This Is the End (and a Beginning)
I am hereby retiring the MusicEdge Blog and transferring the corresponding Twitter account over to the folks at MSU’s Spartanedge. I started the MusicEdge section there in 2007 while I was in the Masters of Journalism program. There are a variety of reasons for my decision, but the prevailing one is that my own professional goals have shifted — or I should say, they’ve become more focused and clarified. I started blogging about music in January 2006 on my Blogger.com page. Now my writing is more often about movies, books, culture, psychology and philosophy. Those are the topics I discuss regularly over at my Refractor blog, hosted on my DIY magazine Supraterranean.com.
Here are some of the other reasons for my decision.
- Spartanedge is a student publication. I haven’t been a student for two years. The blog sort of operates on its own, but for a while I’ve considered hosting the blog on my personal website. That’s where I’ll soon move it to: nickmeador.org.
- Since January of 2007 when this blog started, I’ve only received a total of 29 comments. And since I started logging site traffic in mid 2008, there have only been an average of 4-5 visits per day. The busiest day was last fall, when 600 visits came in from a post about Japandroids being listed on Digg or Reddit. I’m fine doing work that doesn’t gain wide exposure, but the work has to fulfill my true potential. Music writing is only a piece of that.
- The Music Festival boom is over. Rothbury is gone (what the hell were they thinking?!). Lollapalooza is kinda stinky — not just the line-up but also the organization in 2009 (there were much fewer porta-johns and more constrictive walking paths). And I’ll never get a chance to go to Coachella (plus I would miss half the bands I wanna see because they have so much overlap). Personally I think our music culture is undergoing a strange flux and the upcoming decade is going to be much different than the previous one. We’ll see what happens…
- Music writing limits my language and my ability to truly communicate myself. I’ve known this for a while, but I guess once I stopped freelance music writing, it didn’t bother me as much. I was able to write whatever I wanted on this blog — I had total independence. But the price of unabashed individuality is that no one pays attention (either that or you piss people off). Oh well.
- Music writing upholds the capitalist system that created entertainment monopolies and media conglomerates. That’s why Capitol Records and Live Nation even still exist after the onset of p2p networks — because we’re not actually “rebelling” against them. Or I should say, enough of the general population is still willing to listen to Top 40 and MTV artists, even if they claim to be interested in independent music. The point is not that you should listen to unpopular bands; it’s that you should listen to bands that aren’t prostitutes. Anyways, many of the indie bands simply make themselves into media darlings for the likes of Pitchfork (or Pitchfuck, as I like to call them). That’s still prostitution, even if they’re getting paid in “hipster cool points” instead of dollars.
- I fear I’ve acted in the hipster vein too often. By hipster I mean anyone who prefers to build an aura of “cool” instead of facing the difficulties of life, figuring out who they really are, educating themselves, and actually accomplishing something. That’s not to say that I wish I hadn’t written about independent music. It’s that I’ve now totally and officially unplugged from the music media machine. I couldn’t stand being dependent on Pitchfork when I hate everything they represent. Granted, I still see their “best new music” choices, and occasionally check for tour and album announcements on their news feed. But I now look at those things a couple times a month, instead of every day. Furthermore, I don’t intend to make “Best of XXXX” lists anymore. Actually the past few were “My Favorite Albums of XXXX.” I guess I might still do that. But I’m more interested in writing the story of what role that music played in my life.
- Sadly, there’s an element of music and music writing that distracts me from more pressing things going on, like the collapse of the industrialized world. This “distraction” factor is more true with TV and movies (and even books, especially contemporary fiction), or if you’re into pop stars. But even the way I track concerts takes up a lot of my time. Don’t get me wrong — I still love live music. And I think it’s great that, more and more, things are shifting towards electronica the live music scenes. But even at the Flying Lotus show at the Magic Stick on April 1, I kinda wished I hadn’t gone. I had just seem him the Friday before at the Blind Pig, and I was at the Magic Stick by myself. The show was sold out so it was really crowded, and the sound quality was really shitty. FlyLo’s music has a lot of detail that can get lost with poor sound engineering. The worst part is that I could have watched Serena Maneesh downstairs in the Cafe (though I did watch the first 20 min of their set). And Beach House was playing at the Pike Room in Pontiac! I probably would have enjoyed that more.
To anyone who knows me, I’m sure it’s obvious that I won’t stop writing about music altogether. It’ll just be mixed together with other topics, or it’ll take the form of an essay that I can publish on Supraterranean and somewhere else. Thanks to those who have read my posts. I had plenty of fun writing them.
To send things off the right way, here’s a playlist of videos from the Bassnectar & Major Lazer show at the Fillmore Detroit on 4/9/10. Enjoy!
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