Monday, April 19, 2010

Stereogum

Stereogum is one of the more popular music blogs that I will look at, and is another example of a music blog that has morphed over the years as it has gained in popularity. Interestingly enough, as Stereogum has grown, the number of comments have decreased. Stereogum started in 2003, and on average would have 10 to 20 comments per post, while recent posts range from 0-5 comments.


Originally Stereogum was structured much more as a blog, now however it takes on the form of a more structured website with tabs for news, music, videos, photos, lists, and releases. News encompasses what would be considered normal blog content; featuring posts with the various artist's opinions and new musical releases and events. The home page is simply a series of links to the various features of the blog.

The rise of professionalism in the blog seems to have discouraged dialogue between readers and authors, warping the initial form. Even when the blog was much smaller, a stronger community surrounded it, which is evident in older posts. Also, Stereogum's background features various advertisements, which are normally music based, but nevertheless, are still evidence of Stereogum's shift away from approachable blogging to com modified postings. While I have no evidence that Stereogum's posting are based on commercial interests, it would be interesting to see if they ever made posts based on different products that were pushed to them.

3 comments:

  1. If you're using Stereogum as an example of professionalized/commercial blogging, you'll probably want to mention the fact that in 2008 Stereogum was acquired by the social media company Buzznet. Here's a good, in-depth CNET article on the acquisition and the broader implications of the commercialization of music blogging:
    http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9934879-7.html

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  2. ...and here's an informative interview with Stereogum founder Scott Lapatine (circa 2005):

    http://content.usatoday.com/communities/popcandy/post/2005/12/8009845/1

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  3. oh, thanks for the heads up!

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