If you’ve been on the hype machine recently you may well be aware of the project called N.A.S.A; You will also be aware of the biography; You will have heard the remix; Seen the underwhelming tour? Bought the album? Ok, maybe not, but anyway… For those that haven’t I’ll illustrate: it’s a collaborative effort by 2 men who couldn’t have cracked the blogosphere better if they had got the Dewaele brothers to remix the Justice produced Radiohead record of Animal Collective covers. They’ve collaborated with Lykki Li, Spank Rock, RZA, M.I.A, Santogold, David Byrne, ODB, Karen O, Tom Waits, Chuck D, Sizzla, the list goes on.
Relatively, on hypem’s own blog they’ve posted about how they pick blogs. The post has received criticism as some users clearly have qualms about how the hype machine lists many blogs that post the same thing – criticisms pending to the blogging Zeitgeist. “Do we REALLY need 200 remixes of MGMT’s Kids?” asks one user. As tempting as it must be for many to respond ‘We could probably do with 300 remixes’ it would not be entirely correct. We need people to blog freely and unaffected by the actions of fellow bloggers. Of course we need them to show us the songs that they believe in, we need them to pass on the music that they listen to. However what we don’t need is for them to exist in some parallel universe where french electro is the most-popular, creative and cutting edge sound; Where the Radiohead record is more visionary than anything which has preceded it; Where Spank Rock is King and M.I.A. is Queen.
If the music is already available, why do people bother posting it. If the band have already saturated the blogging corner of the market, what motivates bloggers to post about them.
It’s tempting to say yes we do need 200 posts on whatever because it’s the democratic way. That we’re not talking about 200 posted MP3’s but 200 votes of confidence for an artist/track/S.T.I./whatever but this just isn’t necessary any more. It used to provide us with the sole method of ‘what’s hot and what’s not’ but now the process of adding tracks to favourite lists (the love heart with a number next to it) has undermined that necessity.
So to answer this slightly rhetorical question, we don’t need 200 copies of whatever because we don’t need 200 blogs posting the same mp3’s. Hype machine needs to end this farce for one simple reason, unless it stops these blogs whose only concern is popularity and hits (and ad revenue?) achieved through trailing fashionable artists and adding nothing more to the fray but echo’s of each other, the whole infrastructure becomes nothing more than a flock of like minded, self-appointed arbitrators of cool. It transforms their blogs into members of a cult. It reduces the breadth of the coverage and it obscures the work of the blogs who do not look at their peers for inspiration to post (well hypocrisy was inevitable wasn’t it?).
What has saddened me – and provided the motivation to write this post – is as soon as the term ‘blogosphere’ was coined, instead of increasing the profile of blogs outside of it’s world it has made the community more insular and in turn, more irrelevant. People have identified it as a single community of like minded folk, but rather it should be an umbrella term for individuals from across the globe who can autonomously present a unique selection of music to their readers in a unique way.
Partially due to over-saturation, bloggers have stopped asking the question, ‘Will my blog report on musicians and issues that others wouldn’t touch?’ and instead decided to post MGMT – Kids (Justice remix) for the 201st time.
Further more, although these sites profess that they only post tracks for sampling purposes and encourage album buying, the sad reality is that I can get every N.A.S.A track and all the remixes on hypem before the album is made available in my local record store. Any attempt at ‘respecting the artist’ is rendered farcical. I advise instead to go on youtube spotify and avoid the hype, it will only kill your excitement.
In defence of the blogorati, here’s a couple of recent favourites:
Alan Braxe live at Studio B edit, 7 March 2009
The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart – Gothenberg Handshake (Demo)
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