Elbows Music Blog Community

Interesting article. Just left a comment on there as there seems to be a decent discussion going already.

Yeah, our traffic keeps growing. Spotify + Pandora are exposing a new population to music -- and providing new tools for discovery -- but most of their audience weren't the type to check out music blogs anyway. If they're enticing more users to find new music, perhaps some of them will start to explore music blogs as well!

Also Site Analytics is depressingly bad at estimating traffic. As are any of the major public "estimators."

You have to keep working for your traffic. It doesn't come magically. Plateaus are completely normal, as are dips. Just wait until the Christmas season...ouch!

Interesting articles - thanks for starting the discussion!  I've definitely noticed a lack of growth in traffic.  I've been doing this a little over 2 years, and I can't tell you how many times I've wondered why traffic isn't growing, or questioning whether I got into music blogging at a time when it's potentially dying.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not doing this for the big numbers, but it would be nice to see some evidence that people care.  It definitely makes you wonder whether it's worth continuing.

And that takes its toll.  I just scanned through my last few months of posts, and the ones in August are definitely much shorter, standard-fare stuff (this band is releasing this album on this date - here's a song) compared to previous months.

The thing is, it doesn't seem to matter.  Our traffic tends to follow the same pattern - 3 months of increase, followed by 3 months of decline.  Posting more often, writing more detailed posts, writing less-detailed posts...it doesn't affect that pattern.  There's just no sustained momentum.