure, but don’t expect anyone other than your friends and family to actually pay any attention.

Getting your own website costs money – and quite a lot of money, actually. Can you afford it? If you can, do you have the resources and the nouse to keep it up to date and functioning. Nothing disappears in the chaos of the information superhighway than an unkempt website. An unkempt garden attracts more response.

Four: Er, see three – although this is actually something I do need to learn – how to make the absolute most out of the interconnectivity that the internet offers. There are a lot of links and ways of broadcasting yourself and I haven’t even begun to get a handle on all of it, yet.

Five: Couldn’t agree more (although this blog might not lead you to think I was a particularly positive thinker). Actually, one of the driving forces for me starting these blog pages was to act as a counter to a lot of the negative journalism that exists out there concerning music. I find it somewhat rich that a handful of journos and axe hacks comment on Ehrlich’s blog by saying ‘don’t be too negative’, when it is precisely the journos and axe hacks that make a living (of sorts) out of doing exactly that.

But, yes, unless you are castigating the narrow minded, please do try to be positive. I honestly do. There is more than enough negativity around – it’s easy and cheap. I tend not to like easy or cheap options.

For me, the two most important elements necessary to write a good blog were covered by Ehrlich in a couple of passing sentences with little emphasis on them. These are (were): 1) Be able to write.

I know this is a tricky one – much like if you want to be a singer, you probably need to be able to sing, although the pop idol and x-factor auditions show us repeatedly that many (not Simon Cowell, it should be pointed out) see this is a mere detail. But honestly, even if you have the ability to link your blogs to every website on the world and have it psychicly capable of linking through to video accompaniment as you read each key word, if the writing is drab, the reader will go elsewhere.

2) Have an angle. One of the other thrusts of my blog is (perhaps a little paradoxically, considering the previous point), while there is a world of great talent out there, don’t be discouraged if you are not part of that pool of talent. Rejoice in your mediocrity.

That said, you still need to strive, you need to be realistic about what you are doing – and you need to be able to make a point and get it across.

If you can write and you have something to say, all well and good. Go for it – and good luck. But if you want to be a music journalist (which, it strikes me is what Ehrlich is really hinting at) then you’re going to have to jump through a lot of hoops, accept a (limited, if you’re any good) future filled with rejection and if you do make it, you’ll have a cool job that will probably earn you next to nothing for the rest of your life.

Blogging is a fun hobby. Writing for a living is another question altogether. Just ask Brenna Ehrlich… In fact, yes, do. After all, she is a music journalist and a blogger and I have read her blog and subsequently written a thousand words on it.

She obviously knows better than I do…

Ignore this blog.

(sigh)