Good day, visitor. Just a quick public service announcement. I’ve been running this blog for about two and a quarter years, and certain things have become evident, so I’m making some changes.
First, I appreciate anyone who reads any article here; it’s very gratifying to know that on occasion I have turned someone on to music they haven’t heard before. However, attempting to keep up writing a blog comprised of very lengthy reviews and articles, while making a living and yes, making my own music too, has simply proven very difficult. Short of winning a big lottery jackpot and having all my time freed up for fun like this, it just ain’t feasible.
I drafted in some contributors last year, each of whom has done some great work, but it’s clear they are busy people as well and are not able to pick up my slack.
There are two other main personal reasons I’m dialling it back:
1 – While readership on the whole continues to grow here, there are a lot of music blogs out there, and this one has not become the go-to place for musical knowledge in certain genres that it should have. I have not found that there is a great deal of support from acts I’ve reviewed or fans of the genres covered (with notable exceptions, of course). It’s a “me, me, me” world out there on social media, and I just don’t care to be pushy and tweet a billion times a day.
2 – After things got going and it turned out that yes, people really would end up coming here and reading stuff, I got the idea that hey, it might help me promote my own music, which, if I don’t mind saying so, is actually pretty good. However, that has not happened, and I’m still very much on the outside looking in where exposure is concerned. It feels silly to me when one of two articles about my new Gateless Gate album (on a label to boot!) is written by me and posted here.
Does this sound whiny? Well, I acknowledge it might. After all, on the second point, I’m just one of millions of decent musicians jostling for exposure in the cyberverse in the post-music-industry age. There’s no particular reason to assume that because I write well about music and support other artists like crazy, those other musicians would maybe point out my musical work to others. That’s a utopian vision.
On the first, well, I feel a bit justified. Almost nowhere else online will you find content with this much depth on these genres, written so well by smart people. A lot more links to this blog and a lot more retweets and reposts were justified.
Anyway, it’s long way of saying, if you want to read Make Your Own Taste, you should subscribe/follow now so that you actually will know when an article is posted, because it won’t be done as regularly.
The biggest change:
I regretfully can no longer accept submissions of new music. I can’t keep up with it. If you are a musician, it’s not fair to you to send me free music that I’ll never even listen to. It’s rude of me. Any reviews of new releases from now on will occur just because I happened to come across something that took my fancy, or because I want to write an archival article, such as those I have done on the best of acts like Camel, Steve Roach, etc.
So, this blog is not being taken down, because I think the material here should stay online for people to come across and discover music they might not otherwise have encountered. The occasional article will be posted when I have the time and enthusiasm to write them.
Heck, if you want to pay me to write about music, money talks!
But my carpel tunnel days of writing two or three 1,000-3,000 word blog posts a week are over.
