“Music Tumblr”?

I use Tumblr as a platform because it is easy and free. It is not perfect, but if you need to start a blog in 20 minutes or less, and gain access to an audience, it is alright.

I started using Tumblr at a time during “the vinyl revival” (the prediction of which once netted me a badge to 2008 SXSW to lead a panel discussion; cash value $358), when my regular platform, the website Dusted, couldn’t move quickly enough for me to cover records at the speed which they were arriving in my post office box.

It’s like four or five years later now. There are well over 2,500 record reviews on this Tumblr, written by me and people I trust who were excited enough to share my vision of keeping zine-style writing and discourse alive in a new medium.

Combined with the thousands more published on Dusted from 2005, there is enough review content from me and my team to create a new Trouser Press-style guide of music writing, covering an era of creativity (and lack thereof) that is already mostly forgotten.

These thousands of reviews exclude, at my estimate, 95% of the records that were covered by most other outlets, even by artists and labels that initially supported this endeavor and copped out when they got bad reviews. This is a whole league outside of “firsties,” as it were, and it bridges the wide gap between The Wire at one end, and MRR on the other,

All of this work was done on my own time. I’ve never been paid for Still Single, and from the time between when CMJ published a scene report of mine in 1996, and last week, when I landed a piece on NPR Music, I’ve never been paid for music writing, ever (unless you count the authoring of one-sheets, that dirty secret no one ever wants to talk about. I’ve written a lot of those, btw.)

When I read about “Music Tumblr,” my hackles are raised, as if this medium is subjectively any better than any other blog, a standalone website, print media, discovering music on your own, or sharing it with people you like. Learning about a community that exists around Tumblr to write about music tells makes me wonder exactly what Still Single has been excluded from. If it’s writing about Tapes ‘N’ Tapes eight years ago, then great; we dodged a bullet. If it’s being called an “up and comer” by a guy who looks like the person behind yvynyl, that’s about the same.

Right now, I feel like the work we’ve done here is either the best shit out there, or the worst. The answer might be somewhere between, but I doubt it. And now I’m sitting here wondering what all I’ve missed out on by not being recognized by this community, rather than what they’ve missed by not recognizing Still Single. Which is the wrong way to wonder.

There is only one endgame here: to broadcast strong thoughts about music. Me and mine are going to keep doing that, be it through Tumblr or whatever happens next.

DM