We are a collaboration of music enthusiasts who want to share their thoughts about the music that is being released in our world. We give honest opinions and guided descriptions to enable our readers to determine what they may want to listen to next as well as providing the artists with an insight as to what a seasoned music geek really thinks about their music.
History
We started this website in 2012 because we realized there was a surplus of music being created in recent years. One reason for this was because recording technology caught up and more people than ever were recording music from their home or at a local studio. Musicians no longer needed a huge budget to make a decent recording and because of this more music than ever is being released. It is also easier than ever to get your music on the internet with sites like soundcloud, bandcamp, reverbnation , etc. The major downside to these sites is that you are competing with thousands of different artists and your songs are like trying to find a needle in a haystack. One other thing we noticed happening with a lot of other popular music sites and blogs is that they rotated and reviewed the same 50 artists. We felt this method was barely scratching the surface and decided that we wanted to dig a bit deeper and see what else was out there.
Model
It is pretty obvious to most die-hard music fans that most of the mainstream media like Pitchfork or Spin chose to only review top-tier acts and seem to rotate the same 50 artists. We do not care if an artist has 50 fans or 500,000 fans. That brings us to our next point. We thought it would be a waste of time to critique music we did not like (Who wants bad press?). Regardless of whether we like it or not that artist most likely put a lot of time and effort into their album. Do we really want to waste our time slamming an album when there are countless amounts of amazing albums being made. Ratings and reviews are either favorable, good or great rating meaning a 3.0 or above. While the critiques are at least favorable we also make sure to point out things we thought could be improved. You can think of us as a promotional company that gives constructive criticism. Artists are critiqued by either being on our radar or chosen from our submission form. We receive a large amount of submissions everyday and although we would like to critique more, we do feel that if we critiqued more then eight a day it would be overboard and don't want to overload our site with so many that our readers start skipping over them. Our staff makes weekly decisions on who we want to feature and then give those artists a number of options (paid and non-paid) to chose from so they can maximize their exposure. Here are the options we send via email to selected artists who used our submission form.
Option 1 (Free)
With this option the album will be included in our "weekly roundup" section. This section is published once a week (on Friday) and is a list of the albums we enjoyed.
Option 2 (28 dollars)
One of our trusted freelance writers will be assigned and elaborate on the rating. The writers talk about the genre of music, the tracks they felt were highlights, where the band is from, etc. This includes its own distinct URL, cover art, two links of your choice (bandcamp,website, reverbnation, facebook,record label,etc) and a professionally written review. (4 -5 paragraphs sometimes more)
Option 3 (35 dollars)
This option includes everything from option 2 and also includes a song or songs to be embedded from soundcloud or bandcamp.
Option 4 (40 dollars)
This option includes everything from option 2 and 3. It also includes a video upload
FAQ
So why do you guys have paid options? We have production costs that we need to cover in order to critique 3 - 8 releases a day. We cannot cover the cost alone through ads at this point but one day hope to. As of 2022 we receive about one to three dollars for every thousand visitors that come to the site. Until then we feel this is a fair way to cover our costs as our audience grows. If you have a problem with that do not submit or if you are selected choose the free option.
How much traffic do you guys get? So we currently get around 700 - 1200 unique visitors and 5000 - 7000 page views a day. You can check out specifics here.
So do you guys like approve everyone? Oh goodness no - If our goal was to split our meager earnings so the staff could buy a couple of extra frozen dinners before our audience left us this would be the way to go but it's not. Some of our short-term goals are to have our own station, review live concerts and put on our own music festival. It would be pretty apparent to our audience we were full of poop if we gave favorable ratings to a bunch of talentless musicians that sounded like they recorded their album in a tin can. In order to reach our goals we need to grow our audience - In order for our audience to grow we need credible, kick-ass content.
Do you really expect people to think you have unbiased reviews? The ratings we give are not determined by what option is chosen. Just read some of the reviews for yourself. Some of the releases are near masterpieces while others simply veer on the side of favorable and need some improvement. The reviews are not only for the audience but for the artists themselves. We think it is very beneficial for the artist to know why we think something is good or bad by someone who has been listening to that genre for a long-time. Instead of their buddies just saying "This kicks ass, man" we give an in depth critique as to why it does or doesn't.
History
We started this website in 2012 because we realized there was a surplus of music being created in recent years. One reason for this was because recording technology caught up and more people than ever were recording music from their home or at a local studio. Musicians no longer needed a huge budget to make a decent recording and because of this more music than ever is being released. It is also easier than ever to get your music on the internet with sites like soundcloud, bandcamp, reverbnation , etc. The major downside to these sites is that you are competing with thousands of different artists and your songs are like trying to find a needle in a haystack. One other thing we noticed happening with a lot of other popular music sites and blogs is that they rotated and reviewed the same 50 artists. We felt this method was barely scratching the surface and decided that we wanted to dig a bit deeper and see what else was out there.
Model
It is pretty obvious to most die-hard music fans that most of the mainstream media like Pitchfork or Spin chose to only review top-tier acts and seem to rotate the same 50 artists. We do not care if an artist has 50 fans or 500,000 fans. That brings us to our next point. We thought it would be a waste of time to critique music we did not like (Who wants bad press?). Regardless of whether we like it or not that artist most likely put a lot of time and effort into their album. Do we really want to waste our time slamming an album when there are countless amounts of amazing albums being made. Ratings and reviews are either favorable, good or great rating meaning a 3.0 or above. While the critiques are at least favorable we also make sure to point out things we thought could be improved. You can think of us as a promotional company that gives constructive criticism. Artists are critiqued by either being on our radar or chosen from our submission form. We receive a large amount of submissions everyday and although we would like to critique more, we do feel that if we critiqued more then eight a day it would be overboard and don't want to overload our site with so many that our readers start skipping over them. Our staff makes weekly decisions on who we want to feature and then give those artists a number of options (paid and non-paid) to chose from so they can maximize their exposure. Here are the options we send via email to selected artists who used our submission form.
Option 1 (Free)
With this option the album will be included in our "weekly roundup" section. This section is published once a week (on Friday) and is a list of the albums we enjoyed.
Option 2 (28 dollars)
One of our trusted freelance writers will be assigned and elaborate on the rating. The writers talk about the genre of music, the tracks they felt were highlights, where the band is from, etc. This includes its own distinct URL, cover art, two links of your choice (bandcamp,website, reverbnation, facebook,record label,etc) and a professionally written review. (4 -5 paragraphs sometimes more)
Option 3 (35 dollars)
This option includes everything from option 2 and also includes a song or songs to be embedded from soundcloud or bandcamp.
Option 4 (40 dollars)
This option includes everything from option 2 and 3. It also includes a video upload
FAQ
So why do you guys have paid options? We have production costs that we need to cover in order to critique 3 - 8 releases a day. We cannot cover the cost alone through ads at this point but one day hope to. As of 2022 we receive about one to three dollars for every thousand visitors that come to the site. Until then we feel this is a fair way to cover our costs as our audience grows. If you have a problem with that do not submit or if you are selected choose the free option.
How much traffic do you guys get? So we currently get around 700 - 1200 unique visitors and 5000 - 7000 page views a day. You can check out specifics here.
So do you guys like approve everyone? Oh goodness no - If our goal was to split our meager earnings so the staff could buy a couple of extra frozen dinners before our audience left us this would be the way to go but it's not. Some of our short-term goals are to have our own station, review live concerts and put on our own music festival. It would be pretty apparent to our audience we were full of poop if we gave favorable ratings to a bunch of talentless musicians that sounded like they recorded their album in a tin can. In order to reach our goals we need to grow our audience - In order for our audience to grow we need credible, kick-ass content.
Do you really expect people to think you have unbiased reviews? The ratings we give are not determined by what option is chosen. Just read some of the reviews for yourself. Some of the releases are near masterpieces while others simply veer on the side of favorable and need some improvement. The reviews are not only for the audience but for the artists themselves. We think it is very beneficial for the artist to know why we think something is good or bad by someone who has been listening to that genre for a long-time. Instead of their buddies just saying "This kicks ass, man" we give an in depth critique as to why it does or doesn't.