The nonsense of this blog is the fact that, it is the "Emi Australia's official music and mp3 blog".
Blogs are by definitions grassroots media, byproducts of participatory culture trends empowering the audience, counter voice of the dominant news industry.
Blogs set themselves in explicit opposition to mainstream media conglomerates, whom EMI is part of.
The purpose of music blogs is to serve niche audiences and subcultures, usually ignored by mass media. Blogs give exposure to unsigned artists and provide a very subjective and personal opinion on news, facts, etc..
Music blogs are primarily authored by music fans which commit to it because they are passionate about music, not for economic reasons. That's why people like them: they are authentic, spontaneous, and true.
How can possibly a major label's blog be considered as authentic and true?
The about session states:
" As far as we can tell, we are the only label with this level of openness"
Level of openness?
Then it continues:
"Written and curated by EMI staff, we post only the most interesting, lively, original content to the blog"
This really makes sense: they are open but they will only post comments they believe to be appropriate and relevant to the blog.
One of the great thing of music blogs is that readers can freely participate in the discussion, expressing their opinions, creating flows of discussions. In other words, blogs create a community around them of people sharing a common interest on a particular music genre.
EMI is obviously neglecting this community aspect of blogs, further confirmed by the fact that in the "friend" section there are only a couple of other music blogs.
I understand that the music industry is in crisis, sales are declining, labels are desperately attempting everything to remain economically viable but, this ridiculous EMI's attempt to look cool and "open" with the hope of tapping into non-mainstream fans networks is a mere joke.
2 comments:
This has been going on for a bit for a few record companies Beatrice. You should also check out Remote Control Records blog too - blog.remotecontrolrecords.com.au/ which more or less works in the same way as EMI's blog albeit at a lesser scale.
We will always see record companies and associated organisations involved in new grassroots media whether it be blogger, tumblr, f-book etc etc, and all of them in a way do it to get in touch with the people they want to consume their music, which isn't neccesarily a bad thing. I don't know if the whole purpose of music blogs are to be "serve niche audiences and subcultures". Sure, it certainly defines alot of the music blogging world, but in my opinion, why can't a big corporation get in on the act and communicate directly with the people it is wanting to service, and as such have deserved bands get better recognition for their work? EMI's blogs looks to do this with that "A&R Drop Box" they have on their blog...
Of course they probably have a proviso to blog about their own bands on a more regular basis though, which does restrict the content somewhat.
A little disclaimer though - Remote Control release some damn good music, so I suppose I'm a little biased about it all :p.
Hope all is well Beatrice by the way!
"Written and curated by EMI staff, we post only the most interesting, lively, original content to the blog"
this line is kinda confusing..how can they call it openness..
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