Random Thoughts & Theories

So, I went on a pretty long Twitter rant.  I finally had to stop blowing up everybody’s timelines and just finish my stream of thoughts here in a post.

It began after reading this recent Ted Gioia column for the Daily Beast (LINK).  It talks about the recent surge of jazz backlash in the media.

I’m cool with his column, but whatevs.  I’ve pretty well restrained myself from commenting on any of these “jazz sucks” columns that have been popping up lately.  I guess that’s over.

Here’s some quick hit thoughts on items brought up by Gioia or just stuff hanging around my head waiting for an opportunity to pounce.

Let’s begin…

Yes, the Rollins piece wasn’t funny. Obvious.

But has anyone pointed out that the bitterness & disillusionment attributed to Rollins might be real for a lot of jazz musicians?

That jazz musicians avoid thinking things like “I wasted my life” like struggling married couple avoid bringing up the D-word?

Jazz takes enormous time & passion to excel. Creativity as a business is even harder. Fear & bitterness & doubt can creep in.  The New York Times piece (unintentionally, I believe) mocks that. Or, at the very least, is casually dismissive of it.

I mean, think of the hardships Rollins went thru in life, both creatively, but also socially & financially via racism & rock’s ascendency?

Are you telling me that he didn’t occasionally struggle with the fear of “I wasted my life” during vulnerable moments?

I don’t think Django Gold was trying to be cruel. I think his poorly crafted article may have been unintentionally insightful in this one instance.

I don’t know Mr. Rollins & I don’t know if my assumptions have any validity. But it’s understandable why other musicians might take offense.

Anyways, that’s the part I of the Django Gold piece I was offended by.

That WaPo column, otoh, was just plain stupid & lazy. I don’t mind if people don’t like Jazz, but don’t dismiss what you won’t explore.

Especially modern jazz, which isn’t explored by the mainstream as much as it should since it incorporates many of the mainstream qualities.

A lot of it sounds more “indie” than jazz. Jazz evolves. It changes. It’s always absorbed other influences, a melting pot of sound.

Each new generation of jazz musicians are different from the previous. They are influenced by new music & new societal forces.
It shouldn’t be surprising that a lot of modern jazz sounds like stuff that doesn’t get categorized as jazz in the first place.

The identity of mod jazz is more diffuse than at any time in its history. Its sound is less recognizable. Mod jazz is hard to sum up.

And that is its strength, even though it is often pointed to as a weakness. However, its diversity makes it more substantial. Bigger.

But I think some misconstrue it as representative as something insubstantial, something easily knocked over by some jabroni who wants some cheap page views.

But they are wrong.

Don’t fear the confidence of modern jazz artists. If they didn’t posses confidence, the music wouldn’t sound as good as it does.

It would be tepid & mimic the jazz of the past & wouldn’t take risks, even in the face of almost certain commercial inviability. It wouldn’t be art. It would be homage.

I just read that Atlantic review of the new Bill Frisell album. It mirrors a lot of my own review (LINK).  Also, it’s not a jazz album, and I think Frisell has gotten to where it’s probably not even accurate to refer to him as a jazz musician.  He does his own thing and he sort of transcends genre classification.  Yes, he got his start in Jazz, and we can claim him as “one of our own,” but not sure it’s applicable to a why is everyone hating jazz theory (too lazy to hyphenate that thing).

But Frisell, after a career of inventive, massively creative music, has really hit a lull with his last few albums.  Me, personally, I have strong feelings about his music, good or bad.  That’s how it is.

Jazz is the Worst is not very funny on Twitter, though I definitely enjoyed both of his blog posts.  I believe that kind of development has more to with a natural blowback against the JazzBro phenomenon.  Unsurprising.

The problem with the defensiveness some of us feel from the “inaccuracies” in columns like the Deadspin one are that, one, it doesn’t represent how we feel or behave, but, two, it does reflect a backlash against some jazz fans who do fit the stereotype of snob/condescending asshole.  Like any general group of people, Jazz Fans is comprised of a wide array of people, and some of them are total pricks.  We do what we can to ignore them or change them or shout them down.

But I sure as hell don’t deserve to have their bad behavior attributed to me.  And I get pissed off when my hard work to change peoples’ opinions on the approachability of jazz are shot down by some knucklehead working for a large media outlet spewing off his witless generalizations about something he or she hasn’t bothered to research and develop a familiarity with.

I believe that I make a welcoming environment for people to explore modern jazz.  Unfortunately there are some people who use their knowledge of jazz as a weapon to hammer into other people the idea that they’re stupid for not knowing something.

Of course people are going to prematurely dismiss something when they expect to be called stupid.  They are going to hate the haters first.

What I don’t like is that these columns calling out “jazz fans” for behavior is attributing the behavior of the worst of us to the group overall.  Fuck that.  I don’t want people to feel stupid for not knowing things about jazz.  I want them to experience the excitement of getting familiar with it, discovering new music, discovering music that brings them happiness.

It’s the whole reason I have this site.  I absolutely love discovering cool new music.  I want to be able to help others do the same.  I want to help guide people to music they may like.  They won’t like all of it and that’s okay.  If I find one album a month that makes me wonder how I got through life without it, that’s a pretty big deal.

Okay, I think I’m out of steam on this one.  I’ll add more if it comes to me, but I think I got that out of my system.

Here’s where you can follow me on Twitter-> LINK.

And here’s a song I like from a 2014 release.  It’s by Angles 9, and you shouldn’t be surprised if it ends up in my Best of 2014 list…

You can read my recommendation of their 2014 release, Injuries, here, at Bird is the Worm.

Have a great Sunday!

Cheers.

So, you want to start a music blog… (Part II)

(You can read Part I by following this LINK)

I’ve only been at this three years, which in terms of internet music blogs, that’s a pretty long time.  As far as figuring out how to best run an internet music blog… well, I’m not sure exactly how much time that takes, but I can tell you from experience that three years doesn’t get you far.

Here’s some things I regret not thinking of when I first began my site.  It will cover subjects of set-up, content structure and formatting, content organization, content frequency, social media, website traffic, advertising, promotional materials, artist/label/PR rep relationships, networking, time management and You.

I’m probably forgetting a couple of important topics.  Perhaps I’ll cover those in my “Year Four” article.  I’ll covered about half of these items in Part I (last week’s column) and now here’s Part II.

Worth noting:  As opposed to last week’s column, which focused on site creation and organization, today’s will focus more on navigating the field and getting yourself noticed and sourced by people in the music industry.  Now, if you’re only looking to have a music blog that highlights the albums on your shelves and couldn’t care less about what’s new today, then today’s column is going to be less relevant than last week.  But if you are into what’s being released every week (in any genre) and want to be a source of what’s new, then today’s column will also be helpful.

As always, I’ve embedded some of my favorite music from 2014 into the body of the column.

Let’s begin…

(“Up,” from Spacelab by Hess/AC/Hess)

Where do you start?

I got lucky with this one.  I mean, you have your brand new site.  You’ve picked out the theme and the format and all the little ornamental extras that enhance the aesthetic.  Now what?  What the hell do you write?  No matter how much you tinker with the site’s design, you’re still going to be faced with that first blank page.  Where do you start?

Me, I had two avenues to take, both similar in nature and, I believe, not a bad direction to take yourself.  My original plan, when the idea to start up a music blog first formed in my head, was to simply write about albums on my CD shelf and iTunes library that floated my boat.  Most of them would be modern jazz, but I’d hit on some under-the-radar “classics” too.  But two things happened in the span of time when I first got the inkling to start a blog and when I actually flipped on the Open sign.  One, I got the eMusic gig.  Part of the deal with that thing is that I have the ability to reprint my eMusic (now Wondering Sound) synopses thirty days after they’ve been initially published.  Well, that’s what I did.  Literally.  I added some links and personnel names and embedded audio when I could find it… but that’s all I changed.  These were true reprints and those early posts, well, as they might say in my new hometown down here in the South… “bless his heart, he really tried, didn’t he?”  But even though those early posts were sort of lame in a way, they provided a very nice source of help on what to write about.

So did Number 2 of my two-part what-changed premise… I began my site at the end of the year.  As you’ll come to discover, and which I’ll address briefly later, end of the year means the Season of Lists.  This is when you encapsulate everything that’s happened in the year and highlight the best of the best.  Well, end of the year is when I opened my door, so I had a whole lot of summarizing to do.  Much in the style of my eMusic Jazz Picks synopses, I wrote a series of columns that highlighted the best of 2012.  I wrote little paragraphs for each album, about five albums per column, just briefly talking about the music and why I liked it.  Nothing fancy and definitely nothing that was going to get nominated for any writing awards.  But that’s kind of how many of the wrap-up columns go.  You’ve probably already written plenty about the music during the year when initially covering the music when it was first released.

What both of these two types of columns (eMusic Jazz Picks synopses and Best of 2012 synopses) did for me was put out a huge volume of mini-content on my site in a short period of time.  Between my use of social media and networking (addressed later in this column) and artists/labels/PR reps scouring the internet for relevant material, my site got noticed.  It wasn’t long before I was getting lots of promo material from artists and labels and reps asking me to review albums, conduct interviews, etc.  The question of what to write was answered for me.

I highly recommend writing a little about a lot of albums, a scatter-shot approach that is likely to get you noticed in short order.

(And some of those original column ideas?  I’ve never gotten to them.  I have some drafts of huge columns for Bill Frisell and Wayne Horvitz and Guillermo Klein just sitting there in draft form.  I get to them from time to time, but until I can do this thing full time and can ditch the day job, they’ll continue to evolve slowly.)

Getting Noticed, an addendum

As I mentioned in the previous section, part of getting noticed is putting your stuff in a position of being seen.  There’s some basic things you can do to get your site on the radar.

1.  Go knock on Google’s door and introduce yourself.

This was one I learned a little late.  You can submit your site’s URL, as well as the URL of specific content on your site and a site map, and this will trigger Google’s search engine to begin including you in search results that hit certain keywords and tags on your site.  Here’s a LINK to check those options out.  The option I chose was the second, “Link to a specific page…”  If I remember correctly, I asked Google to just check out my site’s main page (via the vanilla birdistheworm[dot]com URL) and to stop by and visit occasionally, because that’s where I’d be posting new material.  The other options are either very simplified or very complex.  They make it pretty straight-forward, so don’t worry if you don’t understand it all entirely.  It’ll become clear as you go through the steps.

But I couldn’t understand why my site was never showing up in most google search results.  This made it happen.

2.  Twitter, Facebook and probably a bunch of other social media sites.

My site has a dedicated Facebook page.  Every time there’s a new post on my site, I post a link to it on the Facebook page.  I probably don’t use the Facebook page as effectively as I could to get the word out about my content, but I at least get something up on that Page daily.  Other people (fans, musicians, labels, etc) who do use Facebook more effectively than I do, in fact, notice my posts, because my site traffic manager shows me how many people are coming to my site from Facebook posts.  Even if the idea of Facebook repulses you, go create one.  It’s painless.

Also, get on Twitter.  Now, I use Twitter a lot.  I like to hang there.  You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but you do need to create an account, and every time you make a post on your site, you need to send out a tweet about it and you need to include the Twitter handles of the artists and labels and PR reps in your tweet.  It’ll get them to notice you and they’ll retweet your link and the people following them on twitter will start heading to your site.  If you don’t want to shoot the breeze on Twitter, fine, no problem, but create a Twitter feed for your site and use it.

There are probably other social media sites you could be using.  I only use the two just mentioned.  None of it could hurt, so avail yourself of as much of it as you can handle.  But at least do the Facebook and Twitter thing.

Also, since you’re just starting out, you might want to email the artist and/or label directly and say, hey, here’s a link to something nice I just wrote about your album.  Maybe include a 1-3 sentence introduction, but I’m not even sure you need to do that… not so long as you’ve got a decent About Me page on your site.  If people want to send you promo materials, they’ll jump all over finding out who you are.  Most of the time.  Actually, let’s take a brief detour…

(“Battle Mountain,” from Battle Mountain by Ben Flocks)

Don’t feel bad that I’ve never heard of you… I’ve never heard of myself, either.

This next bit of advice (I feel like I should put that word in quotes) is based on a trend I noticed over time in my site stats.  Every now and then I see a huge spike in site traffic, and it’s gotten to where I can almost guess which review of the past handful of weeks instigated it.  Usually it’s from an unknown (or relatively unknown) artist who either self-produced their album or put it out on an unknown (or relatively unknown) label.  They almost certainly live in middle of nowhere Norway or middle of nowhere Poland or middle of nowhere Italy or they live in Seattle.  They will typically be a younger musician (though not always) and they will be all up on all kinds of social media sites just to hang while also promoting their music.  And if they see some nice words about their album on your site, they will link to it and they will get the word out like mad on all of their social media pages, letting their fans and friends and family know that, hey, look at the nice thing this person (you) said about me.

You’ll also start getting promo materials from anyone who contributed to the album.  If a small label is involved, invariably you will begin receiving promo materials for everything they release.  You’ll start getting followers and subscribers and your site traffic will go up and Google will notice you more because people are linking to your site on social media sites.

I bring this up only by way of anecdotal evidence that, if you’re faced with ten different albums that you feel equally strong about and can’t decide which one to write about, you might want to invest a few minutes of your time checking out the artists’ social media presence.  If it’s an active one, then you might want to consider choosing an album that will get that traffic boost.  It’ll help you get noticed, but even long after that stops being a consideration, it’s still pretty cool to see that spike in traffic.  I don’t get too wrapped up in the stats (more on that later), but I always enjoy seeing people are getting to my site and checking out all the great music I spotlight.  It makes me feel like I’m accomplishing my mission statement of spreading the word about great music… much of it obscure.

And speaking of obscure, if you start out writing about ECM Records or Blue Note releases, you’re not likely to get noticed right away.  Everybody writes about those albums and they can cherry-pick the stuff that holds the most prestige.  That’s probably not you.  Think about writing about a few albums by artists who aren’t seriously well-known.  They’re more likely to appreciate getting some print and put in the leg-work to spread the word about it.

Just something to think about.

Just say no (thanks).

Let’s jump ahead.  People are learning about your site.  You are getting review requests from artists and label and reps.  You haven’t yet reached the level of requests to where there’s no possible way for you to get to it all.  For now, it’s just dribbling in a little at a time.  Resist the temptation to write about things that you don’t much care for out of fear that the music faucet will get shut off if you say ‘no thanks.’  There are more than a couple of us who have succumbed early to that fear and written up an album or two that didn’t exactly float our boat.  It may not have been an effusive recommendation, but it still got a slot that, otherwise, never should’ve received the time of day.  I can think of two columns on my site that fit that category (though there may be a third, now that I think upon it).  But after a couple, I learned to just say ‘no thanks.’  I mean, if I’m not writing about the music that I think is truly important, then what the hell am I doing here?

But there’s no doubt that those early stages of getting noticed and receiving promo materials, etc, can be almost dizzying… a kind of intoxication in the changes of status, and it can be easy to lose sight of what’s what.  Don’t let that happen to you.  Write about the stuff you want to write about and write it the way that you want it to read.

Conversely, if you’re an artist or label or a rep who is having trouble getting print on a particular album, go find someone new to the scene.  You can probably jostle them into writing something up before they wise up to the just say ‘no thanks’ advice.

(“A Journey Through Hope,” from Sad & Beautiful by Emler/Tchamitchian/Echampard)

Where are all of you people coming from?

So, site traffic and stats.  Depending on your theme and platform, there are going to be a number of different tracking methods and tools available to you.  Depending on how much you want to focus on this aspect will guide you to which tools to use.  I haven’t delved much into this, so I don’t have a lot of advice for you here.  I have one site that uses the Jetpack stat tool (a basic free WordPress plugin; way simple to install and use).  I have another site that uses Google Analytics.  It’s way better and more detailed and because I just never really got into my site stats, I almost never take the trouble to analyze it.

What I do enjoy seeing (and Jetpack takes care of this) are the sections that tell me where my visitors are coming from and where they’re going when they leave the site.  I like seeing how many people are finding my site via Facebook and Twitter and which artist and label sites are linking to my site and sending people over.  I especially like seeing when people leave my site and go to retail links to buy the album or when they go to artist sites I’ve linked to, to learn more about that artist and maybe see if they’re touring anywhere nearby.

The thing about site traffic… don’t get too emotionally invested in it.  In the beginning, you’ll probably be checking your stats daily.  It’s understandable.  You want to see if anybody out there knows you’re there.  But once you’ve been around for a little while and have established yourself, that’s where the danger of stats becomes more evident.  You’ll have gone through a period (or three) of burnout.  You’ll come to see how much of your time the site takes and how much like a real job that it is, and it’s easy to become bitter when you look at your stats and think, WHY DON’T THEY APPRECIATE ME MORE?!  This is when it’s good to have a well-honed sense of humor.  I laughed that moment off, had a stiff drink, and moved on with things.  You should consider a similar approach.  Substitute where necessary, but definitely get laughter in there somewhere.

The thing of it is, I do want to get high traffic numbers, because that means people are checking out the music that I think they should be hearing.  I love discovering great new music and I am extremely gratified when I’m able to help do the same for others.  And I want these artists to succeed, and if people are reading about them on my site, then that increases their chances.  But you just have to stay patient and keep plodding on.  I can’t remember where, but music writer Marc Myers talks about a tipping point, where the slow accumulation of followers/readers/Likers/etc that comprise the concept of site traffic suddenly reaches a peak and one new reader a day becomes a hundred a day and the traffic numbers reach a level where the actual number becomes irrelevant.  It kind of reminds me of how professional poker players talk about how once the chip stacks become so high, the concept of $750,000 in chips versus $2 million in chips is irrelevant.. they’re just chips.

I guess where I’m going with that is don’t get too wrapped up in site traffic.  It’s one thing if you get off on analyzing the numbers because that’s kind of your thing, but don’t let emotions creep into it.  That’s a toxic situation.

About that site traffic…

If you think, eventually, you’d like to get some custom advertising on your site, start thinking about it early.  I touched upon this briefly in last week’s column in the section about site design.  If you like the idea of a musician or label buying some ad space, like a banner image for a new album or a sidebar box offering a free download, consider early on how you want to make that happen.  Think about the types of advertising you want to offer, how you’d package it and how much to charge.  The last part is the touchiest of the topics, but you can get guidance based on what current sites are doing.  Many of them post what they’re charging and have nice PDFs about the different options.

The other stuff, just get out in front of that early.  I regret that I didn’t.  I’ve had several offers to advertise on my site, but because I didn’t plan it out early: can my theme fit advertising in and, if so, where?  What kind of packages do I want to offer?  What do I need to do to make those packages a reality?  Do I need to have my own Bandcamp or SoundCloud Pro account?

Because now, my site is pretty much how my site is going to be, and my time is pretty much dominated by just getting up new content… figuring out how to take on advertising requests just doesn’t get made a priority.  It’s something that I should have addressed back in the day, when I was first starting the site up and had more options and time available to me.

Oh, and if you do plan on having advertising on your site, you’ll want to find a statistics tool that gives you the most perspectives on your site traffic.  Advertisers are going to want to know that stuff.

Something to consider.  It’s not something of great importance to my site specifically, but I do regret not investing some brainstorming time on it back on Day One.

Okay, I think that about covers it.

I hope you find some of this helpful.  Doubtlessly, I’ll pick up a few new things along the way and return with another column.

Cheers.

So, you want to start a music blog… (Part I)

I’ve only been at this three years, which in terms of internet music blogs, that’s a pretty long time.  As far as figuring out how to best run an internet music blog… well, I’m not sure exactly how much time that takes, but I can tell you from experience that three years doesn’t get you far.

Here’s some things I regret not thinking of when I first began my site.  It will cover subjects of set-up, content structure and formatting, content organization, content frequency, social media, website traffic, advertising, promotional materials, artist/label/PR rep relationships, networking, time management and You.

I’m probably forgetting a couple of important topics.  Perhaps I’ll cover those in my “Year Four” article.  I’ll cover half of these items in Part I (today’s column) and Part II will publish next Sunday.

As always, I’ve embedded some of my favorite music from 2014 into the body of the column.

Let’s begin…

(“Night Potier,” from Love for Snail by Peter Rosendal)

The Set-Up

I’m going to assume that most of you will be going with a WordPress theme… either with an actual WordPress blog or on your own platform.  It’s a smart route to take and pretty much the entire universe is making the move to a WordPress environment.  There are a number of different themes you can use.  Some of them are free, others you have to pay for.  Here are some considerations to take into account when choosing your site’s “skeletal system.”

Think about what you want your site to look like.  Not from day one, but on Day 1,000.  Look way into the future and go with the assumption that all the crazy ideas and hopes you have for your site will come true.  Sketch out how your site will need to look and function in order to accommodate all of those crazy ideas and hopes.  What is the first thing you want readers to see when they walk through your site’s front door?  How do you want your content presented?  Do you want them to see the most recent article first or do you want them to see a table of contents?

What about the stuff that fits around the main content?  Do you want to be able to customize multiple columns will bells and whistles (ie, plug-ins and menus) or do you want it to be clean of clutter (“it’s all about the stories, man”)?  What about advertising?  Is there a way to feature advertisers with the WordPress theme you’re considering?  Does it allow you to add extra room to feature a banner image?  Are there one or multiple columns on the page and how many menus and plug-ins will it fit in case you want to add more functionality (or ad space)?  Brainstorm like mad.  Consider every angle.

Wander the internet and visit other music blogs.  Hell, visit non-music blogs.  Find some that have features that you’d like on your own site.  You might even choose the same theme as one of these sites.

A nice thing about these WordPress themes is that you can preview what your site will look like even after you’ve gone live.  Because let’s be real, unless you’re already super-famous, nobody other than your grandparents and (maybe) your spouse is going to visit your site in the first month of its existence.  If you’ve got a solid plan of what you want your site to look like and the characteristics and formatting you wish to incorporate into it, as long as you’ve got your WordPress theme choices whittled down to a small handful, you can just pick one, post your first couple of entries of content, and then just see how it all shakes out.  If suddenly you become unsure if you picked the right one, don’t worry, it’s no problem.  WordPress theme functionality allows you to go in and choose a different theme and preview it live… it will show you what those first, new posts will look like with different themes.  And if you like a different theme than the one you initially chose, it’s easy as pie to switch them out.

And it’s not like there’s a drop-dead date on when you can switch themes out.  But what I’ve discovered from experience is that once you get pretty deep into posting content with very specific formats, it gets a lot tougher to switch themes out.  On my own site, I like the clean, crisp design.  I’ve formatted my posts to fit that design.  When I poke around different themes and do a live preview, many of those posts lose their nice formatting and become a bit muddled and messy.  It would be an easy enough exercise to reformat a handful of them to fit the new theme, but as it stands, I’m three years into this site and that’s a whole lot of existing posts… there’s no way I could reformat all of that content to fit a new theme.  I’d have to let things stand as-is.  Now, some themes will mess with my existing formats more than others, but that right there limits my options on a new theme.  Just something to consider.  I regret I didn’t spend more time shopping around the different theme options after I was up and running a couple weeks in.  I might not have changed anything, and I do like my simple theme, but “simple” does tend to limit your options as you try to grow your site.

I don’t have any comment on free vs. pay themes.  I think it’s best to find the theme that is most likely to fit your plans for Day 1,000 and go with that, whether it’s no cost to you or you have to pay a little bit out of pocket to obtain that theme.  The best theme for Day 1,000 will save you lots and lots of time throughout the process of running your site, and you’ll come to learn that time is often a scarcer resource than cash, and one that you’d happily trade cash to obtain more of.

(“Shhh,” from One for Miles, One for Maynard by Reggie Watkins)

About that content…

Presentation is something to consider as you make your initial post.  Think about the sites you enjoy visiting (music or otherwise) and the layout of the their articles and columns and various other posts.  Think about the characteristics that make a post visually appealing to read and functional in use.  You want to enchant readers, and keep them on your site wanting more.  God, when I look back at some of my earliest posts, I can’t believe what a knucklehead I was.  I used to bludgeon my readers with embedded audio and scrunch up the text between them, poorly spaced and lacking any concept of flow or cadence.  It was one play button after the other, and I can’t imagine what the load times were like with all that embedded audio.  Over time, I’ve streamlined the way my posts look and operate and become more objective about the way in which I view them.  When you start to make your first posts, you’re likely going to get all types of gushing proud when they go up.  That’s okay, but not at the expense of an editorial eye.

It’s the kind of thing you’re going to tweak as you go along.  It’s not anything you have to get right from the first try, but it is something to be aware of.

Categories & Tagging

You’re going to want to organize your content to make it easier for readers to find what they want and to guide readers who aren’t sure what they want.  Simply putting a search engine box on your site isn’t enough, not nearly.  Most WordPress themes give you the option for two types of guiders… categories and tags.  Think of your site as a city.  In your city are storefronts, each representing a piece of content… columns, reviews, videos, etc.  Categories are the highways and streets of your City Site.  They are the standard routes that readers will take to navigate your content.  Tags, on the other hand, are the signs over the doors of every storefront.  Tags are the signifiers that will inspire your readers to walk through the storefront doors of the content that most interests them.

Keep the Categories simple.  You can build a hierarchy of Categories and Sub-Categories (for instance, Category = Reviews, Sub-Category = “2014 Reviews,” “2013 Reviews,” etc.  Or how about, Category = Opinion Pieces, with Sub-Categories of “Trends in Jazz,” “The Business of Art,” “Current Events,” etc.).  Don’t get too detailed with the Sub-Categories either.  The detail is what the Tags are for.  That’s where you want to offer an array of options, providing signposts that are traditional (Tag = “Sax Trio”) or imaginative (Tag = “Late-Night Music” or “Music from another planet” or “Seattle Jazz”).  Having those tags will help guide readers to content, including readers who know the kinds of things they’re looking for (via a search engine box) and those that don’t (with a drop-down list).

Go through your CDs.  Hold some of your favorites in your hand and think about the keywords you’d use to describe them or how you might organize them on your shelf.  Label, Artist Name, Sidemen, moods, local scenes, primary instruments, recording year…

Go to retail sites.  Think about how you might search for those albums.  Look at how albums are tagged on those sites.  Sites like CDBaby and Bandcamp give the ability to create customized tags to accompany established ones.  You can have “Jazz,” “Piano Jazz” and “Rainy Day Jazz” sitting out there as fishhooks trying to bait buyers to check out an album.  Browsing those sites and checking out some of the custom tags might give you some inspiration on how to organize them on your site.

If there’s one thing you’ll want to get right on the first try, it’s the Categories and Tags.  Brainstorm like mad and establish both sets.  You can always add categories and tags later, after your site is under way, but all of the previously posted content that those new tags and categories would be applicable to won’t be included in the new groups.  The only way to bring that content into the fold is by going back and adding those new tags to the old content one by one.  Believe me, you just won’t have the time or energy to do that, no matter how strong the inclination is.

I regret that I didn’t add more tags from the beginning, things like “mood” (ie, rainy day music) or “scene” (ie, “Seattle,” “Portugal,” etc… regional signifiers).  If I could do it all over again, I definitely would have spent more time in this area before flipping on the Open sign.

(“81%,” from Eno Supo by Estafest)

So, got any plans today?

Post something every day.  It’s an obvious thing to say, but it’s a task more formidable than you can possibly imagine.  You’re going to suffer from burnout.  You’re going to have things like, I dunno, life, interrupt your normal schedule.  You’re going to have stretches where you re-envision what you want your site to be.  Give yourself “outs” for those times when you need to post something, anything, as well as a way of fending off burnout.

I’ve got my These Are Videos That I Like series.  Look, I appreciate a good video and I think it’s a fun thing to post and I know readers enjoy them based on my stats, but the biggest upside for me is that they are way simple to construct.  It’s like an off-day for me.  I have a handful of them sitting in draft form, too, just waiting for a day when I need something at the last minute.  I have a couple album recommendation columns, too… ones that I’m not thrilled about the way I wrote them up and maybe don’t even consider the music sufficiently amazing that I’d normally post a recommendation for them on my site… but I liked the music well enough and was able to write something up on the fly, and I keep them in my back pocket in case I need something at the last minute.  It’s a nice thing to have available.  It’s particularly stressful to have to put a post together at the last minute.  Avoid that as much as possible.  Get out ahead on your schedule as much as possible.  Don’t ever back yourself into a corner where you’re having to create a post on the same day you want to publish it.  I’ve been there, and it sucks.  That’s the fastest way to get burned out.

And you don’t want your site to go dead, not even for a day.  Having new content every day keeps readers coming back day after day and gets them in the habit of visiting your site, almost to where it makes a person feel compelled to do it.  I know I do this with other sites, myself, where it’s just automatic that I visit those sites day in and day out.  New daily content is the way to make that happen and develop an avid readership.

(And let me take a moment to thank all of the people who visit my site; I do genuinely appreciate that you’re finding articles on Bird is the Worm that float your boat to the point where you keep returning for more).

So, plan out your schedule, make sure you have some categories of content that are easy to throw together, and post something every day.  If you get on a hot streak where you are writing your best stuff and it’s flowing out of your head and onto your computer screen with an amazing ease and fluidity, then milk that shit for as long as you can.  Exploit your hot streaks for all you’ve got.  Because, trust me, there will be opposite streaks where every word is flat and every thought is cliche and the very idea of listening to music (much less writing about it) is a total drag.  When you’re on, don’t let anything get in your way until that surge of productivity comes to its natural conclusion.

(“Que Horas Não São?” from Invento by Juliana Cortes)

I’m going to end Part I with the thing that, perhaps, you might want to address first…

Who Are You?

This one is a bit abstract, but it’s the most essential question you can answer before you start your blog.  The thing is, you might not figure it out right away.  Don’t let this one hang you up, but always let it stew in the back of your head, because, ultimately, it will be the piece that allows everything else to fall into place.  The best way I can explain Who Are You? is by talking about Me.

I’m not a music writer.  As it turns out, I never was.  I’m a novelist.  I write fiction novels.  That’s a far cry from being a music reviewer or critic or columnist.  In the beginning, I was a bad music writer.  I was trying to find my voice.  I mean, I was pretty good with the 3-5 sentences of pithiness and humor for my eMusic/Wondering Sound Jazz Picks column, but for my own site, where I was looking to expand on those ideas, well, I was pretty bad in the beginning.

Don’t get discouraged if you are, too.  Some things you just have to work at, and doing it in a live setting tends to speed up the learning curve.

Three years later, and I think I’ve gotten better.  Every now and then, I write a great piece.  Sometimes I knock one out of the park.  When I suffer from burnout, sometimes my stuff is pretty bad.  But after three years of perseverance and hard work, I’ve developed into something of a middling music writer.  This does not disappoint me.  What I found sort of discouraging, though, was that I may have reached my ceiling.  My redemption (in my own eyes) was that I read the writing on that ceiling.  What it said was… “Who Are You?”

Once I answered that question, everything changed.

I’m not a music writer.  I’m not a reviewer.  I’m not a columnist.  I’m not a critic.  My value to the jazz scene, the value I provide my readers is The Pursuit.  Back in the day, there was somebody on the AllAboutJazz forum (I believe it was the person with the handle “Robmid”) who called me a bloodhound.  He was referring to my ability to track down the great new releases, no matter how obscure they were.  And he was right!  I am a bloodhound.

Once I accepted that I was more tastemaker than journalist, writing for my site became easier.  It’s also changing things up.  What you are going to find as things progress on Bird is the Worm is that my columns will become shorter, and my analysis of albums will drop precipitously.  I am going to recommend albums.  I am going to write a little bit about them, just to give readers a sense of what’s what.  If there’s some backstory that I think is interesting or relevant, I’ll include that.  As always, there will be some embedded audio and some links to artist, label and retail sites.  But that’s gonna be about it.  Hopefully I will gain the reputation and trust to where I don’t have to say much more than, “Hey, this is something you should take for a spin,” and that will be enough for readers to hit the play button on the audio and follow a link or two to discover more about the recording while the music plays.  Every now and then I’ll write a long-form piece, and I’m sure there will always be albums that will receive write-ups that verge on 1,000 words.  But for the most part, from here on out, I’m going for brevity (this column excluded).  I’m thinking 250-300 words is enough to state my case.

Who Am I? is a question you should answer before you begin your music blog and it’s a question you should pose every so often for as long as you keep the thing running.

I hope you find some of that helpful.

Part II will post next Sunday.

Cheers.