Blogs Are Dead, Long Live Blogs!

The golden era of dance music blogging generally coincided with the start of this blog you are currently reading circa 2007, alongside some of the other blogs that went on to help define the past decade of dance music such as Little White Earbuds and mnml ssgs. There was an explosion of writers taking things into their own hands and spreading the word on underground music in their own DIY capacities. Big and small, anonymous or no, and with coverage that included both popular sounds and niche genres, these blogs and their popularity at the time were a defining feature of dance music journalism for a number of years.

It’s a bit harder to pinpoint the fall of blogging about dance music. More and more big sites emerged, including some with corporate backing and others with big money behind them. These sites actually poached writers from blogs for a while, which is definitely part of the explanation of the blogs’ decline. Along with the already existing big sites, this led to the golden era of dance music media websites, an era we still appear to be in (though hopefully the end of some such as Vice Media’s Thump is a bellweather for the end).

With websites such as RA now balls deep in selling tickets to shows that are also promoted through their site and other blatant conflicts of interest, the influence of money and PR agents in the “underground” dance music game has never been greater. I’ve been using the BLOCK buttons on social media to rid myself of this plague over the past year, and I am now almost completely insulated from the media’s narratives. This has helped increase that same feeling I had back in 2007, as the previously reliable dance music magazines were dying and I felt like the community I was a part of was no longer being recognized or covered in a manner that made sense.

Apparently I am not the only person with those feelings. I’ve been very pleased to see some smaller blogs start popping up again, so that various people who don’t have a voice in the dance media can have their say on their own terms. It seems very much needed in many ways, so let’s hope more people take the initiative to do it themselves. This is just a handful of some of what has popped up lately, but I hope it is useful for finding some new voices.

Underground and Black is done by Ashleigh from Atlanta, an up and coming DJ

ComeN2MyHouse is written by Paula Johnson from Detroit, a big house music head

Orriginal is by Chris Orr from San Francisco, and features some of his old writing for various dance music magazines in the 90s as well as new record reviews etc

Innate written by Owain K, a producer and DJ originally from Wales

Diary of a Mad Black DJ is written by Jay Simon, a DJ/producer/owner of Must Have Records in Atlanta

Zurkonic Is by Nick Zurko, a Midwest refugee living in NYC. He also reviews records on his Instagram account.

Many of these are new and currently have very few posts, but I am hopeful they will all continue to tell their story the way they see fit!