Last night I learned of an article on dml.fm (Dirty Mexican Lemonade) about the state of music blogs. I felt compelled share my sentiments, as I own and run this blog. Although ElectroJams was not mentioned in the article, we are however still part of the EDM blog “scene.”

Off the top of my head, I can think of 10 different music blogs that focus primarily on electronic dance music, with the occasional indie rock or hip hop post. On top of that, there are probably 20 – 30 others that write one or two simple sentences and then provide a download link. These, my friends, are not “music blogs” – they are file-sharing websites. We all know that many EDM blogs post free downloads, often as temporary links – but there is a fine line between blatant file sharing and posting tracks as a “try before you buy.” Any respectable blog that I have seen has posted links to Beatport, iTunes, etc and encourages the user to support their favorite artists by purchasing the music they download and most importantly, by seeing the artists live.

Recently a regular EJ reader posted a comment stating that we were moving in the direction of newdubstep.com – implying that we get paid to post content. I was highly offended by that comment, and I want to clarify something. Just like every other music blog, I get 10 – 20 emails per day from artists, labels, and promoters asking me to post their stuff on here. That’s fine and sometimes I do post the stuff (if it’s something I like and feel comfortable promoting) For the record, I have NEVER been offered money in exchange for anything I have posted on this site. I often have to bargain with the person to even get a Tweet with our link in it.

In Ryan’s article on DML, he mentions people launching music blogs in hopes of getting rich. While I agree with that to an extent, I want to explain something here – ElectroJams yields ~200,000k hits a month. We have two ad blocks on the homepage and one ad block on the forum and this nets us approximately $20 a month. After I pay the server fee, that means I’ve profited $11. How’s that saying go? Don’t quit your day job? I’ve been fortunate enough to snag some amazing writers for this site, and the only way that I’ve been able to compensate them is with a ElectroJams t-shirt. Our traffic would literally have to octuple (yes, that’s 8x) if I wanted to really make a profit and compensate my writers. Even then I’d have to upgrade to a better server. At the end of the day, I’m not in this scene because I want money. Of course it’s nice to turn a profit and have some extra cash for things, but ultimately I keep this blog running because I love electronic music and this is my platform to share my findings with the world. It’s as simple as that. I would continue to run this site even if I lost money on it.

A few readers have criticized me due to some content being late. I have a policy of not posting content that’s more than a week or so old, as by then 95% of people have probably seen it, and of course it just looks bad. Unfortunately though, ElectroJams is not my full time job (as much as I want it do be) and so as a result, 40 hours of my week are spent away from the computer and completely disconnected from the online world. In addition to that, I am also working on my Bachelor’s while raising my daughter. I’m not asking for sympathy or anything of the like – all I’m saying is, give me some slack when I post something a little late. The EDM world is moving faster than ever and admittedly it is hard to keep up with sometimes. We do our best to serve our loyal readers the freshest content however.

I want to wrap this up, so I’ll finish with this – you guys know who your favorite music blogs are. If you enjoy their content then support them with a comment, a tweet, a Facebook ‘like’ or what have you. Let’s all collectively ignore the blogs that are just out to get fame and money and they’ll go away. How’s that other saying go? Don’t feed the trolls?

Thank you all for your continued support.

I started this website in 2009 as a means of sharing my EDM findings with my friends. Since then, the website has experienced an explosion in growth that I never once imagined. This excitement and growth inspires me to make ElectroJams the #1 source for new electronic music.