Rafi is one of the smartest y snarkiest people I know.
So I when I saw his comments on the Musictank blog about blogs, community and the long tail I knew that I when I had some time I would want to blog about it.

The post titled Barking up the Wrong Chart on Musicthinktank.com is about the changes in the music industry, low album sales, artist websites vs. media channel sites.

The author, Bruce Warila’s main contentions are that,

Artist sites just fall flat when it comes to delivering the value that makes a website popular.

A limited selection of songs, a few videos, a pile of images, a schedule and some blog posts are not going to cut the mustard.

To begin with, ten major artists, thirty to forty mid-level artists, and fifty up-and-coming artists on the same site can deliver additional and expanded value that standalone artist sites cannot.

A multi-artist site can go far beyond the this-site-informs-me and the this-site-entertains-me-for-more-than-ten-minutes value propositions. As someone that has been working in software for twenty years and tracking this industry for the last five, this seems like one of the best places to begin.

Rafi’s left comments in the comments section which stated that:

I think it’s a mistake to think artist online initiatives are failing if they’re not putting up the numbers of the most popular websites. Let’s face it… traffic and page views are flawed metrics that don’t tell a story of mindshare captured or potential revenue. If you can use your website/facebook page/mailing list to speak to those inclined to support/fund/evangelize your efforts, that is a success.

Also, although I love that ?uestlove quote about the power of being part of a movement, i think it’s basically just as unlikely for a collection of artists functioning as a single website to become a trafficked destination as it is for a single artist.

Immediately as I heard him talk, in the comments section about blogs, community and site traffic as being a poor indicator of blog “value” I knew that he was on to something.

I also realized that Rafi, Mark Zuckerberg (of Facebook) and I understand something that Bruce may not, which is that the “value” in a site is not the content perse but in the community that comes there, and the information that they share.

Facebook is useful to advertisers because of the information that WE share is sold to advertisers for the purposes of marketing to us.

An independent music artist can cultivate his or her fan base using the information that fans share on an artist blog.

Kev Brown and LMNO are on tour right now promoting Selective Hearing 2 , and I stay checking Kev’s blog for new tracks because I have wanted that album since February. #ummhmm. Fans check sites because they want to support and DO support.

When Rafi says, “traffic and page views are flawed metrics that don’t tell a story of mindshare captured or potential revenue. If you can use your website/facebook page/mailing list to speak to those inclined to support/fund/evangelize your efforts, that is a success” my antenna went up.

In many ways I think Rafi is right about the tension between page views and building community. Blogging for me is about building community for my ideas, having a space to work out scholarly thoughts, and having a space to discuss issues with people who are interested in similar things.

Three weeks ago I was at a conference on Black Feminism and a big time Feminist, Cheryl Clarke, shouted my blog out.? I was honored, but now people (colleagues) are asking me about the blog and its a little bugged because this has been a space that has grown organically.? I don’t tell people I just met that I blog. Its my space. Pepe also pointed out that most people are taught to “brand” themselves so that they are constantly talking about what they are doing, communities they are apart of. I don’t. And learning how to claim my writing voice has been a process and a challenge. However, later on that night at our post conference dinner, I spoke with the editor of the Feminist Press about blogging, about how I don’t have ad’s on my blog, and what it means to cultivate such a space. I see my blog as playing a role in facilitating these kinds of conversations.

I don’t write ONLY to be affirmed. MANY folks do NOT agree with me. AND THEY TELL ME. ON A REGULAR BASIS.

MANY.
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But they take the time to comment and that means a lot, because it allows for a much richer discussion. It also shows me that I have written something compelling enough to get someone to take 15 minutes out of their day to read and respond to, and this is meaningful.

I also pride myself on having a blog that serves as a safe space for men and women, to talk about race, gender, sexuality and patriarchy.

Furthermore, in the end, when I do publish a book of blog posts and essays, the people first group of people that I would market this work to ARE blog readers and folks on twitter who have said that they have enjoyed my writing.

Ultimately, the issue is whether you want to have slow money and take the time to build a community, OR if you want have the greatest number of page hits possible, for the purposes of having ad dough, because you want to be acquired by a corporation.

Rafi nails this when he says,

And I don’t only think of ad models. Quite the opposite. You’re the one judging sites based on if they generate a ton of traffic. If you’re chasing all the traffic you can get on your site, that means you’re probably aiming to please advertisers more so than your audience.

He then goes on to discuss the success of Okay Player and the importance of community when he says,

What drove OkayPlayer’s success was the community. And to quote the above post it’s “not the content silly” OKP filled a major void for people who were looking for a site that reflected their identity – a hugely popular genre / culture that wasn’t being repped online.

Sure, it’s creation was brilliant. And sure we can learn from it. But to think that anything close to that level of success can be achieved without similarly fortuitous circumstances (timing, gaping market void, fame) is nuts.

When talking about the purpose of artist blogs vs. aggregators he says,

When traffic is the game, the aggregator always wins. Ask the myriad of passer-throughs if OkayPlayer did so much for them and I think you will find different answers. How much did Pharoahe Monch or deadprez benefit from being part of the OkayPlayer collective?

And in many ways the crux of the contradiction lies at the pursuit of ad dough and the pursuit of community.

This notion of upping page views can be inversely related to building community became clear on my blog when people complained about not having a scroll bar that allowed them to scroll between new posts quickly. I was reminded that readers need to have control over how and when the access the post. And if they don’t they may not read, and definitely will not comment.

Adding the scroll mechanism has correlated to comments from people who recently stumbled upon the blog and have stated they they were really moved by what they read. Today, that it a measure of success for moi.

Questions for @rafikam and the rest of us who care about independent artists online and their careers, as well.

What happens to music blogs when bloggers are more concerned with pleasing advertisers then their blog community?

Isn’t this the same thing that happened to music magazines?

Will the fact that “suits” are beholden to the bottom line, and don’t get building community, perpetually marry them to page views as a metric?

Where is the music blog for alternative (rock + Boombap + hip hop) cats that HAS community, new material daily, and is more beholden to artists + their fans than a corporation and ain’t misogynistic as shit?

Do you go to Okayplayer? If so why?

Rafi has also written about page views not being the best metric in the post “Whats that Blog Post Worth” about hip hop blogs and blog post “value.”