Musicians' Take

While I've been primarily focusing on the medium of music blogs, I think it's also important to talk about the content. Music blogs are unique because a lot of controversy surrounds them and their relation to the phenomena of file sharing.

Here are some musicians takes on the world of music blogging:

Emily Haines of Metric



Jermain Dupre




Lilly Allen




Also, Grizzly Bear's Edward Droste was contacted by "Web Sheriff" when he posted a track from Animal Collective's then new album. He talks about the incident and file sharing in an interview with The Portland Mercury:

Can you talk a little bit about album leaks, file sharing, and how that's affected you as a band, and also a music fan (i.e. the Animal Collective incident)?

Leaks are reality and we've come to terms with them. I'm more disappointed about the way people approach an album now rather than losing sales. I think people become a bit entitled with the internet and expect things as soon as they want them and on their own terms. People will download dozens of albums a week, do flash armchair reviews and often dismiss lovely albums when they haven't even listened to them in high quality. On the flip side, it reaches more people around the world and people find other ways of showing support via coming to shows or buying a T-shirt. Ultimately we are a band that would greatly suffer without the internet and we are very grateful for all the blogs and websites that were early advocates of ours. I only worry about the art of making an "album" that gets listened to in entirety (and I'm speaking from experience) because often people or myself will get an album and just delete the tracks they don't like or shuffle the album. I catch myself doing it and I think to myself wait, that's NOT how the artist wanted it to be heard. Obviously in the long run I'll like what I like as will anyone, but it's at least important to try and listen to an album once straight through and in high quality.

Here's a link to the actual blog post as well.