2.11.2005

News: UponFirstListen Ripped Off

I read several music websites each day. All of the blogs you see to the right get a hit once a day (usually at night, after they've updated for the day) as does antimusic, velvetrope and pitchforkmedia. Others I check less frequently. Two of these are popmatters and stylusmagazine. Not that their news or reviews are any less entertaining or important, but they both have terrible layouts and are difficult to navigate and difficult to ascertain needed information. So, tonight, I'm browsing the internet at random and I decide to hit both of them up to see what I'm missed. Nothing major at popmatters (new Hood and Sage Francis review), but stylusmagazine has something interesting. Called "On First Listen" it's exactly what you think, only slightly different. They take established artists and make theire reviewers listen to them for the first time (the first one is a review of the Rolling Stones). Granted, their review is a lot longer than anything I write (or plan to, sans this and a feature here and there), but still, I can't help but feel violated. Of course, there's not much I can do, but the satisfaction of knowing that I've been doing this (at 3 different locations) for almost a year and a half, with more than 300 albums reviewed for the first time, makes me feel cheated. I plan to continue updating this site every day for as long as I possibly can (I already have the next 2 months worth of reviews sitting in a .txt document on my desktop, so assuming I have internet, you will see an update for at least that long. Additionally, I have approximately another 150 or so albums I have in the to-be reviewed column and that's not counting new stuff I discover, and trust me, I discover a lot of new music). UponFirsListen did it first, just remember that.

1 comment:

thenoiseboy said...

Don't worry about it. The fact that someone else came up with the same idea and then instituted it only proves that your idea was a good one in the first place.