As CMJ Week Approaches, Bloggers Prepare To Destroy Hundreds Of Bands

Next week is the CMJ Music Marathon, the annual festival where a bazillion indie bands come together to either make their names or cement their hype, and a New York Times preview makes this year look more hype-filled than ever before, with more bands, more panels, more attendees, and definitely more bloggers. (And yes, Idolator will be attending.) In fact, blogging and “blog bands” and the Internet in general have been slowly changing the way CMJ operates for some time, with industry folks claiming it’s “more about networking and building awareness and community” these days. And bloggers have also brought a blog’s press cycle, giving CMJ more potential than ever before to build up a band’s dreams only to have a fickle audience dash them months (or even weeks) later:

For people in the industry, attending is “due diligence,” said Amrit Singh, the associate editor in chief at the Stereogum.com music blog. Mr. Singh, who expects to see more than 100 bands, considers it a way for everybody to catch up. “If you play a really good set and the right people are in attendance, the Internet ends up being this hall of mirrors,” exponentially expanding the buzz, he said. “And with so much of the music industry moving to a model where live music is going to be a revenue source, and possibly an exclusive revenue source, people will look at that.”

Not that the signs have been great for the majority of bands actually parlaying blog attention into a “career” that lasts longer than a college semester. Especially given that there’s no direct corollary between blog attention and increased attendance at a band’s live shows, with some claiming that this shift to touring-as-main-revenue-stream is already burning itself out.

If thousands of bands really are flying in from all over the world to get caught in the Internet “hall of mirrors,” they might have been better off spending their travel money on new equipment rather than in letting a bunch of bloggers dangle the carrot of a few thousand promo MP3 downloads followed by no one giving a shit come SXSW time. But even if the blog explosion has allowed a lot more CMJ attendees to play minature king-maker, like most music festivals, especially one as press-focused as CMJ, 90% of the draw is still making the scene:

That indie-rock collegial attitude may be the driving force for CMJ attendees. “It’s really festive,” Mr. Singh said, “and it can be suffocatingly cool.”

Emphasis should probably be on the “suffocatingly.”

Looking For Buzz, Amplified In New York [New York Times]