Elbows Music Blog Community

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Basically, I think BuzzMedia bought a couple of those sites (?) but not GvB or HypeM.

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they made a pretty lucrative offer to us way back when, but then they kept changing the terms and wanting more control. if memory serves, in the end they said that after two years they would decide whether or not they wanted to keep us on the site (sounds pretty similar to another buzzmedia property, eh?). in the end, we knew what would happen, so we walked.

going to go check my spam box for my buzzmedia email offer.

I found out consistently that the best time to have accident is during extremely cold winter. You don't feel a thing.



- I hit a car with my bike, down hill, must have been 25 mph ish. I misjudge how hard a car can break. lol... rolled on the street at least 10 feet and scrape my head pretty bad. no helmet, dazed for 5-10 minutes. It was during my superman stage. t'was empty street. relax. Bent my bike frame rear fork tho'. My first nice bike too. aluminum schwinn 500. Lesson learn: performance bike goes pretty fast and break differently than kiddy bike. avoid ramming car bumper at high speed.



- broke my finger hitting it against steel ledge. don't feel a thing, it was friggin frozen. (didn't go to the doctor until 2 weeks, even than the doctor say, look whatever, you want it straigthen out ya gonna need operation. it's already healing. That was one of the most useless doctor trip i've ever done. $200 bucks for that lousy diagnosis. At least give me a free toy or something..or free 'feel good' injection.... ffs.

for the record, the techcrunch update is the closest to accurate. they haven't purchased GvB, they've invested in the site and will manage ads. i still own it and retain 100% editorial control.

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for the record, the techcrunch update is the closest to accurate. they haven't purchased GvB, they've invested in the site and will manage ads. i still own it and retain 100% editorial control.

Curious how that "right to buy the remainder" works. So what happens to your editorial control if they exercise their right to buy the remainder?

i hope they manage their new relationships better than they write press releases

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Why would one want to do that? Everybody knows GvB is chris, this is the internet, not publication world. Those deep linking only last 3-6 months for a blog. If Chris moves on, people will move on with him. GvB or no GvB. They can have GvB in exchange for loots and trinkets.



just don't sign that non compete clause.



arrrrr.... land ahead matey...

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Yeah, even if you're not being cynical, I am sure they want it to remain the same, and then in a few years when it turns out that music blogging is still kind of a niche concern then those reliable tricks for generating pageviews and click-throughs will become increasingly hard to resist for a commercial organisation.  At this point I can imagine subtle pressure slowly creeping into existence, at which point Chris (who writes GvB, Tsuru) will have to decide to either sell up and jump ship or get rid of Buzznet.  Mind you, to be fair to Chris, he has always written what I will charitably call a 'very hit-friendly' blog, so this kind of support might actually work out very well for him, depending on what his goals are for the site.

yeah I don't like this. I am now evaluating the effect of taking mp3 blog off hypemachine...



ya can sell ad, whatever. but "owned by major" ...well... not happening.

No offense to GvB, but they are just a mp3 blog. All Buzzmedia cares about is their luscious luscious hit count & twitter followers & (if they are on there) facebook likers.

Was there really "twickering", I missed it I guess. Who do I need to follow to see it?

Anywhosal. The immediate future is not blog-vertising (I like combining words) but twitvertising! If I was Buzz, I'd be all like, "hey Chris, can you do me a solid, broham? Can you tweet to check out that new album by Ke$(CAD)ha (Canadian version, much more authentic) and link up to her iTunes page? Thank C-Dog!"

And then Chris can tweet, "LOL OMG, Ke$CADha is TTLY >>> Ke$ha GUYS! Go check it @ http://bit.ly/ituneslink!"

BLAMO! m4a sales galore!

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AS for the selling out thing itself... Dave Eggers (thanks to @tadpoleaudio for linking it to me after my REM post yesterday) had a very interesting essay on it.

I come from an era when just going to a major label was selling out. Song showing up on TV or in a commercial? Suicide. But... I've relaxed and, in many ways, even though it pains me to say it, the young Aaron sheds tears just thinking about it, Eggers makes lots of great points.

@Hawkguy - first, exhale.

Feel better?

You're generalizing things here. I understand the investment angle and who is behind Buzz, but check the archives... that's been wrestled around in the forum to a point of exhaustion. Any business would go back to the drawing board and reconsider its options if it's not meeting its goals. I'm assuming you've had a job between birth and now, so in what situation would it be fair to have you continue on with that job, as you see it, doing it as you please, while those who are investing in you generally consider you to have 'stopped producing.' Justify it, call me a fucking fool, take the indier-than-thou approach, whatever... You clearly disagree with him & maybe you disagree with society, and maybe society IS completely fucked. But that doesn't mean that what the guy is saying isn't still grounded in some sort of reality.

Sure it's a combed-over statement, but in what world do you live in where you'd expect anything else? I never said that I trust the guy word-for-word or that I even believe what he's written, I just wanted to point out that he's made a statement. I'm a complete outsider looking on on this whole situation and to say that I have some sort of insight would be ludicrous. My only point there was that there are two sides to this and it's a little harsh to look at it from a single perspective.

(hey, I only said 'fuck' twice there, top that!)

@Tsuru I'm going to check the article out, thanks. I think we're on the same subject here--whether it's a post or a twitter post, I can't see a scenario where there would be complete fronting on that level. Adding "sponsored post" or "sponsored tweet" or "sponsored linked-in-face-like-my-friender" might still be something considered "selling out," but you said it yourself, there are always advertisers looking for new ways to reach out to their market. I think that once there's deception added to the mix is when it becomes something terribly deceitful. Just an example: I check The Daily Beast from time to time and theyrepresent ads as such... for them to use adwords, pop-ups or roll-over pages would be silly, they just wouldn't work. I like their process, and it actually makes me like the site more because they're not jocking readers around--it is what it is and they're honest about it. This sort of stuff is inevitably going to evolve whether or not we want them to... Don't think that just because I'm jib-jabbin' market jive that I don't appreciate your hard-nosed approach here. I do. Off to read Mr. Eggers.

if memory serves, the whole twitter war today didn't have anything to do with the quality of gvb (at least not how it started or any of it that i saw). just a lament that they get what some folks feel is undue attention when sending bands upstream to be covered by larger media outlets.

also, you can't really extrapolate how the relationship between buzzmedia and gvb will work based on stereogum. stereogum is a much, much larger entity, which in and of itself gives it sway that smaller properties wouldn't have. then there's the fact that stereogum's owners actually own stock in buzzmedia, too. and that likely means they get a little more say than someone who has gotten investment money from them instead of taken ownership of the company.

that said, i'm not saying editorial things will be interrupted or changed. but my point has been and still is that you have no idea how it'll all shake out in the long run. hell, after the contract is up, buzzmedia might not even want to buy gvb. that's what happened with all those sites they acquired in the last round except for idolator, stereogum and absolutepunk.

hell, just take a look at this article from the gauntlet about their time with buzznet they posted, after the contract ended last month.

@Chris: I hear ya & I think we are on the same page too. I'm very curious, in general, not related to this thread necessarily, where this is all going. It sure is fun to watch though!

@hawk: I follow @hypem & @fascinated (Anthony's tweets are interesting & often random, I like that). I follow @p4k for basic news tweets. I don't follow anyone specific at p4k and I don't follow "big blogs" because I just don't care. But yeah, that was pretty amusing stuff! IGIF talking about "breaking bands", GvB putting someone's tweets "in check".. lol!


BLOGGERIN'! WHAT'S YOUR PRICE FOR FLIGHT!!!
Blog life ain't easy...

Funny shit man!

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yeah, around 2am last night. it's all good now. he's gonna buy me booze and i'm gonna bake him some thin mints.

Yeah Toad, I hear ya. And I agree with you. I might sound naive by trying to figure out how the other side is making sense of everything (maybe there is no sense to be made) but at least to me I get the feeling like this is all slightly uncharted territory and everyone has to trust everyone... If only until one side screws up royally or screws someone over...

Which leads me to the Gauntlet article that Sean pointed out. It's a must read in terms of this thread. : http://www.thegauntlet.com/article/1225/19071/The-Gauntlet-ends-the-nightmare-with-Buzznet.html