And what exactly is the difference between lossy and lossless compression? Well it’s quite simple. When an audio track is compressed to a format such as MP3 or AAC, data is lost - forever. There’s no turning back once it’s been compressed. Sure, you can convert it back to the original format if you want but there’s still no way to retrieve the data that was thrown out. On the other hand, lossless compression (e.g. FLAC, Apple Lossless, Monkey’s Audio) manages to compress the data in such a way as to not lose any information. It’s like Zipping a file - you’ve saved space but you can still unzip it to return the original file. My beef here isn’t with lossless compression; it’s with lossy compression. So to avoid confusion, from hereon whenever I say “compression” it’s meant in the lossy manner.

To me, compressing a musician’s audio track is roughly analogous to adding a little bit of white to every color in a painter’s palette, causing them to fade. The picture (or sounds) aren’t as bright or clear as before. This doesn’t have as noticeable of an effect on some types of music as it does on others. The more acoustically simple a song is, the more likely it can be compressed without a noticeable audible effect. What I mean by acoustically simple is that not a lot is going on at the same time - for instance a singer/songwriter like Jack Johnson. He just happened to pop in my mind, and I’ve got no problem with him, but most of his music I’ve heard is just him singing over his guitar with some percussion and subtle bass in the background. This is more compression-friendly than (again, first artist to pop into my head) Opeth - with their very wide dynamic range and complex layers that fill out the audible spectrum.

It turns out that 256kbps AAC compression (the iTunes standard) is actually pretty good at preserving the original fidelity of most songs, and it also helps if the original track to be compressed is a high quality recording. But I don’t think this nullifies anything I’ve said thus far.

If you have a digital music player with a limited amount of space and you want to fit your entire library on it, then understandably you’ll have a need for compressing your music - at least for that digital music player. But it just doesn’t make much sense to me to compress one’s entire music collection on their hard drive to accommodate for this in an age where computer storage space is so cheap (hell, my iPod has 120Gb, and it seems it’s hard to find a computer these days with less than 200Gb… even Terabyte storage is hardly a rarity). I always try to buy physical CD’s whenever possible, this way I can rip them to my hard drive in Apple lossless format, thus preserving the original quality of the recording.

Here’s a couple links I like that I think you should check out:

Analysis: Metallica’s Death Magnetic Sounds Better in Guitar Hero - A case study on how post-production compression can completely ruin an album.

SoundExpert.info - Cool site that compares the quality of different audio codecs at different bit rates.

Although Radiohead hasn’t officially called it quits and they claim shorter projects such as EPs could be in the future, it got me thinking. It’s so rare that a band will call it quits while they’re ahead. There are innumerable reasons for bands to split or stop producing music, so I can’t claim that the point in which this happens reflects their intentions. But I’d like to think that those who are musicians for the sake of music, as a opposed to entertainment, will step down at the right time. Despite the fact that I would love another Radiohead album, I have the utmost respect for Thom Yorke admitting they don’t have another album in them; rather than scraping another one together because it’ll sell well.

Sometimes I wonder what I’d think of bands like Creed and Metallica if they never released anything beyond My Own Prison (1997) and The Black Album (1991), respectively. These two bands had very different levels of exposure, and started to suck for very different reasons, and at different paces too, I suppose. But I loved at least one album by each of these bands at one point. They’ve both released god awful albums and someone in each of these bands has become so arrogant that I can’t even stand to listen to their earlier work. It’s hard to blame anyone but Scott Stapp for Creed’s mishap, but Metallica should have known something was awry when they released Load… and certainly Re-Load. Oh man… I’d argue that naming scheme is about as bad as the sequel to Die Hard… Die Harder. Of course, it’s not the name that makes them awful, and one could debate Die Harder is awful in a great way.

As soon as a musician starts writing albums for everyone but himself, he starts to teeter on that gray line distinguishing sell-outs.  I guess I’d like to think the real musicians will see that in time, or at least before their third farewell tour. Then again, maybe I’m just an idealist looking in.  In any case, kudos to Radiohead.

Fatal Flaw #1: Full-Range Drivers

All of Bose’s home theatre systems utilize full-range drivers. This is probably already known by most or all of you, but full range speakers attempt to recreate frequencies  across the entire audible spectrum (roughly 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz). Now most of the Bose home theatre systems do include a subwoofer, so maybe the other channels only have to produce frequencies as low as about 200 Hz, but this still leaves far too broad a frequency range for a single driver to effectively operate across. Quality speakers have a tweeter dedicated to producing crisp highs, along with a larger woofer and possibly a mid-range for generating lower frequencies. Bose’s insistence upon using only a subwoofer and a collection of 2.5″-diameter full-range drivers means that the high frequencies aren’t accurate and the mid-bass frequencies (roughly 200 Hz to 500 Hz) are seriously lacking.

Fatal Flaw #2: Cheap Materials

Bose uses paper cones for their speakers. Actually, I believe they call it something like “space-age paper”, whatever the hell that means. The bottom line is paper warps far too easily, resulting in inaccurate reproduction of sound, especially at high volumes. An easy way to observe this is to listen to a loud Michael Bay-esque explosion through both a Bose system and an actually decent one (explosions are an example of a complex sound effect containing low rumbling, high crackling, and pretty much every frequency in between). The decent system will sound noticeably cleaner and Bose will sound distorted or muddy - I promise. Most good speakers utilize some sort of high-tech plastic or composite material because they are more rigid and durable than paper, resulting in a more accurate sound.

Besides the driver cones being crappy, the cone surrounds are crappy too. They’re either thin foam or some type of fabric; I didn’t even bother researching to see what exactly it is because either way it’s second-rate material. Quality speakers have rubber surrounds or something comparable. Now I don’t think the surround material affects sound quality right out of the box (someone correct me here if I’m wrong though) but this really pays off when the speakers are several years old; rubber will hold up just fine whereas cheaper materials are more prone to deterioration over time.

Like I said in the intro, Bose builds entry-level home theatre equipment. But even if you’re on a budget (most of us probably are) there are plenty of alternatives. In fact there are a multitude of speaker manufacturers out there, and far more than you’ll see at Best Buy or even an audio/video catalog like Crutchfield. Some companies that offer quality home theatre systems that won’t break your wallet are: Infinity, Polk, Klipsch, Boston Acoustics, and DCM. And they are just a few of the fish in the sea of many, so there’s no reason to settle for a crappy system just because some housewife on a TV commercial says she’s amazed by the sound quality of her new Bose system.

“You should never beat a dead horse, unless it’s a zombie horse, then you can’t beat it enough.”
- Steven Colbert

I’m under the impression this is a zombie horse… I think we’ve made it abundantly clear that we don’t use radio to find new music. Unfortunately, there are people that completely agree, but haven’t found other avenues to find music. In fact, that was me a little over a year ago. I hadn’t found a new band I really liked in years, and I was extremely close to giving up on the music industry. That was then though. I urge you to take a look at our reviews portal. Many of those bands I’ve heard before the site, but probably a lot fewer than you suspect. For example, my favorites page has 11 bands on there. I hadn’t heard 6 of those bands before the start of Obnoxious Listeners. Although I am rather proud of this site, this isn’t shameless self-promotion. My point is that you don’t need the radio to find great music. You just have to actually take a few minutes every now and then and find it yourself. The music is out there, but you can’t depend on it just finding you. Start searching on your own and you’ll realize:

“Maybe music isn’t dead. Maybe we all just forgot what it fucking sounds like.”
- Get Fighted, Alexisonfire

There’s not one band I’ve found, since the start of this site, that I found on the radio; and a large majority of them have never regularly been on the radio. One of the most frequently asked questions I get when I discuss music and this site is, “How do you find all of these bands?” I’d like to be a little more explicit about how I come across these bands… I have a subscription to regularly refill my internets. Seriously, all I do is peruse online music stores, myspace, and Pandora. Actually, I don’t use Pandora so much anymore because I tend to only need a few seconds to know if I want to listen any longer. Pandora only lets you skip so many songs within a certain amount of time. I pretty routinely use the “listeners also bought” and then follow up with a trip to myspace to get full length tracks. Are you into music? Pretty serious about it and need more music? Please, I urge you. Just go to an online music store and look through the “listeners also bought” for at least 10 minutes. You’ll be surprised how easy it is to find something new you’ll like.

I hope that this site will develop a large enough library of reviews to compete with the above process for our readers, but it’s just not there yet. My filtering process isn’t perfect, and frankly, it’s my filter. There is music you’ll love that I’ll hate, and I’ll skip over or not get the inspiration needed to write a review; which brings me to my final point. Here’s a little known secret. While I certainly spend a lot of time and energy trying to encourage others to get excited about music, I frankly don’t do this for you, the reader. I don’t mean to be arrogant or immodest in that regard. I just mean that you might be surprised how much you’d get out of putting yourself on a schedule to find new music and actually spend time writing about what you’ve found. Pretty quick, you’ll grasp out how much you truly like the band or artist you’re writing about. Either you’ll find you didn’t like them as much as you thought, or you’ll end up learning and hearing more than you would have otherwise. While I believe I enjoy writing much more than most (or maybe I just like reading my own opinion), but there is certainly value to it that I think anyone serious about music should try.

I’m certainly not trying to discourage people from using this site or others like it. I just want to convey that music critics don’t really know anything special or different from anyone else. There is a plethora of free utilities around the internet to find new music. Take some time to find new music, you’ll be surprised how easy it really is.

iTunes | Amazon | MySpace | Last.fm | Pandora | Amie Steet

First I just want to offer a small bit of evidence to support my lofty claim. To do that, let’s take a look at the most prestigious award from each award show: the Academy Award for Best Picture and the Grammy for Album of the Year. Over the past decade, nominees for Best Picture include films such as American Beauty, Lord of the Rings (all three of them), There Will Be Blood (which has an amazing soundtrack by the way), The Departed, Little Miss Sunshine, A Beautiful Mind, etc. Now I’m no expert on movies, but I do think I’m able to identify quality acting, directing, and writing, and I think all those movies are great. In fact, while perusing nominees over the past decade, not a single film sticks out to me as being horribly deficient in any of these major areas.

During that same time span, nominees for Album of the Year include Tha Carter III (Lil Wayne), Millenium (Backstreet Boys), Nellyville (Nelly), American Idiot (Green Day), and multiple albums from Dixie Chicks, U2, and Justin Timberlake. Now some good albums got nominations - and even wins - but the mere presence of some of the other nominees really detracts from the prestige of this sought-after award and the rest of the Grammys as well.

Now this isn’t meant to be rock-solid evidence that the Oscars are infallible and the Grammys a sham, but I’m guessing at this point you either: A) completely disagree with me, in which case you might as well discontinue reading now and instead turn on your favorite Top 40 radio station, or B) agree with me, or at least see that I may have stumbled upon something slightly resembling an accurate observation.

For those of you still with me, I’m going to cite one factor I believe may be a reason for this Oscar-Grammy disparity. But first, one more observation, and that is that films and albums alike that win these awards tend to be very profitable. In other words, the awards reflect to some degree the public’s opinion of the respective media [of course there are plenty of extremely high-grossing movies that don't get Oscar nominations, but I think my point is still valid]. How is it then that the public can somehow be “smarter” when it comes to movies and “stupider” when it comes to music?

One word - radio. Now I know it’s easy to vilify and make fun of the radio, and we do it often on this website, but let me finish my point before accusing me of riding the bandwagon. The radio is a free source of music to the public. In theory this is a great thing, but in practice it’s simply an easy way for the major music corporations to mercilessly and repeatedly batter the public with the latest thing they call music. Movies on the other hand don’t have any sort of free public broadcast that forces people to repeatedly watch the same thing over and over again. Because of this, I think, people are inclined to be more choosey and to form their own opinions when it comes to films… ya know, assuming they haven’t already been brainwashed by the endless TV advertisements and billboards.

You can get the same effect by going into iTunes, searching for any mainstream band, and perusing the “Listeners also bought”.  You’ll hear the same things over and over.  What I heard over the holiday weekend was pieces of bands I’ve been listening to for years, mutilated and forced into some kind of radio friendly algorithm. This isn’t exactly a revelation. So many of us hear this already. But I noticed something slightly different. Many of the subtle details that defined the hardcore punk and heavy metal genres are being used frequently in mainstream rock. I heard more lead-ins and a sense of spontaneity in at least one of the band members from time to time. I heard faster riffs and more obscure sound effects.  I even heard snippets of songs that actually take talent to play. Effectively, what I heard was actually a good seed for music. The reason it was mainstream was that it had a very simple song structure; the usual verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus routine. But as Dana Carvey once said, “You cannot pee in a Mr. Coffee and get Taster’s Choice.”

A big gripe with mainstream music is originality. I actually think that argument is moot. I’m not entirely sure how to quantify the originality of music (unless of course you rip off “…the same rhythm, tempo, melody, and key”). Perhaps I’m a purist, but I think difference between mainstream music and quality music is the creative process behind the music. It seems anyone can come up with a couple riffs, play them one after another, repeat, and maybe play one of the riffs softer. There is an art in writing good music, not a filtration system. A telltale sign that an artist realizes this is the variation in song lengths. An album of tracks all roughly 3 - 4 minutes probably lacks some structural creativity. If you allow the music to write itself, you simply won’t have a 3 - 4 minute song every time.

It doesn’t make sense to force two parts of a song together that don’t necessarily fit. Sometimes it needs additional work to make an appropriate transition and sometimes the pieces just aren’t meant to be in the same song. The real heart of this argument applies to more than just music; it even applies to literature, movies, etc. For example, doesn’t it irk you when you watch a movie and it doesn’t explain how one character has unlimited ammunition, and no one else does? Or how about when Daniel Faraday knew how to calculate the bearing to get to The Island before he even got there which cured his drifting mind (Damn you J.J. Abrams!). It’s the same thing in music. You’ve got to explain how you got from point A to point B. On the same token, you don’t want everything completely spelled out for you. That said, it’s nice to have enough faith that the answers to your questions are there whether you catch them the first time or not. This is exactly the same for music. I despise Law & Order because it’s entirely predictable, and I loathe mainstream music for the same reason. By the way, Robot Chicken did a spoof that brilliantly depicts how nearly every episode goes (embedded at the bottom of this article).

For the sake of being explicit, I feel song structure is as important as sonic development and maybe even the music itself. I’m also not saying that the more complicated of a song structure the better. For example, one of my favorite bands, Demians, has a song called Shine. This song effectively only has two parts… and the first is not played again after the second. A song that simply goes from A to B and nowhere else. It’s so simple that this may seem obvious to someone who has never written music. But it’s easy to get in a mind set of having to repeat pieces of your song because nearly every other song does that.  Another example, the seventh track, Empire, from that same album has a few measure loop playing over and over throughout the entire song… even through the verse, chorus, peaks, and quite moments.  What makes it so amazing, in my opinion, is that it’s subtle.  You could have heard that song a hundred times and not noticed because it all fits. So it’s not that song structures need to be complicated, the writer just needs to be creative and let the music breathe a little. And the moral of the story, I might be more inclined to tune into the radio again if the mainstream rock artists picked up on this.

Music all too often falls into the same trap as Law & Order… using the same formula over and over.

Obviously, the basic function of a drummer is to keep the beat. Your run-of-the-mill drummer believes in order to be a better drummer he/she has to do just that… but faster and with faster fills right at the end of a bar. In my opinion, this is the wrong approach all together. Granted, playing drums is the most exhausting piece of a band, but music is not a sport. Playing as fast as possible and sweating the most won’t make you the best drummer. More so than the rest of the band, the drummer has the ability to help you actually feel the rhythm. Some drummers are nothing more than an over-glorified metronome, e.g. Lars Ulrich. I’ll admit, taking a stab at Ulrich is about as easy and a liberal college student taking a stab at Bush… but it had to be said.

The most important attribute a drummer must possess is the ability to simply play by feel. I like to see a drummer that can keep time without counting even during odd-meter. Beyond that, drummers should possess a sense of spontaneity.  Actually, this applies to music composition in general. Following the canonical song structure of verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus gets under my skin just as much as a drummer who has a one or two bar pattern repeated over and over for each section.  It’s not enough to just throw in a fill.  Add a dash of improvisation and syncopation.  I can’t stand a constant high hat with an alternation of a bass kick and snare drum, and then maybe a crash on the first down beat every few measures.  That said, flash doesn’t always appeal to me either.  I’m sure there are tons of drummers faster than many of the ones I’m going to mention, but that doesn’t necessarily make them great drummers.  Some drummers really add to the mood and feel to a song.

So, I’ve come up with a list of some of my favorite drummers… with a couple rules. First of all, this is not a list of the best drummers ever. That should be clear because I included no jazz drummers. Secondly, anyone who claims to have a list of the best drummers ever, has an inherent qualifier built-in to the list; namely, that everyone on that list has become famous to some extent. I’ve seen far too many phenomenal local drummers that never became famous to know that most of the best drummers out there will never be heard (the same goes for other types of musicians too). That said, most of these drummers would be obvious choices to anyone obnoxious about their music, but hopefully some you’ve never heard.  Aside from the ones mentioned below with short audio clips, I’d also like to mention that Neal Peart (Rush), Josh Freese (A Perfect Circle), Carter Beauford (Dave Matthews Band), Terry Bozzio (Frank Zappa), and John Bonham (Led Zeppelin) are among my favorite drummers as well.  If you’ve never seen the video of Tony Royster, Jr. at age 12, I highly recommend you check it out.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Tony Royster, Jr.

Download audio file (danny-carey.mp3)

Danny Carey (Tool)

Download audio file (mike-portnoy.mp3)

Mike Portnoy (Liquid Tension Experiment, Dream Theater)

Download audio file (open-hand.mp3)

Alex Rodriguez (Open Hand)

Download audio file (martin-lopez.mp3)

Martin Lopez (Opeth)

Download audio file (michael-johnson.mp3)

Michael Johnson (Del Rey)

The first band I think of when trying to describe a fantastic recording in terms of its fullness or sound quality is Porcupine Tree for their album In Absentia (2002). This album isn’t phenomenal so much because of the musicianship, more so because of the whole package. Although Steven Wilson really isn’t that great of a singer, he is amazing with both the recording process and development the band’s overall sound. The big point here is the overall sound. Every instrument contributes to the band as a whole musically and sonically.

Although it is related, this isn’t the same argument about filling the entire EQ spectrum (as I describe in my review of Abigail’s Ghost). This is about each band member filling the role the band needs, not what the individual musician wants. For example, I’m very fastidious about bass players. I’ve been playing bass for over a decade, guitar even longer, and it’s not a stretch to say I’m pretentious about how one “should” play an instrument. For example, it’s a faux pas in the classical bass community to use a pick. However, I realized sometime ago… this was no different than hating mainstream music simply because it’s popular. There’s no real reason to not play with a pick other than pretentious bass players assume that bass players who use a pick are bad or just guitarists pretending to be bassists. That sounds pretty stupid, huh? Well it is, but there’s a following of people that believe that. But you know what, you’d be hard pressed to find someone who refuses to appreciate Tool simply because Justin Chancellor will use a pick.

I’m not rambling here, I’m just trying to make a point. Justin Chancellor plays the way he does because it fits with the band. He’s playing his instrument the way the band needs, not necessarily the “right” way. I’ve come across bass players (including myself at one point) that refused to play their bass with effects or a pick. That can be OK. You know, if you’re in a jazz band. But what if you’re in a metal band? Or a progressive rock band? Experimental? If you really love metal and want to play bass in a metal band, you’re going to have to swallow some pride and distort that bass and maybe even play with a pick.

Every musician in a band has a role to play, and while that role may not be well-defined, it should always fit with the band as a whole. If you’re a musician, your role in each band may be entirely unique even if you play the same instrument. If you want your band to really make it, really contribute to the music community, you have to do something unique. The bands that do well are usually not copy-cats (unless you’re Coldplay I guess). But in general you need to sound unique to get people’s attention long enough to find out just how unique you really are. A perfect example is Radiohead. They are easily one of my favorite bands and they have an absolutely unmistakable sound. They’re not really better musicians than most, but they’ve put a lot of time and energy into developing sonically… and that can be just as respectable, admirable… and dare I say enjoyable? Having a strong and unique sound may not be as important as the music behind it, but it certainly cannot be ignored. In fact, it’s likely that edge your band needs to get the attention is truly deserves.

 
This past weekend I was sitting down with Obnoxious poet/emcee George Watsky for some dinner. And as he went to the bathroom, I pulled out my iphone and I tweeted to our community, “hangin’ with George Watsky and discussing his latest ventures: writing plays, moving to LA for screen writing, and droppin new album this summer.” I put down my iPhone as George came back to the table (Tweetie is a great iphone app). He caught a glimpse of me typing and asked “texting your girl?“. And I responded, “nah, just twittering that I’m hanging out with you.” George just smirked. Well who wants to know that information?

George has been questioning for a little while where he wants to join twitter and whether it was advantageous to do so a music artist. And that’s a question many artists are asking of themselves. They are asking themselves things like:

• is it worth it to join twitter?
• am I over saturating my community of fans?
• do I want to get that personal with so many people at once?
• will this end up being more work for me?
• isn’t this just another way to invite people to stalk me outside of my blog?

Just like any other social networking tool out there on the web, Twitter is a tool. And the question is, how do I use it so that I get what I want? First, define what it is that you’re looking to do. Then figure out if Twitter can actually help. Don’t do it the other way since it’ll only make you more confused. If you do it right, you’ll figure out whether Twitter is the right tool or not. And then you’ll need to know how it is you want to use Twitter.

Pretty Much Amazing recently wrote a post entitled The Thinking Man’s Take on: Twitter. They take us through when its appropriate to tweet:

To Tweet: You are an inside source at a major news organization/important news happening!
Not To Tweet: You are an entry level intern at a major news organization!
To Tweet: You own a major sports franchise!
Not to Tweet: You spend 16 hours a day looking at excel sheets!
To Tweet: You are a regularly updating website!
Not To Tweet: You only re-tweet what other twitterers have tweeted.
To Tweet: You are a witty and well written parody!
Not To Tweet: You don’t understand twitter, but desperately want to seem hip to the jive like the kids these days!
To Tweet: You’re in Egyptian jail!

I think their insights are golden for artists to understand since tweeting can be done in so many fashions. You don’t want to be like the other boring / annoying tweeters. You want to set yourself apart and do something of value to you as an artist. As a fan of George’s work and music, here’s what I’m looking for:

• new music updates - are you working on a new album or is a new single being released? 
• encounters you have - did you meet someone cool that might potentially impact your music and/or artistic career?
• sources of inspiration - did you have an encounter or face a tough event that might shape a song or your creative process?
• performances - are you traveling to my town or somewhere where I have a friend that might want to check you out?

Of course if you have wit or can drop some comedy in from time to time, that’s also ok and a perfect thing to tweet about. But don’t over burden yourself with it. Make twittering a normal routine and do it when it feels right. The idea behind twittering from an artist’s perspective in my opinion is to develop a community. A community of supporters and people who really want to follow your rise. 

If you already have a community (Facebook Groups, A Blog, Myspace Friends, Ning Site), then twitter can still help. Instead of using twitter as a source of new content, use twitter to syndicate filtered content from your existing community. Not everything though - that’s annoying.

Another option is to use twitter as a way of connecting with your most exclusive fans. Make it a private and/or exclusive place where only the supporters you want have this limited access to you. This keeps away the stalkers and allows you to have very simple conversations with people that want to help you.

Though twittering has had a lot of hype around it, I find it extremely useful. You just have to be selective about what it is that you write about and what your intentions are for using it. As long as you got that down, your career as a musician can only be enhanced by twitter.

Well after 4 years of hiding from blogs and thinking they were just the next trendy thing to do, I learned very quickly that blogs didn’t have to be a log of my life. They didn’t have fit the form of a traditional diary. No offense to the people who do use it that way, but I find that the most interesting blogs do a variety of things outside of logging what went on through your day. They instead:

• Provide you valued content: I’m a big fan of conscious hip hop, and I’m always looking for a stream of good information related to that genre. Not so much of an outsider’s point of view, but more of somebody on the inside that’s actually living it. The iLL-Literacy crew does a great job profiling conscious artists, providing live feeds of events, talking about what’s going on in the community, and much much more. 
• Educate: I’ve recently become a wine connoisseur after having been brought into the whole wine world from a client of mine. Not only do I find so much valuable information from Gary Vaynerchuk’s Wine Library, but I also get a ton of information from Maynard Keenan. Yup, the same Maynard Keenan from Tool also actively writes about wine making. He actually knows a lot about the subject and goes pretty extensively into it. Though I probably won’t ever make wine or go vineyard hopping anytime soon, I find his content really fascinating and educational.
• Talk about passions: I love design whether its in relation to clothes, architecture, or jewelry. So I frequent Kanye West’s blog a lot just to see really well designed goods. He’s always posting pictures from live events or things he comes across on his travels. 
• Entertain: They provide a stream of content on a daily basis that just makes you laugh, smile, or feel good. One of my favorite posts to read and that I found absolutely hysterical was when George Watsky called out Michael Cera. 

As you can see, a blog can be lots of things. But regardless of what it’s about, they all serve one purpose and that’s to form a relationship between an artist and his/her fans. Fans want an outlet that they can feel personally connected with you, the creators of the music they love so very much. Your music is simply not enough. Perhaps music could do it all alone in the past (like in the 1980s and earlier), but your music is really not enough to maintain a relationship with your fan base all by itself. Your fans need something more sustainable that can keep their attention and keep them engaged. 

If you’re a solo artist or band/crew in the music world today, you should seriously consider creating a blog. There is no smarter and simpler way to market yourself in today’s music world. It doesn’t matter if you’re blog is about music or not. It just has to be interesting. Once you got it up, make it your web site’s (assuming you have one) homepage and/or link to it directly from the homepage. There are tons of free blogging solutions you can download and/or join. It’s dead simple to use and you can get up and running in less than an hour.

As long as you can distinguish that a blog is no longer an online journal/diary, I think you  will like me start enjoying having a blog of your own. You then have the opportunity to create something of value and that others will enjoy as well without having to tell your deepest darkest secrets!

Do you read any blogs right now that are created by musicians/artists? What do they talk about on their blogs and why do you find it interesting?