All this has turned into some really interesting discussion. Is it possible that stereogum and Idolator can continue to provide what I consider some of the best music writing out there, now that they're owned by a parent company like UMG?
I support music blogs earning money in the same way I support musicians earning money -- I'm in favor. :)
I know firsthand what an intense amount of work it takes to run a music website, and in theory, I would hope that those sites should only get better, once the editors and writers have the financial means to work on the site full time (read as: no more dayjobs). But yah, when the sugar daddy also owns over 25% of the record labels (according to wikipedia), then yeah... ya gotta wonder what the expectations are. I think the readers of those sites are a bit savviet than your average bear. If stereogum is suddenly premature evaluating all over the new Fall Out Boy, they're gonna get eaten alive. That's the beautiful thing about comments and user generated content. Checks and balances. Hopefully Buzznet is aware of this and won't try to disrupt editorial of the sites they acquire. But who knows. I haven't noticed any changes to content quality yet... but I will have my guard up for sure.
Also, I just looked at Buzznet and it made me feel about 1000 years old.
Reviews
imaginary dana said on April 18, 2008:
While we're all on the subject, it's official: Buzznet (who bought stereogum and Idolator) just got 25 million dollars in funding from Universal Music Group -- and it looks like they're trying to accumulate more blog purchases too.
All this has turned into some really interesting discussion. Is it possible that stereogum and Idolator can continue to provide what I consider some of the best music writing out there, now that they're owned by a parent company like UMG?
I support music blogs earning money in the same way I support musicians earning money -- I'm in favor. :)
I know firsthand what an intense amount of work it takes to run a music website, and in theory, I would hope that those sites should only get better, once the editors and writers have the financial means to work on the site full time (read as: no more dayjobs). But yah, when the sugar daddy also owns over 25% of the record labels (according to wikipedia), then yeah... ya gotta wonder what the expectations are. I think the readers of those sites are a bit savviet than your average bear. If stereogum is suddenly premature evaluating all over the new Fall Out Boy, they're gonna get eaten alive. That's the beautiful thing about comments and user generated content. Checks and balances. Hopefully Buzznet is aware of this and won't try to disrupt editorial of the sites they acquire. But who knows. I haven't noticed any changes to content quality yet... but I will have my guard up for sure.
Also, I just looked at Buzznet and it made me feel about 1000 years old.