Monday, April 19, 2010

I Guess I'm Floating

With the rise of file sharing has come the rise of the music blog. I Guess I'm Floating is no exception to this. Focusing on youtube music videos, and free mp3 downloads; reviews are minimal and makes me question the number of people who simply visit the site for free music. While the posts are well written, most of them are not over a paragraph long, but feature high resolution pictures that grab your attention. While the posts do continue, most of them are cut off into preview for aesthetic purposes, and you can "continue reading" if you please. Free mp3s, however, are always included in these short snips of the posts.


I Guess I'm Floating has ventured far beyond the realm of amateurism, as it features adds, and is updated almost daily. It is clear that this blog has developed into a business since it's start in 2005. It's earlier posts still followed a similar format, but the uniformity of the current structure was lacking. Also, the author's voice has shifted as well. Earlier posts took on a far more personal tone, as he confronted other music blogs about musical tastes, and at times used non-standard English. The author's writing is still approachable, and it seems that his intended and actual audience are young, often college students, who consider themselves to be "music people." As the focus on actual written content has shifted, it is clear that the average reader is not interested in the dialogue that blogs can create, and focus more on what they can "physically" receive.

This makes me wonder, if blogs were created in order for the average person to post their opinions on the internet, while creating open dialogue with other readers, what does the shift away from written content imply. If a website focuses more on downloads is the goal the same. While looking at I Guess I'm Floating, one the posts was only a music video, no commentary provided. Beneath the video there was just a link to purchase the album of the artist. I found this slightly unnerving, as it seemed more of a product placement than a true blog post.

As I continue my journey through blogs, I hope to look at the shift from amateurism to professionalism in the blog sphere, and the rise of commercialism as well.

1 comment:

  1. I like your observation about the shift away from written content in popular mp3 blogs, and I think it's definitely an idea worth expanding and supporting as you continue working on this project. (For example, you might and look up some statistics on how mp3/video-centric music blogs compare to more writing-centric music blogs in terms of readership.)

    What purpose does writing about music serve (as opposed to simply sharing the music itself) and how does it effect the way writers and audiences connect through blogging?

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