It’s almost CMJ week in NYC. There’s a lot to navigate, officially and unofficially, on both sides of the bridge. And like anything with music, it’s generally a good idea to see what the blogs are up to. So we built a thing that highlights shows in the music blog community. Have a listen/look at the lineups here.
Last Friday Living Spaces #2 took place in Baltimore, and it was special. We’re thrilled to have helped the Portals crew bring such a good mix of music, art, and people together under one roof. Much thanks goes out to all the artists involved (that’s Soft Cat pictured above) and to the nice folks at The Crown.
Portals has a lush photo recap up on their site. They also shot our “Habitat” the other day, click through to see where we work.
Recently we teamed up with BBC Radio 6 Music to once again present a special half-year Music Blog Zeitgeist, looking at the most-blogged artists of 2014 thus far. Listen to BBC’s Tom Robinson countdown the top 20 here.
In addition to the overall list, we refreshed our Ones To Watch feature for the second half of the year. As before, this uses Zeitgeist data to pinpoint newly-emerging artists by applying two simple qualifiers: it’s their first time on the most-blogged list, and they’ve yet to release a full-length LP. Tracks from those artists can heard paired with words from the very blogs that posted them, here.
We’ve always been fans of the Portals community—what they do both on and offline. This led to supporting a rather adventurous balloon-filled night last October (that’s Emily Reo pictured above). And now we’re happy to help them continue their traveling showcase series called Living Spaces. The first event happened earlier this month in Brooklyn, and the next will take place in Baltimore on August 8th.
In their words, what it’s all about:
“Reaching out to old and new friends, we’ll move from city to city, occupying a unique independent space in each one. For each event, we’ll collaborate with local visual and multidisciplinary artists to construct large-scale spatial installations. Our overarching intent is to create inhabitable space for live performance–space where everyone can engage wholeheartedly with the present experience. We hope to include both more familiar and less familiar visual artists, musicians, audiences, and places.”
Explore the sights and sounds of each artist (and RSVP if near Baltimore) here.
A few weeks back we shared our annual Zeitgeist. One of its features is Top 50 Artists, which counts down the most-blogged acts of the year. The list is always telling of our times, both as a music blog community and an industry at large. What becomes popular on blogs no doubt informs and reflects what is, or will be, popular elsewhere. Each year when approaching this project, we see the distance between what is and will be, getting a little smaller, or perhaps that area a little grayer. Credit this to things moving faster, and that blogs, while still ever-ahead of the curve, are now also an established piece of the overall infrastructure in which new music is discussed. So it makes sense that when an established act like Daft Punk or Phoenix release an album, they are going to make the list. It’s awesome that our data shows this. But, as nerds here ourselves, and in the founding spirit of HM, we got curious. Bloggers still dig daily for the next will be’s. And we thought: how can those findings be better highlighted?
Enter: Ones To Watch 2014
We revisited the list of most-blogged artists and removed any name that has appeared on a previous Zeitgeist or has already released a full-length LP. What remained were the extra-emerging acts—the ones who made a name for themselves last year (and likely no year prior), on the strength of a few tracks, maybe an EP, etc. The ones to keep an eye on. Hope you find this as fun as we did.
Update: Here are a few more from this series:
August 2014: Ones To Watch 2014 ½ with BBC Radio 6 Music
January 2015: Ones To Watch 2015
August 2015: Ones To Watch 2015 ½