The End Of The Music Blog?

In the past 18 months, navigating the Canadian music scene has gotten a little tougher. This article was inspired by the recent news that one of the most important Canadian music blog-type sites, Ride The Tempo, will be no longer. During its thirteen year run, Ride The Tempo was one of the best “All Canadian” music sources. In a blog post, the website’s creator Tiana Feng explained her decision to dissolve the much-loved music site. Her post does an incredible job of explaining how much work goes into keeping the content rolling, and also why nobody really visits sites like Ride The Tempo to discover new music anymore. Without outright naming Spotify and other streaming services, Feng explains that a majority of people source music through playlists and the need for blog-type sites is waning. 

Ride The Tempo isn’t the only site dedicated solely to Canadian music that has recently ended. In September of 2018, Grayowl Point stopped posting after nine years. In their final statement, founder Michael Thomas wrote:

“I’m also acutely aware that with the end of this blog, the number of publications writing exclusively about Canadian music has gotten even smaller. There are still a few out there, though! Please go give your attention to our dear friends at Dominionated and Ride the Tempo; they’re still keeping Canadian music alive. We’re with them in spirit.”

I don’t know how to react to the fact that one of the two sources he named, now, no longer exists. Although Dominionated is still active (and obviously us, who he failed to mention… BAH!!!), one can’t help but feel anxious about the ability for independent Canadian music to get any type of media coverage.

So what to do? You simply cannot fault anybody for deciding to stop investing endless hours on what, simply put, amounts to a passion project. There is no money to be made, just personal satisfaction. I spend roughly twenty hours a week keeping the Cups N Cakes Network running. We have fourteen incredible volunteers that also spend countless hours delivering content that they’re passionate about sharing. Add everyone together, and running a site like this is a daunting task. If you have a full time career (like myself, a carpenter working minimum 44hrs/week), you do everything at night and on weekends. This cuts into family and personal time, and eventually must come to an end. 

I understand the end of these sites for those reasons but one reason that can really be trying is the lack of link clicks, follows, shares, and general engagement from music fans. Teng might have been hinting at this on her farewell post, but I’ll outright say that it is emotionally taxing to see that your hard work falls on deaf ears and blind eyes. As humans we need positive reinforcement and the lack of engagement is sometimes depressing. It’s not at the forefront of the mind but the thought always creeps up from time to time. Does anybody care? Are small scenes destined to simply support themselves? The larger music media sites in Canada sometimes barely mention Canadian music. Exclaim’s coverage of Canadian independent music is suspect at best, and the new Beatroute is showing signs of following their model. Once again, little blame can be bestowed upon these publications as they are simply trying to stay afloat in a world where music journalism has become obsolete. 

This makes me hate how the world is discovering their music through playlists. At least radio in Canada is required to play 33% Canadian content. What is the chance of learning about new Canadian music on a Spotify playlist? It’s hard to not come to the conclusion that people simple don’t care enough about music to invest any time whatsoever into the discovery of new acts or supporting musicians in their own city.

Is there any answer to this? I’m not really sure. If the independent music scene in Canada collapsed… would Canadians even notice? Obviously there will always be small, self-sustaining music scenes in various cities across Canada, but how are the best acts in these scenes supposed to break out? 

If there isn’t some type of effort to keep independent Canadian music sources alive and well, we might lose the idea of break-out bands. Bands that exploded because “tastemakers” wrote about them, spoke about them, and kept dragging folks out to see them. Imagine Canada didn’t have acts like Alvvays or Grimes as ambassadors to the incredible music in our country? What if PUP wasn’t selling out shows and getting teenagers to pick up guitars? What if Colter Wall wasn’t able to share the Canadian Prairies with the world through song?… Or if a shirtless Damian Abraham wasn’t screaming into a mic at the biggest festivals in the world? 

Independent music media sites played a role to catapult artists like this to success. Debate the size of the role all you want but they played their part… 

…and they are dying.

- Jeff MacCallum