Guest editorial courtesy of AB from Too Many Sebastians on the pitfalls of todays music blogs and in turn producers. How far will you go to get those Hype Machine hearts?

Initially, this post was meant to be a jokey thing. The Buzzfeed-esque titling is intentional. It was a surprise to myself some serious elements made their way into post which has a Katamari screengrab at the top. If you disagree/agree that’s cool. Leave some comments, nobody discusses things anymore. I’m just of the opinion that music in 2013 has been the year of too many people thinking they are slick marketing geniuses and that’s all well and good…. I just think a fair few people have forgotten to do the music bit.

Covers/Remixes of artists that have been dead for less than a day.
This is one of the most blatantly cynical things in music today. If you see the name of a musician in that holiest of news sources, the twitter trend bar, they are probably dead (or have got their tits/knob out) and this not only means a twitter funeral is about to be held, it means some ghastly covers/remixes of this musician’s work are about to hit the internet. Exciting, right? " target="_blank">Fuck off.

Sometimes this can workout. However, for every one person who does a good cover/remix which comes from a good place. We have twenty ones of the DJCoolVibes variety. Is this trade-off worth it? I’m not so sure…

<3 I can feel the passion. <3

Uses tonal shift, is super-effective.

Using internet memes as part of a ‘brand’.
In the olden days of the internet, ‘memes’ aka. a joke on the internet was a form of alternate comedy meant to confuse people, usually your parents. The thought of it becoming a commercial thing would have been considered outrageous. How times change. Now, using internet memes is a way for artists to showcase how edgy and full of ‘lols’ they are. Definitely not sucking the dicks of corporations. Here is a good example, we have changed the name of the artist so he can maintain his edgy image. Ladies and Gentlemen, meet.. ‘Zadd‘.

Recently, ‘Zadd‘ wanted to win the Vevo Lift 2013 award for something pointless. A ‘competition‘, run by the label that employs him and sponsored by McDonalds. What better way to promote his cause than trollface, the very image used by those who would typically would use the image when taking the websites of those involved offline. AND THAT MAKES SENSE, YEAH?

Down wiv da youthz.

Other examples include people doing ‘covers‘ of the StarbucksDrakeHands video. A video so false and OBVIOUSLY some sort of ‘genius’ idea from ‘viral experts’ I’m not even going to link/make fun of any of that shit. It’s not funny. Never will be funny. Hang your heads in shame. If you don’t know what this is, " target="_blank">you are…

Third-tier and very blatant paid-for tweets.
Because the music industry is on it arse, lots of artists are now forced to ‘casually’ tweet (sometimes facebook) products and the higher the artist, the more sophisticated it is. There is a really cheap sub-level to all of this though and it’s most prominent in dance music. It’s basically producers tweeting things they got for free…. not even cash-monies. 🙁

Is it so bad to just say, “I got this for free“? Getting free things is great. Why does the link put the product in my Amazon cart?!?! ARGHHHHH. I really don’t understand the pretense, if more people admitted they got stuff for free because the selling music bit is so shit, it could make your fans think? I dunno. icon_neutral

Increasingly baffling and somewhat cheap ‘free download’ schemes.
As mentioned earlier, the music industry is on it’s arse and artists/labels are now forced to claw back some dignity by offering free downloads in exchange for an email address or a ‘like’ on facebook. It’s not ideal… however, you can see the logic behind these sorts of schemes and the benefits they might have in the long-term.

The following is just… incredible. It never ceases to amaze me how much other artists/labels create things which fuck-over their competitors in the short-term, yet fail to see how it will fuck themselves in the future. What am I talking about? GET READY FOR….

You might argue, this is a self-indulgent ’hate’ in this list. As this is effectively is a step at removing the relevancy of blogs. You’d be partially correct. This list is self-indulgent. However, for this sort of scheme to work… you crucially… still need a blog. Why a music blog would post such a thing, I’m not sure. Draw your own conclusions. IT NEEDS TO DIE NOW THOUGH.

Keep it honest guyses. lololololol.

Dramatic news stories about things that aren’t dramatic.
Is Nina Kraviz ruining the very nature of feminism by doing a video in bathtub? No.
Are Disclosure promoting drugs by making songs? No.
Is Steve Aoki warping the fragile minds of our youths? No.
Is Deadmau5 a racist because of something his press team said? No.

These are only things we should be making fun of. Enough of the fake bullshit controversies.
MAKE SOME SONGS.