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5 Ways To Improve Your Music Blog In 2016

The new year is about to begin and right now you’re more than likely staring at a barren inbox praying some pitch or announcement rolls through to give you an excuse to post something before the ball drops. We tried to warn you about the holiday slowdown, but every year without fail there is a large outcry from hungry bloggers in search of something worth sharing with their readers, and after the year most sites experienced it’s not hard to understand why. 2015 found many beginning to question the role of music blogs, as they have year after year since the initial boom of social media, but the last twelve months were particularly bad because of how many sites – both old and new – could not find the funding needed to keep their journalistic endeavors afloat. The lack of money in music writing has been a problem for over a decade at this point, but things seemed to come to some sort of head as fall gave way to a warmer than usual winter.

With all this in mind, we believe 2016 is going to be an important year for the world of music blogs. Whether your site is old or new, everyone attempting to make their mark online is going to have to rethink the way they operate, and that extends from editors all the way to the smallest contributors. Simply creating timely content is no longer enough to bring in hits, and even if it were those hits are probably nowhere near large enough to generate the kind of income needed to cover operational costs. There is more to running a successful online publication than simply being able to keep your site online, but all too often that is the most great content producers can hope to accomplish, and that is heartbreaking shame. We cannot provide you with anymore income than what you’re making from writing right now, but if you follows these tips in the new year we do believe your work in journalism will continue to thrive.

Focus on quality over quantity (AKA Death to copypasta)

We lost the ability to keep track of just how many pitches were hitting our inbox in 2015. The amount of bands being promoted by smart publicists who now how to write a good email has long surpassed the blogging industry’s ability to cover everything, but things seemed to be a little more out of control than usual as of late. Still, not a day went by that we didn’t see writer after writer copying and pasting every press release they could to create what they call ‘news’ posts on their individual sites. While we’re sure the publicists behind these mailings appreciate the support, this content has next to know journalistic value and rarely, if ever, contributes to a site’s overall traffic in a meaningful way. You can rest assured that if you’re taking the easy route of copy/paste that atlas a dozen other sites will do the same, and if you’re all running the same headline with the exact same information contained in each post then why should anyone bother to visit your particular site?

Make 2016 is the year of original content. Cover the news that matters to your audience (which you can decipher by learning to follow analytics), but focus the majority of your time on crafting content that cannot be found anywhere else online. It doesn’t matter if the final result is short or long, just make it yours. The artists we love earn our admiration for doing something that no one else can replicate and the same reasoning extends to the sites we frequent. Your blog should be a unique music destination, and that begins with quality original content.

Sources. Sources. Sources. (AKA Don’t be a dick)

Most the bloggers I speak with on a regular basis share their concerns over never being credited for the work they do. They don’t expect to get paid, or at least not at first, but whenever someone manages to learn a tasty exclusive through an interview or intelligent research they realize most, if not all sites who run the headline after them will not link to their original article. This is especially frustrating for small sites, as they rely the most on word of mouth to grow, and even if they have the best writers online there is no way they can scale their operation without people giving a damn about their existence.

The only way any site will be able to develop a real readership in 2016 will be if writers learn to respect and give credit to their peers. If you cover an exclusive someone else broke, make sure to give them credit. Doing so not only makes you look more professional, but it sends a message to another writer that you appreciate their hustle. That can of respect can go a long way toward developing both the brand of your site, as well as your personal efforts in music. It’s no more difficult than treating others the way you want to be treated, but you would be surprised how few have adopted this idea up to this point.

Leverage emerging technology

Twitter and Instagram takeovers were everywhere in music blogging over the last year, but with live broadcast services like Periscope becoming commonplace it’s time for blogs to think more creatively about their social media based exclusives. Live broadcast offers users a very unique way to interact with their musical heroes in real time, but right now very few outlets have adopted these services in their coverage of the industry. This will change in time however, and anyone hoping to stay ahead of the curve would be wise to begin planning their use of these platforms now.

For example, when covering festivals in 2016 it’s not hard to imagine blogs of all sizes running brief interviews or acoustic performances that air only on live broadcast networks. Likewise, we believe artist Q&As will be very popular on these services. The ability to not only see, but interact with talent in real time is something no other platform can offer. Artists don’t necessarily need blogs to use these tools, but through collaborations they (and you) can reach a new audience.

Innovative Brand Development

It’s hard to imagine many angles for digital features that haven’t been covered, so heading into the new year the sites that hope to develop their connection with readers will need to break the mold with their outreach. While it can be tempting to rely on the internet for everything you do and need, we suggest thinking of what can be done in the real world (otherwise known as ‘offline’) to help grow your site.

Two old school example of this that still have a lot of value are hosting or sponsoring local shows and releasing site-generated compilations. These efforts promote your site’s dedication to helping aspiring artists further their careers, as well as showcase your personal taste in music. The people who come to events you sponsor or host will see your name and align your site with the style of music being played. The same concept extends to the compilation, which tells listeners they can find more music like that featured on the track list on your outlet. If people feel strongly for the music they may learn to feel strongly for your writing, as the success of one can aide the success of the other.

Don’t Shy Away From Honesty

The one thing that cannot be taught to someone trying to navigate the waters of early music writing is that the quickest path to longterm success is found through accepting yourself for who you are as a person and a consumer of music. The reason this cannot be taught is because no one who has yet to embrace their true selves can force such a change to take place on command. It must happen naturally, and any writer trying to force their true selves onto paper or a blog post will only become frustrated at how unoriginal their words sound. Like all great art, great music writing comes from a pure place that worries not about clicks or finances. The best music writers, or perhaps I should say the best writers in general, are those who are unabashedly themselves in everything they do. They share with readers personal details both big and small that make their work, no matter how strange the subject, more relatable to consumers. That accessibility is what will convert blog visitors to dedicated readers, and it’s what will give readers a reason to tell their friends about your work.

James Shotwell is the Marketing Coordinator for Haulix. He is also a professional entertainment critic, covering both film and music, as well as the co-founder of Antique Records. Feel free to tell him you love or hate the article above by connecting with him on Twitter. Bonus points if you introduce yourself by sharing your favorite Simpsons character.

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Journalism Tips: Overcoming The Holiday Slowdown (AKA Stop Worrying About Traffic)

Christmas is just days away at this point, and as a music news writer you have no doubt noticed a major drop in the number of press releases and pitches hitting your inbox. Many PR firms, as well as many record labels, take off the last few weeks of the year, if not longer. It is a long-standing corporate tradition that is both a gift and a curse to blog owners, and so far this year seems no different. On the one hand, you have less emails to keep up with and far more time to relax. That said, the lack of breaking news almost always means a dip in traffic, which is the kind of thing that keeps most serious editors awake at night.

Though this certainly won’t prevent you from worrying about the longterm impact from the drop in traffic try reminding yourself when things get slow that these dips impact virtually everyone in music journalism. Culturally speaking, there is very little emphasis placed on entertainment news and the tour plans of emerging musicians around this time. We as Americans are conditioned to view the time immediately before Christmas, as well as the days leading into the new year, as something intended for family gatherings, get togethers with old friends, and generally strengthening the bonds within their individual communities. People are not reading your review the new album from Before Their Eyes because they do not care, but rather because they have been trained through years of advertising, lessons from parents, and countless other avenues to focus more attention on themselves and their immediate surroundings. You are likely the exact same way, even if you don’t notice it. The only difference between you and them is that you understand what it is like to rely on the number of unique clicks given to any one site or page in order to make it through the day without hating yourself.

I wish I could say that the holiday dip gets easier to handle with each passing year, but sometimes I believe the opposite may be true. When you first start out, the importance of day to day traffic is not as big as, say, how you perform over an entire month. You are happy that anyone is reading your work at all, or at least you should be, so dips come and go without much thought given to the reason for their occurrence. As you begin to build your professional profile however, the frustration you feel towards negative changes in traffic only continues to build. It is at that point that traffic becomes a true addiction for most bloggers, outpacing alcohol and prescription pills in the rate at which they can make or break a person’s day. You begin relying on numbers to justify your work rather than the feeling of accomplishment writing about music well typically provides. When that happens, and it hits almost everyone who finds the smallest bit of success, it is hard to not feel like the world is telling you they no longer care. You feel as if you are a hobby, or maybe even something less, and that the vast majority of internet users would be perfectly fine living life whether or not your site ever existed.

Of course, this is all big and lofty stuff that holds little real weight, but in the mind of a creative person trying to use their voice to share their vision or perspective of the world around them it can feel like a 10-ton boulder weighing on their shoulders all day long. The dip inn traffic sets off an internal struggle between the belief one is doing what they were put on this planet to do and the horrifying notion they may have chased a fruitless hobby to the point of no return. This is admittedly a selfish thought, but that is the way the mind works for many writers. They feel every change in traffic directly correlates to something that was first birthed in the deepest canals of their brain. Every success is because of them, but so is every failure, and allowing themselves to believe that is true can often worsen an already fragile sense of self worth. Writers typically believe they are good, even if they won’t admit it to others, but it is a lot easier to believe with data. When data says differently, that initial blind faith is hard to maintain.

My battles with the holiday traffic dip have been epic since day one. Like many young writers, I believed the easiest way to create more traffic was to have more posts. More content would equate to more unique readers, at least in my inexperienced mind, so I would spend long hours writing about artists – many of whom I did not even care for – who had for new or even recent updates that we had previously not run. I was a news madman, but for all my effort the results were typically about the same. A day with twenty articles and a day with forty articles would only be separated by about 500 uniques, which made the value of those extra twenty posts incredibly small. Ever worse, I knew how much time with family and those I love had been sacrificed in order for them to be created. I was losing on all fronts and feeling even worse about myself than I had just knowing the dip existed.

Two years ago, things started to change, but certainly not as fast as I might have hoped. Instead of driving myself insane by sacrificing large amounts of time for content that very few people would enjoy, regardless of that content’s quality, I decided to use the holiday slowdown as an opportunity to plan the year ahead. Admittedly I did not plan as well as I might have liked, but for the first time in over half a decade of blogging I had found an outlet for my frustrations that allowed me to constructively combat my own demons, as well as the drop in uniques, all while focusing on the one hobby/job/passion/interest I have carried the last decade of my life. It was not perfect by any means, but it was more productive and beneficial than any of my previous late December breakdowns, and I am hoping to improve upon those efforts in the weeks ahead while I set to planning what this blog will do in the new year.

When we started the month of December I had no plans to write this article, as we wrote a similar entry last year, but as I noticed students posting about final exams winding down and saw numerous friends begin complaining about traffic I had a change of heart. I saw myself in those were frustrated, and I wanted to reach out in hopes of easing their worried minds. Let me tell you right now that anyone thinking that the dip they see in traffic around this time is a direct result of something they did is wrong, and that perspective is coming from someone who has spent many holidays being hard on themselves for not producing stronger traffic during Christmas Break. You are worth more than you know, and so is the work you are doing to promote the art and artists you love. That is true whether or not your analytics surpasses your expectations, and it always will be as long as you do not allow yourself to get lost in data. You didn’t start writing to become obsessed with who is or is not reading you work, so don’t let it distract you now. Be the best writer you can possibly be and the rest will follow.

Believe me, young writers, when I tell you that the world has not forgotten about you. The audience you have built remains dedicated, your work remains consistent, and the support you have from the rest of the blogging community is as strong as it has ever been. Instead of letting the holiday slowdown throw you and your emotions for a loop, accept that traffic dips and focus your efforts on creating a more productive new year. Don’t waste time with stories no one will read or social media efforts that will find only minimal traction and look to the future. Build a content calendar, draft requests for 2016 album releases, apply to SXSW, and/or something else altogether. Whatever you do – stay positive. The world is not ending and your talent is not going unnoticed. People simply have other priorities right now, and in less than two weeks things will return more or less to normal. Just breathe.

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How I Left Alternative Music Behind And Fell In Love With Hip-Hop

The following post was submitted to Haulix by Michael Giegerich, a universally respected hip-hop critic whose origins in music began in the world of punk and alternative rock. We asked Michael if he would shed some light on his transition between genres, and fortunately for us he was more than willing to share his adventures here on our blog. Enjoy.

One of my fondest childhood memories goes something like this: riding shotgun in my dad’s car on a sunny afternoon in 2005, Mike Jones’ “Back Then” was coursing through the speakers. The track was inescapable on Atlanta’s 95.5 The Beat and MTV alike, but at this moment, how many times I’d previously heard the single didn’t matter. Maybe it was due to the contagious levels of confidence in Jones’ flow, or maybe it was the blustering, record-scratching beat, but one thing was certain: I wasn’t just casually enjoying “Back Then” – it made me feel alive.

An average kid from the suburbs, I spent the bulk of my teenage years invested in metal and hardcore music, dragging my mom to shows and spending every last cent to my name on edgy band tees. Eventually, armed with nothing but a Tumblr blog and an audio recorder at the age of 15, I converted this passion into words – a lot of words, in fact. Over the next four years, I poured my heart and soul into covering the bands whose stages I dove from and CDs I wore thin; in tandem, my writing skills and industry relationships grew.

As the story goes, though, my love for the genres I once valued so highly began to wither upon my sophomore year in college; a natural conclusion to a phase that some may say lived past its shelf-life. Coincidentally, a severe bout of depression almost stole my life soon after, and in the process, my love for music and writing was robbed entirely. The next six months found me spiraling downward as I searched for anything that would make me feel whole again; changing majors, scenery, and medication, all routes that proved fruitless. I eventually smashed into rock bottom after it became clear nothing could break my fall, but in those depths, some much needed self-reflection led to finding the common denominator of happiness in my life: hip-hop.

I had actively kept up with more than a handful of rappers for years, sure. Hell, I even reviewed my fair share of rap records and was more knowledgeable on the genre than most in my social circle. Yet, for the first time, I consciously realized the pure, unadulterated joy it gave me. Whether it involved getting buck to Rae Sremmurd’s pop-infused Atlanta trap at my university’s spring concert or throwing back lukewarm beers to Danny Brown’s unmistakable squaw in my dorm room – much like that sunny afternoon in 2005 – the weight on my shoulders dissipated. Upon this realization, I slowly but surely picked up writing again while devoting myself to understanding as much as humanly possible about the music that had given me so much. I began examining hip-hop projects with a fine-toothed comb, reading every feature related to the genre I could find, and most importantly, reminding myself everyday of how fortunate I was to receive this chance at redemption.

Seven months later, it’s almost overwhelming to see how much has changed. My mind is sharper than ever, my appreciation for hip-hop is expanding exponentially, and recently, I conducted what is undeniably the most notable interview of my career to date. In truth, though, I’m not satisfied just yet. As hip-hop once pushed me to find inner peace, the inescapable work ethic of the genre now pushes me to perfect my writing skills and not lose sight of the promising road ahead. There’s a long way to go, but throughout the journey, one simple fact will remain constant: hip-hop saved my life.

So here’s to you, hip-hop. Here’s to you and whatever the future may bring. 

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NOVEMBER WRITING CHALLENGE: Abandon Your Comfort Genre

This may be hard to believe, but the Haulix blog is now two and a half years old. We have interviewed hundreds of professionals in that time, and that is in addition to publishing more than two-hundred different advice columns on everything from booking tours to launching a music blog. We feel we have accomplished a lot in our brief digital life, but the one thing we haven’t done is attempt to engage our readers with a contest related to the written word. That is, until today.

November is the month blog editor James Shotwell celebrates his birthday, and when we asked what he wanted most in the world James replied that he simply wanted something good to read. We couldn’t agree more, so for our inaugural writing challenge we’re keeping the rules incredibly simple. All you have to do, and this goes for anyone who wants to participate, is step outside your genre comfort zone and review something you would normally not take time to cover. If you write about metal, find time this month to cover a new pop or hip-hop release. If you love pop, consider spinning the new albums from Handguns or A Great Big World. Heck, you could even cover the new Tim McGraw album, just as long as it’s not something you would typically make time to cover.

Write your best review and submit your finished piece to james@haulix.com, along with a link to other review you have written. We will confirm your submission, adding it to others we receive, and at the end of November one writer will be chosen as the winner. There will be a prize, but for now we are keeping the contents a mystery. We will mail the winner something however, so don’t go expecting the prize to be something stupid like ‘a feeling of accomplishment.’ We like good prizes, so we give good prizes.

Why are we doing this?

Good question.

The simple answer is: We can. The better answer is that after spending the better part of a decade living and breathing music writing we have seen countless talented people fall victim to being unable to write outside their comfort zone. Writers make themselves believe they are only capable of covering one or two genres of music, often tied to their personal taste, and never take it upon themselves to expand their horizons. We feel being able to write about a wide variety of music is key to success in the journalism industry today, so we created this challenge to encourage others to try something new.

All submissions are due by Sunday, November 29.

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Blogger Spotlight: Joshua Hammond (Mother Church Pew)

2015 has been a transformative year for the music blogging community. Sites big and small have been falling apart while the lack of paying positions continues to shrink. Everyone has a drive to succeed and the passion needed to create great content, but people can only chase a dream for so long before they need some kind of return for their effort. We have highlighted a number of influential voices who have chosen to walk away from the sites and columns that first gave them a name in music, and to be honest we can’t blame a single one for their decision. Music writing is, and will likely forever continue to be, a cutthroat corner of the entertainment industry.

Joshua Hammond has appeared on the Haulix blog before. He spent several years running a site of his own before deciding to walk away and start freelance writing for a variety of sites he had no ownership stake in whatsoever. From there, Josh transitioned into the world of music PR as a member of the Reybee publicity team, which gave him a full time position in the entertainment world he never expected to hold. That said, the move was one Josh needed, if only to have enough time away from writing to find the passion to start over again.

Recently, Josh decided to return to blogging by launching a new site dedicated to the world of folk and americana. Mother Church Pew, which launched in the last few weeks, is Josh’s first attempt at running a site of his own in half a decade. Such a move struck me as curious, so last week I had a conversation with Josh about his motivations for returning to music writing, as well as his goals for the new site. You can find highlights from our conversation below.

H: To help us begin, please tell everyone a little about your history in music writing. This isn’t your first time tackling the journalism side of the industry.

J: Roughly 100 years ago in industry time, I started an indie blog in Kansas City called Popwreckoning. It was more of a hobby than anything, but it built a pretty decent following and was getting somewhere between 7,000 and 10,000 reads a day by the time I left. I ended up leaving it behind to find homes at Under The Gun, The Deli, Property of Zack, Diffuser and High Voltage (to name a few.)

H: The last site you ran, PopWreckoning, lead a long life online. What initially lead you to step away from site leadership, and what was it that inspired your recent return?

J: PopWreckoning and I had a very complicated relationship towards the end of its life. In reality, life got in the way in a mental capacity. I was working on the site when both my grandfather and my mother (unexpectedly) passed away. So there was some guilt attached to that I guess. It made it hard to keep going I guess? So I opted to walk away and do something new rather than stick around a place with a black cloud hovering above it, even if it was my baby.

H: You have also spent time contributing to various sites you have no ownership stake in at all. What would you say you gained from those experiences that you might not have found when running a site of your own?

J: I find that freelancing I have more of an opportunity to express my voice. I always found that at Popwreckoning I was stuck behind the scenes working on the editorial side of things. The spreadsheeting and assigning. When I’m writing for someone else I can just speak.

H: Let’s take a step back and talking about writing in a more general sense. When did you first realize you had a passion for the written word?

J: It sounds extremely silly, but I can remember be a really young child (4 or 5 years old) and writing stories at home. I always had a passion for creating things with words. I can’t really remember a time when I didn’t want to write.

H: Do you attribute your interest in writing to anyone or anything?

J: My grandmother use to read to me when I was younger. She would also push me to read the words myself and retell the story as I would have written it. I believe that my love of words probably comes from that.

H: Back to the world of music, you’ve spent the last few years working in the world of publicity. Having worked on both sides of the journalism fence, what has doing PR taught you about music blogging?

J: I think if anything it has taught me to look for unique angles. Everyone who writes can give an opinion. I’ve learned that music journalism is far bigger than my perspective on anything. It is about finding the story that one one is telling and pushing it out into the world. It has made me look for the most interesting bits of stories in a way I guess.

H: Are there any common/frequent mistakes you see sites make when dealing with PR you can pass on?

J: I think that the most common mistake I see being made is that writers on the smallest level of blogging are not open to working with the smaller bands. Everyone is looking for the quick hit and biggest name. Frankly I find that boring. There is so much music out there that people are overlooking, but you have to dig and search for it. I think there is something special about being the person finding a band to love rather than recycling the bands that everyone already loves. I’d rather read a site where I’m going to learn something new any day of the week.

H: Now onto your new effort, Mother Church Pew. What’s the story behind the name?

J: The name comes from the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. It is referred to as “The Mother Church of Country Music” in the Americana circles. You walk in to this extremely old room in Nashville, where literally EVERYONE who matters has played and you can feel the history of the room. The venue is set up like a old church and there are these very worn and beat up pews that fill the room. When I saw that I was really taken by the fact that people had sat in these seats and watched Cash and Elvis and countless others play. I wanted to play tribute to that concept because it is as Americana as it comes.

H: What type of content will we find on the site, and how often are you going to be updating it?

J: We’re leaning very folk, americana and roots on the site. We’re trying to very modern in our coverage in a hype machine kind of way, providing lots out interactive parts where you can listen to music as you read. I think that’s important today in a world where streaming has become so vital.

H: You’ve already ran some great content. What has it been like re-entering the world of blogging?

J: It has been hard. I’m often swamped with publicity stuff, so writing has had to be done on my own time. I’m lucky to have a great partner in Susan Hubbard, who also runs a little blog in Nashville, East of 8th. She bails me out a lot when I’m overwhelmed.

H: Do you have any goals for the site, or for yourself through the site?

J: Really I’m doing this for the music. I missed the part of discovery when I was running PopWreckoning. I always loved digging through emails to find a new band that kicked me in the face emotionally. So I guess the goal in this is to rediscover that part of me that I had lost when I walked away.

H: You told me in our email exchange that you’ve been planning what to run in the future. How far out does your content calendar stretch? Do you feel that kind of planning is key to success, or just sanity?

J: I have things planned through about the second week in October right now in terms of album reviews. Schedules always change and things always pop up, but there are blueprints.

H: Are you looking for more contributors? If so, how can people get in touch?

J: We’re happy to take a little help here and there if someone has something they’re really passionate about, but for the most part we’re keeping the site simple and between Susan and I. I can be emailed at joshua@motherchurchpew.com

H: Looking ahead to the future, where is Josh Hammond in five years?

J: Honestly, I’ll be 40. I’m hoping to be living in a cute house in Nashville and hopefully still be part of the game.

H: Thinking even more longterm, do you feel music is your home at this point? Do you see yourself exploring careers that lie outside the entertainment industry?

J: I 100 percent feel at home in music. I worked extremely hard to get here and I can’t see myself being happy doing anything else.

H: I think that is all I have for now. before I let you go, is there anything else you would like to mention?

J: Everyone should listen to the amazing trio of guys bursting out of the Oklahoma music scene right now; Parker Millsap, John Moreland and John Fulbright. Amazing things happening in that scene right now. It is definitely worth paying attention to.  

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Journalism Tips: How To Know When It’s Time To Say Goodbye

The alternative music scene was rocked over the weekend by the news popular music blog PropertyOfZack will cease operations at some point in the coming days. This marks the end of the site’s six-year existence, which saw it flourish from an unknown Tumblr entity into one of the most recognized alternative music blogs in the world. During that time, founder Zack Zarrillo and his team of contributors broke major stories, introduced the world to bands who would later captivate the entire scene, and somehow found a way to make an entire new generation of music news readers appreciate well-written editorials. Things were not always easy, but the site found a way to continue on. That is, until now.

Writing to readers of the site in the post that announced plans to end POZ’s run, Zarrillo explained his decision by stating:

“My life is in a period of deep change and instead of risking integrity, happiness, or feeling guilt – I would rather PropertyOfZack say goodbye the right way. Timing is everything, after all. I haven’t looked at our traffic in many months, but I appreciate the dedicated daily, weekly, or monthly readers of the site now more than ever. I’d rather bid you a proper farewell than a lackluster finale. Burn out, not fade away.”

I see a variation of that quote, “it’s better to burn out than to fade away,” at least once a month. Most who use it probably don’t realize it was made famous in Kurt Cobain’s suicide note, and even less probably know that its origin is actually from the song “My My, Hey Hey” by Neil Young. It’s rumored that Young based the line off president Millard Fillmore’s famous quote, “It’s better to wear out than rust out,” but that rumor has never really been confirmed or denied. The point is, many people have used this sentiment to represent many different types of change throughout time. In the case of Kurt Cobain, it seems he believed his life were better ended on his own terms than by the slow process of decay the rest of us endure day in and day out until we expire. For Zack, the phrase means something else altogether.

I actually spoke with Zack just before the news of POZ’s end was made public. When I asked him to explain his decision making process to me, he summarized his thoughts and feelings by simply stating that it ‘felt right.’ He told me he had learned a long time ago to listen to himself and what his heart or mind was trying to say. Sometimes he fought those notions, but when he did he often found his body was right all along. He even fought himself over closing POZ before now, and in that instance he convinced himself it were better if the site lived. This time however, he knew fighting himself would be the wrong move. The time had come to say goodbye, and it was up to him to find the strength within himself to make the knowledge of that fact public.

All this discussion lead me to ask myself when I might step away. I’ve certainly had the thought cross my mind that my time could be better spent doing something that actually provided me with income or really any form of sustenance. While others my age have spent years developing a skill for a particular career I’ve been blogging about bands, many of whom don’t even know I exist, and attending an untold number of shows. This isn’t to say I haven’t had my fair share of fun, because I certainly have, but I have also noticed the way many of my peers seem to have gotten a bit further along with so-called adulthood than myself. Sometimes I wonder if that’s a good or bad thing. Maybe the fact I’m able to stay firmly planted within youth culture through my writing is a good thing. Maybe it’s keeping me young while everyone else my age has begun to transform into the lame, mostly middle-class parents they will eventually become. I can’t really tell you either way, but I can say the internal debate is ongoing.

Several people have approached me in the past week and asked me about my thoughts regarding Zack’s decision, and to each I typically reply that I cannot speak for Zack. My experience in writing has always been a personal one. The reason I started was because something inside was telling me I needed to do so, and I expect there are many writers working today who would say something similar if the question of why they began was asked of them. To write, or at least to write well, you have to give something of yourself to your readers. You have to sacrifice your time and leverage your abilities without any idea whether or not anyone else will care what happens as a result. You might write the greatest book known to man or you might spend your life churning our listicles that are forgotten almost as quickly as they are consumed. As long as you’re content with your position, or as long as you’re working to better yourself, the opinions of others should not matter. Others cannot give you success. They cannot fill that void inside that you believe writing will help cure. That is your responsibility and yours alone, so the same can be said for the decision to walk away.

The best advice that can be offered to anyone questioning whether or not they should remain in music writing is urging that person to listen to heart. That may sound corny to the nihilists and pessimists among us, but it’s the absolute truth. You know you better than anyone could hope to, even if you don’t always believe that fact, and only you can determine when is the right time to walk away from music journalism. If you feel there is more work to be done or something that simply must be said, then do whatever you must to satisfy that itch. On the other hand, if something tells you it’s time to move on, then move on. After all, you can always return.

James Shotwell is the Marketing Coordinator for Haulix. He is also a professional entertainment critic, covering both film and music, as well as the co-founder of Antique Records. Feel free to tell him you love or hate the article above by connecting with him on Twitter. Bonus points if you introduce yourself by sharing your favorite Simpsons character.

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Never Underestimate The Power Of Bad Songs

We’ve all heard the expression that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to truly master any craft, and in this post we’re going to examine why writing 10,000 bad songs will have the same effect on your songwriting.

If you read our previous post on writer’s block you’ll recall that one of the top tips for strengthening your mind is making a commitment to write each and every day regardless of your actual desire to create. Fighting through the resistance of not ‘feeling it’ or otherwise not being in the mood to make something out of nothing trains your brain over time to let the creative juices flow more freely, but anyone who actually creates for a living knows this is a task far easier said than done. Even if you can get to a point where you write every day, it can be incredibly hard for creative people to be okay with something they make being ‘ok,’ mediocre, or even flat-out terrible. Creative types believe they have great art waiting to get out of their mind, but bad songs can appear to speak to the opposite being the case.

Here’s a hard truth: You need to write a lot of bad songs, or at the very least you need to write a lot of songs and see them through to completion regardless of whether or not they are bad because it’s the only way you can begin to understand the recipe for proficient songwriting. There are a few lucky souls who simply have a knack for crafting catchy songs, but the vast majority of artists only have an idea of what good music is, and they spend their entire career trying to fully grasp that concept without taking the time to explore the pros and cons of their theory. Writing constantly will allow you to better understand your own tendencies as a songwriter, and through examining the bad songs you can begin to sort out the elements of your style that you do not like.

Bad songs are not actually bad, they’re simply stepping stones toward the next great song that must be overcome if you’re ever going to evolve as an artist. We’ve all known groups who found a sound that worked for them and stuck with it as long as there were people willing to support them. While there is certainly nothing wrong with this approach, it does not bode well for your career trajectory. Change keeps people interested in your music and it keeps you challenged as a musician, but if you want to change you’re going to encounter bad songs along the way. Realizing they exist to help strengthen your career and not harm it will only aide your development, so embrace the mediocrity and whatever you do – KEEP WRITING.

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Journalism Tips: If You Want To Write About Music You Should Absolutely Write About Music

The past month has been a weird one for me. After just over seven years of running my own music blog I was faced with the question of whether or not to continue, and it wasn’t brought about by anything I did. Several years ago I sold my site to a media company in exchange for hosting, a larger chunk of ad revenue, and a general backbone of support to aide whenever a problem should arise. The relationship was never what I thought it would be, but it did take care of the costs associated with running a website (hosting fees, etc).

To make a long story short because 1) it’s not all that important to this post, and 2) I’m still not sure what I can legally discuss at length, the company is cutting back the number of properties they own and I am being given my site back, in full, free of charge. This is great news with respect to my desire as the site’s creator to also be the one who decides how, when, and/or if it dies, but it also created a problem as I had not been planning to begin paying out of pocket to continue running the site. I always assumed I would when my contract ended (if it ever did, and if I got my site back when that happened), but actually having to face the reality of taking on yet another bill was something I had to think long and hard about. For the first time in over half a decade I had to make a conscious decision whether or not I wanted to continue running a site had long surpassed its original goal of simply aiding me in meeting people who could potentially point me in the direction of places looking to hire within the music business.

If you listen to the Haulix podcast, Inside Music, then you may have heard our most recent episode with former music writer Chris Harris. After nearly two decades in music writing Chris recently decided to walk away from everything after coming to the realization he has more or less wasted numerous years of his life pursuing a time consuming passion that was yielding little to nothing in the form of financial gain. He never set out to write strictly for profit, of course, but there is a big difference between writing about music while in high school or college and writing about music when you also have to juggle a full time job (or multiple part-time roles) alongside other real world, post-college obligations.

I should be clear: Chris’ breaking point came not from simply contributing to music sites, but from running his own site. You see, writing is just the tip of the iceberg when you’re the guy who calls himself ‘editor.’ There is new writer recruitment, pitches to be fielded, industry contacts to be made, events to attend, content to plan, social networks to establish, and a number of additional things that must be done in order to ever develop something that may in some small way possess the ability to either 1) become financially successful, or 2) become popular. (Preferably both.)

What we don’t say enough in the podcast, and what I sincerely want to stress today is that you should absolutely, 100% write about music if it is something you feel called to do. If you have even a slight interest in trying it just for fun you should give it a chance. If you just need something to change up the repetition of daily life, you should close your browser, bust out some paper (real paper), and lay some pen to it as soon as possible. You could type it instead, but why not go all in?

What you should think twice about is launching your own music blog. I know I’ve written about this before, but the purpose of this post is different. This isn’t about the horrors of running a blog, but rather the joy of committing yourself fully to writing. If you really want to change the world through your work it will be accomplished much faster if you pen something of quality that garners exposure on the largest networks available today. Who runs it should matter little in your mind as long as the words you wrote appear as you intended.

More importantly, focusing solely on writing gives you more room to develop quality material without the distractions of ‘building a new digital empire.’ Don’t stress about how many followers your recently-purchased URL has reading its automatically posted headlines, or how many of your friends from high school are still cool enough to ‘Like’ a budding music publication on Facebook (hint: Not the ones with kids), and instead dedicate the vast majority of your time to better understanding, describing, and discussing the music and artists you claim to want to share with the world. There, and only there, can you find the kind of longterm satisfaction so many blog owners yearn to find while duking it out with other, equally young blogs for exclusive premiere from bands with only slightly larger or smaller followings than the site(s) looking for their content.

If you want to be a writer, be a writer. You don’t need a site of your own in order to achieve that goal. If you begin writing and find a demand for your work to have its own hub, then maybe you should consider launching a site. Most people, and in hindsight I should be included in this group myself, don’t really need their own site. All they and you need is to work as much as possible to further refine their craft. Keep working, keep creating, and keep distributing your content. In time, if you continue to push yourself to be the best you can possibly be, there will be others who recognize your hustle and want to help you succeed. All it takes is a lot of hard work and patience, both of which I believe you are capable of finding within yourself.

So please, write. If you have even the slightest notion that maybe writing is for you, or if you just want to share your thoughts on the last band that changed your life, write. Don’t let me or anyone else stop you.

James Shotwell is the Marketing Coordinator for Haulix. He is also a professional entertainment critic, covering both film and music, as well as the co-founder of Antique Records. Feel free to tell him you love or hate the article above by connecting with him on Twitter. Bonus points if you introduce yourself by sharing your favorite Simpsons character.

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33 Unusual Tips to Being a Better Writer

Hey there, everyone! Over the weekend we fell in love with a post on Medium from writer James Altucher. As with everything on the internet, we were neither the first nor last to discover the page in question, but it was a rewarding find for us nonetheless. As much as we like to pretend we know a lot about writing, we are always excited to learn tips and tricks from others in our field. Altucher has prepared a great set of guidelines to better creativity, and we thought it was something we absolutely had to share with you. Enjoy.

Back in college, Sanket and I would hang out in bars and try to talk to women but I was horrible at it. Nobody would talk to me for more than thirty seconds and every woman would laugh at all his jokes for what seemed like hours. Even decades later I think they are still laughing at his jokes. One time he turned to me, “the girls are getting bored when you talk. Your stories go on too long. From now on, you need to leave out every other sentence when you tell a story.” We were both undergrads in Computer Science. I haven’t seen him since but that’s the most important writing (and communicating) advice I ever got.

33 other tips to be a better writer.

– Write whatever you want. Then take out the first paragraph and last paragraph. Here’s the funny thing about this rule. It’s sort of like knowing the future. You still can’t change it. In other words, even if you know this rule and write the article, the article will still be better if you take out the first paragraph and the last paragraph.

– Take a huge bowel movement every day. And you won’t see that on any other list on how to be a better writer. If your body doesn’t flow then your brain won’t flow. Eat more fruit if you have to.

– Bleed in the first line. We’re all human. A computer can win Jeopardy but still not write a novel. You want people to relate to you, then you have to be human. Penelope Trunk started a post a few weeks ago: “I smashed a lamp over my head. There was blood everywhere. And glass. And I took a picture.” That’s real bleeding. My wife recently put up a post where the first line was so painful she had to take it down. Too many people were crying.

– Don’t ask for permission. In other words, never say “in my opinion” (or worse “IMHO”). We know it’s your opinion. You’re writing it.

– Write a lot. I spent the entire 90s writing bad fiction. 5 bad novels. Dozens of bad stories. But I learned to handle massive rejection. And how to put two words together. In my head, I won the pulitzer prize. But in my hand, over 100 rejection letters.

– Read a lot. You can’t write without first reading. A lot. When I was writing five bad novels in a row I would read all day long whenever I wasn’t writing (I had a job as a programmer, which I would do for about five minutes a day because my programs all worked and I just had to “maintain” them). I read everything I could get my hands on.

– Read before you write. Before I write every day I spend 30-60 minutes reading high quality short stories poetry, or essays. Books by Denis Johnson, Miranda July, David Foster Wallace, Ariel Leve, William Vollmann, Raymond Carver, etc. All of the writers are in the top 1/1000 of 1% of writers. It has to be at that level or else it won’t lift up your writing at all.

– Coffee. I go through three cups at least before I even begin to write. No coffee, no creativity.

– Break the laws of physics. There’s no time in text. Nothing has to go in order. Don’t make it nonsense. But don’t be beholden to the laws of physics.Advice I Want to Tell My Daughters is an example.

– Be Honest. Tell people the stuff they all think but nobody ever says. Some people will be angry you let out the secret. But most people will be grateful. Else you aren’t delivering value. Be the little boy in the Emperor Wears No Clothes. If you can’t do this, don’t write.

– Don’t Hurt Anyone. This goes against the above rule. But I never like to hurt people. And I don’t respect people who get pageviews by breaking this rule. Don’t be a bad guy. Was Buddha a Bad Father? addresses this.

– Don’t be afraid of what people think. For each single person you worry about, deduct 1% in quality from your writing. Everyone has deductions. I have to deduct about 10% right off the top. Maybe there’s 10 people I’m worried about. Some of them are evil people. Some of them are people I just don’t want to offend. So my writing is only about 90% of what it could be. But I think most people write at about 20% of what it could be. Believe it or not, clients, customers, friends, family, will love you more if you are honest with them. So we all have our boundaries. But try this: for the next ten things you write, tell people something that nobody knows about you.

– Be opinionated. Most people I know have strong opinions about at least one or two things. Write about those. Nobody cares about all the things you don’t have strong opinions on. Barry Ritholz told me the other day he doesn’t start writing until he’s angry about something. That’s one approach. Barry and I have had some great writing fights because sometimes we’ve been angry at each other.

– Have a shocking title. I blew it the other day. I wanted to title this piece: “How I torture women” but I settled for “I’m guilty of torture”. I wimped out. But I have some other fun ones. Like “is it bad I wanted my first kid to be aborted” (which the famous Howard Lindzon cautioned me against). Don’t forget that you are competing against a trillion other pieces of content out there. So you need a title to draw people in. Else you lose.

– Steal. I don’t quite mean it literally. But if you know a topic gets pageviews (and you aren’t hurting anyone) than steal it, no matter who’s written about it or how many times you’ve written about it before. “How I Screwed Yasser Arafat out of $2mm” was able to nicely piggyback off of how amazingly popular Yasser Arafat is.

– Make people cry. If you’ve ever been in love, you know how to cry. Bring readers to that moment when they were a child, and all of life was in front of them, except for that one bittersweet moment when everything began to change. If only that one moment could’ve lasted forever. Please let me go back in time right now to that moment. But now it’s gone.

– Relate to people. The past decade has totally sucked. For everyone. The country has been in post-traumatic stress syndrome since 9/11 and 2008 only made it worse. I’ve gone broke a few times during the decade, had a divorce, lost friendships, and have only survived (barely) by being persistent and knowing I had two kids to take care of, and loneliness to fight. Nobody’s perfect. We’re all trying. Show people how you are trying and struggling. Nobody expects you to be a superhero.

– Time heals all wounds. Everyone has experiences they don’t want to write about. But with enough time, its ok. My New Year’s Resolution of 1995 is pretty embarrassing. But whatever. Its 16 years ago.. The longer back you go, the less you have to worry about what people think.

– Risk. Notice that almost all of these rules are about where the boundaries are. Most people play it too safe. When you are really risking something and the reader senses that (and they WILL sense it), then you know you are in good territory. If you aren’t risking something, then I’m moving on. I know I’m on the right track if after I post something someone tweets, “OMFG”.

– Be funny. You can be all of the above and be funny at the same time. When I went to India I was brutalized by my first few yoga classes (actually every yoga class). And I was intimidated by everyone around me. They were like yoga superheroes and I felt like a fraud around them. So I cried, and hopefully people laughed. It was also a case where I didn’t have to dig into my past but I had an experience that was happening to me right then. How do you be funny? First rule of funny: ugly people are funny. I’m naturally ugly so its easy. Make yourself as ugly as possible. Nobody wants to read that you are beautiful and doing great in life.

– The last line needs to go BOOM! . Your article is meaningless unless the last line KILLS. Read the book of short stories “Jesus’ Son” by Denis Johnson. It’s the only way to learn how to do a last line. The last line should take you all the way back to the first line and then “BOOM!”

– Use a lot of periods. Forget commas and semicolons. A period makes people pause. Your sentences should be strong enough that you want people to pause and think about it. This will also make your sentences shorter. Short sentences are good.

– Write every day. This is a must. Writing is spiritual practice. You are diving inside of yourself and cleaning out the toxins. If you don’t do it every day, you lose the ability. If you do it every day, then slowly you find out where all the toxins are. And the cleaning can begin.

– Write with the same voice you talk in. You’ve spent your whole life learning how to communicate with that voice. Why change it when you communicate with text?

– Deliver value with every sentence. Even on a tweet or Facebook status update. Deliver poetry and value with ever word. Else, be quiet. (And, of course, follow me on twitter for more examples)

– Take what everyone thinks and explore the opposite. Don’t disagree just to disagree. But explore. Turn the world upside down. Guess what? There are people living in China. Plenty of times you’ll find value where nobody else did.

– Have lots of ideas. I discuss this in “How to be the Luckiest Man Alive” in the Daily Practice section. Your idea muscle atrophies within days if you don’t exercise it. Then what do you do? You need to exercise it every day until it hurts. Else no ideas.

– Sleep eight hours a day. Go to sleep before 9pm at least 4 days a week. And stretch while taking deep breaths before you write. We supposedly use only 5% of our brain. You need to use 6% at least to write better than everyone else. So make sure your brain is getting as much healthy oxygen as possible. Too many people waste valuable writing or resting time by chattering until all hours of the night.

– Don’t write if you’re upset at someone. Then the person you are upset at becomes your audience. You want to love and flirt with your audience so they can love you back.

– Use “said” instead of any other word. Don’t use “he suggested” or “he bellowed”. Just “he said.” We’ll figure it out if he suggested something.

– Paint. Or draw. Keep exercising other creative muscles.

– Let it sleep. Whatever you are working on, sleep on it. Then wake up, stretch, coffee, read, and look again. Rewrite. Take out every other sentence.

– Then take out every other sentence again. Or something like that.

Sanket didn’t want to go to grad school after we graduated. He had another plan. Lets go to Thailand, he said. And become monks in a Buddhist monastery for a year. We can date Thai women whenever we aren’t begging for food, he said. It will be great and we’ll get life experience.

It sounded good to me.

But then he got accepted to the University of Wisconsin and got a PhD. Now he lives in India and works for Oracle. And as for me, I don’t know what the hell happened to me.

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A Tip For Creating Original Content Around Valentine’s Day

Hey there, everyone! Glad to see you found time in your busy schedule to spend a few minutes browsing our blog. The feature you are about to enjoy was written with music bloggers in mind, but its message can be applied to anyone hoping to make a big impact with web traffic around the month’s biggest holiday.

This blog exists to promote the future of the music industry, and to do that we need input from people like you and your music-loving friends. If you have any questions about the content in this article, or if you have an artist you would like to see featured on this blog, please contact james@haulix.com and share your thoughts. We can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.

It’s officially the month of February, which means we have less than two weeks until the most despised, commercial, and shallow holiday of all time is upon us. Yes, Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, and if you’re a blogger worth their weight in digital text then you’ve already begun brainstorming content you can run around the world’s biggest Hallmark holiday. If you haven’t thought to begin planning yet, you might want to, but before you do that you should read the rest of this post.

Having been writing about alternative music for over half a decade at this point, I’ve grown accustomed to seeing a flood of similar content make its way through my feeds every time the second week of February rolls around. Be it lists of the best and/or worst love songs of all time, or a collection of the most romantic moments in certain films, it seems everyone in pop culture writing believes the best way to reach readers is through regurgitated list ideas that offer one or two variations, if that, from every other list found online. I don’t entirely disagree, but I do think we are all doing a disservice to our readers by settling for the first few ideas that come to mind. We all know Whitney Houston sang what is arguably the most romantic love song of all time, and we also know that no one will ever top J. Geils’ anthem for the heartbroken. We also know that Jesse Lacey wrote quite a few songs in the early years of Brand New that may or may not have been his own version of a love song. All of this has been listed, debated, and covered to death. It still gets traffic, but so does sharing the number one clip on YouTube on any given day. If you’re okay with easy traffic, fine, but if you want to create exciting content then you need to think a bit more outside the box.

I’m not putting down listicles, and I sure as hell don’t want to make you believe that discussing the songs that do or do not evoke a sense of romance is stupid. It’s not. These conversations have been had throughout the history of pop culture, and as far as I can tell they will continue for as long as there are multiple artists creating art simultaneously. We all engage with art in our own way, and we all find the songs that mean something special to us for reasons entirely our own. We might relate to the romantic anthems played on the radio, but tracks like “My Heart Will Go On” and “Tiny Dancer” are rarely the songs that hit closest to home. They’re thematic staples, and as such they elicit a similar reaction from almost everyone who hears them. They’re safe, at least to an extent, and in my opinion covering them is rather boring. There is something to be said for giving people what they want, but there is a lot more to be said for someone who tries to give people something they don’t know they need. That’s what great writing does, and as crazy as it sounds Valentine’s Day is the perfect time to forge real connections with your readers through original content.

Why is now such a prime time to connect with your audience? The answer is actually quite simple: Love.

You see, we all have an idea of what love is and we go through lives trying our best to find someone that we believe compliments that idea best, but at the end of the day the numerous way we as a culture define love is almost too varied to measure. Some see it as co-dependency, while other see it as giving all of yourself in the name of another’s happiness. Still others see the whole thing as a marketing scam, built by corporations and engrained into society at large through massive marketing schemes. I’m not here to say whether any of those ideas are right or wrong, but I am here to encourage you to share you idea of love, regardless of what its definition may be. People everywhere wonder through life asking themselves if they truly understand what it means to love or to be loved, and it’s only through sharing our own thoughts and experiences that we as a global community will be able to really grasp its meaning. That’s not to say your content will change the world if you’re simply being yourself, but it might change someone’s perspective on life, and if you can do that there really is no limit to your capabilities as a writer.

Let me give you an example: Last year, my friend Dan Bogosian wrote a wonderful piece for Consequence Of Sound about his relationship with Saves The Day, as well as the person responsible for introducing him to the band’s sound. It’s a great piece filled with emotional ups and downs that I must encourage everyone to read, but if you don’t have time I’ll summarize by saying that Dan’s experience with the music of Saves The Day has taught him not only a greater appreciation for life, but also for his relationships with others. Through reading his words, I too found a new appreciation for the people in my life. I was carried back to the times when friends both close and long since forgotten introduced me to music and films that would go on to change my life. I thought of the people I thanked and the ones I did not, the ways we grew apart, and the impact distance can have on even the closest of friends.

I wasn’t present for Dan’s experiences with his friend or his times seeing Saves The Day live, but reading his words it’s impossible to ignore his love of both. As he struggles to understand why things change over time, he touches on universal concerns we all share about our relationship with those around us, and in doing so he forges a connection with us. We too know those feelings, though not because of the exact same circumstances, and learning how someone else got through those times influences the way he live moving forward.

When you’re planning and hopefully drafting Valentine’s Day content this week, think of the experiences and memories in your life that taught you lessons about love. Find the songs that set the perfect mood for that first kiss you’ll never forget, as well as the album that helped you forget the lover who couldn’t be trusted. Reflect on all of this and choose the stories you’re most comfortable with sharing, then proceed to write until you cannot write any more. Pour yourself into these pieces, letting readers know why you do or do not believe in love and the music that helps cement your belief. If you can do that, people will respond. They might not comment at first, but they will carry your words and thoughts with them. They may spin the same songs, or they may relate to the situation being described and think of songs they know that fit the mood even better. Whatever the case, they will connect with you, and forging that connection is the first step towards creating a lasting and rewarding relationship with your audience.

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