File-sharing, and how it affects the music blogger — Jamie Milton

I’d expect most visitors to Music Fan’s Mic — a blog that many would classify as an “mp3 blog” first and foremost — would find the subject of file-sharing a tiresome one. But reading the perspective of someone who would by some, be accused as a culprit of file-sharing, could be interesting, maybe? I hope so.

A vast amount of my blog’s visitors (a good 70/80%) come via. Hype Machine. Therefore, they’re on the blog for just about five seconds – enough time to click on the link to the blog post, scroll down to the mp3 and click “save link as”. My aim when Music Fan’s Mic started was to build an online community of people who shared the same taste as mine. I found it increasingly difficult to draw in visitors, particularly those who comment on a piece, and was always in limbo as to whether to continue publishing my reviews on the site. Nowadays, mp3’s are a ways and means of attracting those who might come to MFM to stay. I want them to read the content more than anything, but everyday I’m reminded of the fact that in reality, the majority of those who find MFM couldn’t give two fucks about what it stands for or its thoughts on a particular song.

There is no way around this. Music journalism used to be prized, far more important. It used to be a nudge towards someone actually going out and buying a record. But nowadays, album leaks allow everyone around the world to hear an album before reviews are even published. Therefore, they allow their own individual thoughts to simmer, making an average music review as useful as only having a toaster when you want to heat up some soup. Yet something still compels me to write, essentially, hoping that people might care and might value the way I write and what I have to say. I didn’t start Music Fan’s Mic as a means of making a living, I started it because I’d always written reviews, as a way of gathering my thoughts and putting them to one side. It was just a storage space at first, now it’s one of the highest priorities of my every day.

In the UK, momentum in gathering behind a collection of musicians’ efforts to decrease the rate of file-sharing in the country. They’re not naive, expecting to completely remove the problem, but they’re meeting together in order to gather ideas, smart ideas in fact. The latest in the line of thoughts is the plan to “squeeze bandwidth” from internet users who choose to file-share on a regular basis. Admittedly, someone who’s had their internet restricted will find ways around the measure, such as using a friend’s computer or getting a friend to make a copy. There will be loopholes, but it will at least cover some ground in restricting the movement of file-sharing in this country. Lily Allen is seemingly the head of the meetings, although in no way should there be a “leader” of sorts. This should be a unison, not an elite. But it speaks volumes that members of Radiohead and Pink Floyd are joining hands in an effort to curb the impact of illegal downloading.

But it’s too late. File-sharing is global and can only evolve. Across the world, (cue Bono) every time I click my fingers, an artist loses out on £2. It’s a vicious circle but if file-sharers can find ways around the proposed measures from Allen and co., musicians should also be making efforts to find ways around not being able to make a living out of their music. And they are, iTunes, ‘In Rainbows’, ‘Intimacy’, we’ve seen experimentation.

It would be wonderful if release dates mattered again, if anticipation returned and if reviews would once again have importance. But it’s all too farfetched. It’s difficult to see how it can evolve from here but the internet will only become faster, more dangerous for musicians who want to make a living. Music journalism is also on its last knees, but it can also evolve. There will always be interest in interviews, opinions from top-class journalists. As file-sharing increases in volume, as does the chance that an everyday teenager will come across an LCD Soundsystem or the “next big thing” where without the internet, they never would have.

The next decade will see similar efforts being made to those currently emerging through Allen and her cronies. But at the same time, music downloading will never cease and can only grow with faster broadband speeds and an ever-growing cloud of hype that surrounds acts like Washed Out, The Drums, The Xx, in a matter of days. Music press and its efforts to find the next Vampire Weekend/Strokes/etc. only spurs on this ridiculous movement of buzz that in turn, increases the rate of downloading. It’s undecided as to whether a blog like Music Fan’s Mic will survive as an effort to match intelligent journal input with the link to a song that everyone seeks.
Right now, mp3 blogs aren’t the big culprits. Most urge a hypemachine user or someone on a forum to “check out this amazing band/song/show”. A lot of passion is involved. Torrents and .rar files are the enemy, but yet in a matter of minutes, you can have a fantastic album on iPod. That temptation is understandably, too much for most. In my position, I believe that music journalism probably won’t exist in music blogs after a few more years, but passion and energy, the key components to making a music blog, will still remain.

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