Is This A Hipster Music Blog?

One of the Gawker writers (they’re pretty much indistinguishable from one another at this point, what with the constant snark and irreverence) wrote a blog post today about “hipster music blogs” and their authenticity problem, meaning editors/writers for said blogs love to use their pulpits to cry foul whenever an artist with a manufactured image gains popularity. The singer in question is irrelevant to my own examination of this issue, because I’m so cynical I assume every musician’s image is manufactured to some degree. The only question I care about is whether or not Swan Fungus classifies as a hipster music blog.

I’ve had this debate with friends in the past, but we’ve never really come to a conclusion. Does my affinity for experimental music and the space I devote to it — as well as whatever else my tastes may be — define this as a hipster music blog? Personally I’m still uncomfortable even calling this a music blog because I really only devote one or two days a week to specifically musical subjects. Still, shit like obscure prog records and vanity pressings of weird outsider albums have become something of a fashion trend in the sense that certain people like to differentiate themselves from the pack by mining areas of musical history outside of the mainstream…and I know I’ve poked fun at plenty of independent musicians for their manufactured looks or silly posturing. But I’ve also tried to back up those criticisms with comments about why the music isn’t good. And I’ve definitely spewed bile at countless buzz-worthy bands just for the sake of it. Never a woman, though! I don’t think….maybe St. Vincent at some point…definitely Sleater-Kinney…but that wasn’t about fashion or ideology, just about bad music and an annoying singer.

Sadly, the Gawker article does little in the way of defining what a hipster music blog is, other than a blog that might cover the singer featured in the article. Which is a shame, because doing so could have gone a long way towards helping me figure out whether or not I fit into that category.

By the way, I was talking to an A&R guy last night during the Battle of the Bands we were judging (which was amazing, if you’re not following me on Twitter you missed some funny commentary!) and he started talking about how this was a lean period for online “indie” music magazines. For example, if you use Compete.com to chart Pitchfork’s unique visitors and PageRank you see that they’ve lose half their readership during the last year. Stereogum, WFMU’s Beware Of The Blog, and My Old Kentucky Blog have all seen drops in readership. His reasoning was that there are so many new avenues for music fans to take when it comes to discovering new artists — and the amount of information available and the speed at which it comes is so instantaneous — that websites who try to keep up with it all inevitably fail. A news story might break at 10am and receive A1 placement on a music blog, but by 3pm it’s buried three pages deep on their sites. Services like Turntable.fm and Spotify, and social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, deliver content in a more immediately accessible way than most blogs do. Until “professional” music blogs figure out how best to adapt to the changes in content delivery and information sharing they’ll likely continue to see their numbers dwindle.

Yes, even Ye Olde Swan Fungus blog has seen some weird statistical anomalies during the past year. Are things good? Are things bad!? Shit, I don’t even know if this is even a hipster music blog!? Why should I worry? I’m just going to keep typing little stories about myself and hopefully someone will read it. I’m still thankful every day that my readership isn’t just my friends Melissa, Marika and Matt anymore. It’s more fun reaching thousands of people every week than it is reaching dozens.

So, you tell me: Swan Fungus — hipster music blog or NOT hipster music blog.

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