Music Blogging

Writing and maintaining a music blog is really quite the challenge. After all, how does one put into words the way that something sounds? One can always write about musicians and various points of interest, but one will also need to write about the music itself, and it's rather difficult to describe something that is entirely intangible. So, here is the low-down on writing a music blog, Goggin style.

Developing and Sustaining a Theme, Mission, and Purpose

As with any blog, you will need a purpose. Without a defined path to follow, your entries will be jumbled and inconsistent. The posts should be unified under one flag. After all, a solid hill is stronger than a pile of pleasing boulders. To develop your purpose, just pick some aspect of music that you really enjoy and would enjoy writing about. For example, music of a particular genre or perhaps a specific instrument. You can write about more that just specifically that aspect, of course, but it is probably best not to stray too far out of the general theme of your blog lest readers be turned away when they feel that each post's topic has become too arbitrary.

Coming Up with Ideas for Posts

Coming up with ideas for posts on a music blog is usually not terribly difficult. After all, you wouldn't be blogging about music unless it interested you. A good way to start is simply to browse through your music collection until you notice something you feel like writing about, such as an artist you've been listening too a lot lately or perhaps a particular album. One easy idea for a blog post is to review a CD you've just purchased or a concert you've just gone to. There are pretty much as many musical topics as you can think of.

An Effective Writing Process

When you actually begin to write your blog post, you'll need to have a good way to go about doing so. If you are going to be writing about a band or a song or anything like that, it definitely helps to listen to that music for a while before beginning to write. Close your eyes and block out everything but the music. Think about how it makes you feel. Think about the images it produces in your mind and the memories it reminds you of. Listen to how the different instruments come together and how the vocals fit with the rest of the composition. Now, try to put these feelings into words in your blog post. It is a formidable challenge to do this but you will get better with practice. I find that it also helps to listen to the music as you write about it. Just make sure that you don't end up spending a whole bunch of time listening to the music and forget to write anything.

Including Outside Information in Your Blog

It is rarely a bad idea to include information from external sources. The obvious place to start when looking for outside information about a band or some other music related subject is to type said subject into Google. This will almost always give you the Wikipedia article and often the band's official website. From there you can find plenty of information and possibly links to more sources. It is a fine idea to put a link to the band's website in your post so that readers can go directly there with ease.

Catching People's Attention

A very important part of any writing is catching the reader's attention, and in the cutthroat world of blogging this might make the difference between life and death for your blog. To begin with, I like to put a picture at the beginning of each post. But this won't do anything if nobody goes to your blog in the first place. To catch people's attention you basically need to tell people about your blog. This is tricky, since most of the ways to do this are considered “site pimping”, which is essentially going “hay guys check out my website” and is a big no-no on the Internet and will not earn you any respect. Really, you either need to have a logical situation to tell people to go to your site or just put a link to your blog in some passive place such as your signature on a forum. The best way to get people's attention is word of mouth, which is pretty hard to generate on purpose.

Connecting With Your Audience

o connect with your audience you will need to know enough about music that you will be able to write about it in a way that readers will both understand and appreciate. It is definitely important to know at least something about the bands, genres, or whatever it is you are writing about. If you know how to play an instrument this will obviously help quite a bit, especially when describing a particular song, since you will better be able to explain how the composition fits together. Providing the ability to listen to the music you are writing about in a post is always helpful to your readers, so that they are able to hear for themselves what you have been talking about. However, don't let that induce laziness. You should still describe the music enough that readers can get a feel for the music even without the option of actually listening to it.

Developing A Voice

A strong and unique voice is very important in blogging, as well as pretty much everything you do in life. It will set you apart from the rest of the herd and will earn you more attention. If you write about something in a good voice, people will probably pay more attention to you than someone who says the exact same thing but in a boring way. In my experience, the single best way to develop your own voice is simply to write the way that you think. You could also assign yourself a blogging personality and try to write from that angle.

DO:

• Listen to a song at least once prior to writing about it
• Write about things you don't like in addition to what you do

DON'T:

• Put your provided song file on some clumsy hosting site that requires registration for downloading
• Make generalizations such as “all songs of ____ genre are bad”