In the sea of music blogs, best means most relevant to the reader. How can bands or listeners find blogs in their genre? How can they find blogs in a specific city? Google is an obvious search tool for most topics, but to really get in the trenches and find smaller indie blogs, here are five super-effective search techniques.
1. Similar Artists
Before you start, determine the bands that are most similar to you. In case you’re clueless on this, use last.fm to help. Each last.fm artist page lists similar artists. The artists with the highest similarity to Japandroids on last.fm are Titus Andronicus, No Age, and Cymbals Eat Guitars.
Example: last.fm/music/Japandroids/+similar
2. Aggregators
Now that you know what artists are in your sub-genre, try searching for them on a music blog aggregator like Elbo.ws or Hype Machine to find the blogs that are writing about them.
Example: elbo.ws/search/?q=Titus Andronicus
Example: hypem.com/search/Titus Andronicus
3. Ask The Fans
This may sound simple, but what better resource for your music scene than your own fans? They may point you to great underground blogs that you wouldn’t have found otherwise, and many of them may be bloggers themselves. They already like your music and will want to help you.
4. Search Smart
Search Twitter for the similar artists using search operators to filter your results. We’re locating blogs, so filter for tweets containing links. Refine the search to a specific location and/or use the hyphen to omit now playing tweets. Experiment with operators on blogsearch.google.com too.
Twitter: “titus andronicus” OR “cymbals eat guitars” filter:links -#nowplaying -#lastfm
Twitter: “titus andronicus” OR “cymbals eat guitars” near:”New York” within:25mi
Blogsearch: japandroids site:tumblr.com OR site:posterous.com OR site:blogspot.com
5. Trust People
Delicious and StumbleUpon are based on the intelligence of the masses. Explore Delicious tags like genres, artist names, mp3 blog, cities, etc. Discover on StumbleUpon via topics and search.
Example: delicious.com/tag/music+indie+rock+review
Example: stumbleupon.com/discover/music-review/
Japandroids in Ann Arbor in 2010.
photo: dailybeatz/flickr
official site: japandroids.com
music: iTunes | Insound | Amazon
Titus Andronicus in Barcelona in 2010.
photo: stinka/flickr
official site: titusandronicus.net
music: iTunes | Insound | Amazon
Cymbals Eat Guitars in London in 2010.
photo: encosion/flickr
official site: cymbalseatguitars.com
music: iTunes | Insound | Amazon
No Age in Barcelona in 2010.
photo: cz77/flickr
myspace: myspace.com/nonoage
music: iTunes | Insound | Amazon
