Boards
Is there such a thing as "too many reviews"? / Future of DiS
Hello
So, this has been touched upon by Brainlove and a few others in this thread today on the social board http://www.drownedinsound.com/articles/3743968 and many other times over the years. Is less more and should less mean more of our balls on the line?
My personal feeling is that trying to be comprehensive and offer an opinion on everything dilutes what a site (this site) could and should be. Plus the internet itself is a limitless entity which can be many things to many people. I'd like the half a million people who come to this site each month to end each month knowing about and loving something they would never had done otherwise. This frustration is probably what led to me starting the label.
On the one hand, music reviews have lost a lot of their purpose in an age when people can listen before they buy, rather than get an opinion on them before they consider buying to hear them (it's a cultural shift a young generation will never know and a lot has been lost in the process). On t'other, with the doors flung open, there's more music available than ever before and more need for journalists / people-with-the-time-and-attuned-taste to weed out the best bits. I think this is what Stereogum and various mp3 blogs do well and simply enthuse about what they love.
My quandary, whilst pondering the future of DiS (as always happens when a redesign and rethink is on the horizon), is should we focus on covering less and enthusing about more that we love? Are frontpages like popmatters.com and pitchfork overwhelming for all but a diehard read-everything day-in-day-out audience? And would you prefer just to chatter here about everything and anything and leave us to offer opinions on notable releases, digest the rest and tip you off on good bits that we've found? Would you be that bothered if some albums (i.e. not the more notable things like Beasties, Beirut, Battles, Beck, etc) were covered in round-ups like the singles column, possibly even with bits under a vague genre/flavour umbrella by people who know their shiiiizzle? Do these boards themselves act as more of filter of what's good than the opinion of a few people with varying tastes?
It's a tough one and I'd be really curious what you all would like and hate. Mike and Me disagree about this quite a bit, so a decision is far from being made. I'd love to find a happy balance. All suggestions and thoughts welcome.
Look forward to hearing your thoughts,
Sean
Founder, DrownedinSound.com
p.s. as of today you can now get highlights of DiS and other behind the scenes bits'n'bobs via twitter http://twitter.com/drownedinsound