We (I) Are On Vacation

Hi there. Just a quick note to let you know that the Palebear staff (all 1 of us currently) is going to be taking an extended hiatus until the new year. Yes, that is 2007 for those keeping track of such millenia. During this time, you can expect no new reviews - although depending on whether we happen to be in the “office” at the time, there may be some new material being put up. Sporadically. Maybe.

Ok, that’s all most of you need to read. Stop now, go and create more indie music. ETC.

However, for those of you interested (or for those who have a few minutes to waste (or for those of you who like listening to complaints (sorry for the multiple parentheses programmer’s habit))), here is a semi-diatribe of sorts:

Ok, here we go… first, I know that this is a bit strange to read this kind of entry in what seems a straight-up serious music “publication”. Well, get used to it from now on since I may be planning on taking this website in a new direction. In other words, Palebear may shortly become more of a personal blog.

You see. Palebear Reviews and Resources originally came about as an offshoot of the Shmat Records label which enjoyed a lot of success reviewing nearly everything sent in for almost 2 years. It was fun - for awhile. And then it got out of hand, with billions of indie kids sending homemade CD-Rs or begging us to check out their web sites. Yeah, at least they were actual web sites back then - now it’s all MyDisgrace pages. But I won’t get into THAT. I also need to mention that the review part of Shmat was a home-rolled PHP MySQL monstrosity that was difficult to control and administer. It was before the advent of easy-to-manage content systems like blogging platforms. I won’t get into THAT either.

Anyhow, we (me, basically) decided to separate the two parts so that Shmat Records would be the record label part and Palebear would be the review part. I had the Palebear domain since 1998 and used it as my own personal web site previously.

There was a general frustration that the “writing reviews” part was taking an inordinate amount of time. If you write a music review site or blog, you know what I mean. So we thought Palebear could be a fresh new start with a pseudo-blog look and feel and perhaps some extra helpful articles for indie musicians. Simple, right? Easy to handle and fun to update, right?

Unfortunately, we underestimated the huge impact that music blogging would have. We were quickly inundated with at least 3 times as many CDs as before. To add to the problem, early on we had decided to allow people to “submit” links to their MP3 files as an alternative to sending in a CD. We thought we might be helping out w/ postage. We (me) often have ideas like this that end up becoming huge liabilities or time-wastage vortices.

Ugh… who could have predicted that MySpace would make it so easy for 10 times as many bedroom bands to put their music up on the web. Good for indie music in general right? Level the playing field? Ironically, pre-MySpace the general quality of music from websites we received for review was much, much higher. Sort of like, you had to pay some dues or at least be half serious about the music. What about the Community you say? Let me tell you where you can shove your community…

I’m getting off track. I said I wouldn’t talk about MyDisgrace, but it just seems to rankle me. Sorry. I’ll talk about the real issue:

Palebear is a currently a music pseudo-blog with a lower to mid level range of popularity. We’re more popular than your average blogspot, but less popular than say Stereogum, My Old Kentucky Blog and Sixeyes. We get some freebee promos, some quite decent, from music promotional companies. But most of the major indies (Matador, Merge, etc.) snub us with a smile.

The reviews were originally started up with the intention of helping out indie musicians… this was more true on Shmat, but the same thing applied here at Palebear. It was pure good will. Remember what I said about good-will ideas becoming enormous black hole time suckage vortices? Yeshhhh. We knew what it was like to be a tiny band and send your CD to countless of music sites and to have NONE of them review it. This is before the big music review blogging bust-out, mind you. It was TOUGH. We resolved to try and help out fellow indies by reviewing their CDs or CD-Rs, especially since we knew a bit about indie music from buying so many friggin’ CDs.

We expected nothing in return… and that’s exactly what we got.

Nothing but a huge suckage of time. I have to say this was the case for me personally; I don’t want to speak for the large number of music reviewers that have passed through the door.

But seriously - we got nothing.

Also, somewhere along the line any external reviewers were jettisoned due to other committments, lack of interest, etc. So now you can multiply the Nothing by about 3-4 times.

In retrospect, you can easily say, “Well, then that’s your fault and you should have known.” And you’d be mostly right. We didn’t plan to get anything other than a few free indie CDs in return. But what we (I) didn’t bank on is the immense psychological drain it is to have 50 people a week send you their “LIFE’S WORK MAN” along with handwritten letters (in crayon, occasionally!) beseeching you to give them a chance (much worse when we were at Shmat… then it was a chance to actually RELEASE their music) and to have to THROW THEIR CDs away. That’s right, we often had to throw these people’s masterpieces in the trash.

And there are just so many CDs coming in, MANY actually that are worthy of review. You might also say that I’m a bit overly sensitive (and idealistic) about these things and that perhaps I care too much about helping some of these people out.

You’d be right. Stuff like this bothers me more than it should. I know you can’t help everyone without destroying yourself.

Also: I’m not a natural writer. I can write a decent indie music review, but it takes a lot out of me to do so. That’s yet another avenue of destruction of my enjoyment of indie music. It really sometimes takes the enjoyment out of an undiscovered indie CD to have to write about it. I know - a bit weird.

But anyhow, that’s the problem with being a mid-level Music Review Blog. For the high-end Bitchfork (Pitchfork) type sites, you’re going to attract advertising, moola, etc. as an incentive to keep your review staff churning out copy, and of COURSE you need to have some sort of filters in place. No one expects you to review EVERYONE or pay attention to all CDs sent in. (I wonder how many Bitchfork actually throws away, 100s? 1000s?)

For the average bottom feeder personal music blog sites, a similar thing is true. It’s YOUR blog so you can do whatever you want. You don’t have to keep your received packages for review (if any) in order so you know which ones you have to review next. You’re pretty much free to do whatever. If you make a few pennies from people buying stuff on Amazon, you’re insanely happy.

Mid-level music blogs have it the worst. You’re under pressure to produce reviews because you’ve got such a nice little review site that everyone respects, but you don’t have too many options for monetizing all your hard work. Small wonder so many mid level review sites either quit the game within a few years… or become a Bitchfork.

This is sort of the root of the problem. In the beginning, reviewing was NOT a chore. Earlier, I’d been simply happy to spend 3-4 hours a day listening to these CD-Rs. Then when it started to become more of a job, well, raise your hands how many of you work day in and day out at a job you’ve grown to become tired of? Ok, now what if you weren’t paid at all? What if, for example, you had to flip burgers at McDonald’s for free for 2 years? What if your only “income” was the pyschological satisfaction of serving the customer? And what if that customer kept coming in every few months with a new order for a different hamburger that you couldn’t fulfill? Would you quit? Hot DAMN you would!

I’m exaggerated hugely here. But that’s the general crux of the matter - I slowly began to get into the frame of mind of needing to make it worth my while. When music reviewing started to become more of a chore than fun, I expected to be able to counter-balance this “un-fun” with some sort of income.

Big Mistake-o. To date, the various affiliate programs including Itunes and Amazon have really produced zilch as far as revenue goes. We’ve tried selling banner ads with a bit of success. However, the cost of upkeeping them and dealing with the clients nearly wipes out the modest amount charged. And to justify your client’s ads, you need to get even more traffic by writing even MORE reviews. A vicious cycle.

To make matters worse, I didn’t have a real job (still don’t) after getting laid off from **unamed large Japanese corporation** so there pretty much wasn’t any income AT ALL. It’s easier to come home and work on your pet music project when you don’t have to worry so much about whether or not you’ll have to “skip” X-mas gifts for your cousins this year. I’m sure I’d feel much more symphathetic toward the 300+ CD packages waiting in the closet to be reviewed, if I wasn’t so concerned about making the damn rent. OK, I’m exaggerating again.

This negative vibe surfaced in me - I started to resent all these people I didn’t know expecting me to listen and pay attention to THEM. All they had to do was throw a CD-R in a box and put a buck postage on it. I had to read their bio, listen to the music, come up with a clever review angle, get the graphics, links, etc, and publish it. One down - 315 to go.

But anyway, this is pretty much the current problem. It was a mistake to expect to earn compensation for running any sort of music blog. After all, there are tons of college kids who write awesome reviews of indie music for absolutely nothing. To that, however, I have to say let’s wait until you get out of college, Yale-boy. Then we’ll see how long your website lasts.

Sorry, I don’t mean to get so negative or cynical about indie music. Thanks for listening. Basically, everything I’ve complained about is my fault directly or indirectly. “It’s not you, it’s me.” I should have come up with a better plan to become a Bitchfork, or I should have cared less about the millions of bands looking for a review. I don’t know why I get so worked up about reviews… who cares anyhow if we don’t review a particular CD? They’ll just send it to any of the thousands of other music blogs out there.

But since it’s not so fun to shoulder the responsibility of a mid-level professional type music blog, I gotta do something. I can’t continue with trying to review everything. This isn’t something that can be worked out in just one simple post. So, I’m going to just end this complaint / diatribe with the admonition that I’m going to change SOMETHING with the site. I might just post reviews less often and only when I feel like it. That’s a given. I’ll probably put some sort of warning on the contact page if so. I might turn Palebear into more of a personal type of site. I don’t have a regular personal blog, so that might be an interesting idea.

One thing I know for sure. I would like to stop thinking of this site in terms of having to make a profit. That pyschological pressure is just not good for my health.

I think I need to lighten up. It’s only rock and roll.

See you in 2007.

by Palebear