I recently stumbled across a music blog called ""The In Sound from Way Out."" While, at first blush, it doesn't appear to be radically different from any other music blog, the ""About"" section got me thinking. ""The In Sound"" is ""EMI Australia's official music and mp3 blog."" The ""About"" section continues, ""As far as we can tell, we are the only major label with this level of openness.""
Although I wouldn't call myself an avid reader of music blogs, I try to keep up with a few sites. But I promise you, ""The In Sound"" will not be one of them. In fact, I think that the idea of an official blog for a major label could not be more ridiculous.
I think the idea is ridiculous when you examine music blogs themselves. Blogs serve a specific niche audience. Sometimes this niche is specific to a region or genre, and sometimes the niche is ""not Britney Spears."" Within that subculture, the blog serves to provide news, exposure, and multimedia content, but all content is filtered through the specific viewpoint of that niche. The same story reported on blogs that serve different target demographics will inherently be reported in vastly different ways.
The question then becomes, why do these blogs gravitate towards very specific cultural niches? The obvious answer is that these groups are being neglected by all of the traditional music media outlets. I haven't watched any of the MTV stations lately, but I'm guessing that they aren't talking about the techno scene in Northern Iowa or specific trends in mathmetal.
The reality is that most music blogs exist to do the same type of things as traditional pop culture media, just for a more specific audience. MTV, Rolling Stone, E! or even ""Light Rock"" radio stations do virtually the same things as your favorite music blog. They provide news and information, they build hype for specific artists, and they preview new material. The difference is that their niche is wider.
All of this brings us back to ""The In Sound."" Why would a major label want or need a blog, when the entire pop culture media already accomplishes everything their blog could do? Even without blogs, major labels have a commanding presence online when you consider their official websites, websites for the band, MySpace pages and YouTube channels.
The only explanation that I can imagine is that ""The In Sound"" is yet another attempt by the mainstream to tap into the organic nature of non-mainstream music. I may sound like I'm repeating this idea, but I think that the music industry realizes that it has lost something that independent music has. Maybe it's the grassroots networks of fans, maybe it is the fervent devotion to the music, or maybe it's some form of artistic purity. But whatever it is, I doubt that starting a blog will help.
