The Americana and roots music authority

Advertorials on No Depression

An Open letter to The No Depression community,

Having had a post* deleted for being a 'glorified ad' ( No Depression's Kim made a fair point in an email explaining ND's decision to axe the post:

"we try to keep the blogs free of things that look like glorified ads. Due to the frequency with which people post things like this, if we allowed everyone to post stuff like this, we'd quickly be overrun with artists and bands just pushing themselves in the blogs, rather than thoughtful reviews, articles, commentary, recommendations, and other discourse.")

I've been looking through the blogs and a lot of them look like press releases from PR companies this one is pure blurb.Another example is Hearth which describes itself as a" brand-spankin-new roots music promotion agency"It's a P.R. Company! Are these companies buying space? I've been working in Journalism for 20 years and I know an advertorial when I see it. By no stretch of the imagination is a PR agency involved in an unbiased discourse about country and roots music which is, in my eyes what a blogging community should be.

If they are paying why haven't I been offered to opportunity to pay for editorial space? (I'm not talking about banner that's a straight forward paid ad.)

What gives No Dep?

I'd appreciate discussion on the matter

Neville Elder

This forum post is also a blog post

* The content of my Blog post is available, legally, on my profile for my band 'Thee Shambels' should to wish to examine it. I don't dispute it's an Ad and won't link to it to avoid charges of reposting a deleted post

I'd appreciate discussion on the matter

Neville Elder

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by RP N10 on March 19, 2012 at 8:07am

One nation divided by a common language... but in this case you caught my meaning pretty well. Although being paid for the performer to fan wasn't really what I had in mind, as such.

If a performer wants to write a blog about their record, or the songwriting process (and Gretchen Peters pieces on the stories behind the songs on her latest record is a case in point here) I wouldn't like to push that off into the separate section as it's a valuable contribution to the users.

But where intermediaries are marketing on a paid for basis, then I do think that should go to a separate section, for which they should be asked to pay something (out of what they're being paid). More support for the site and community members can go there if they want to.

Then there's the street teamers...

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Permalink Reply by Easy Ed on March 19, 2012 at 8:10am

I'm in agreement. See...it takes a few passes but we do manage to communicate quite well.

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Permalink Reply by Kyla Fairchild on March 19, 2012 at 8:34am

I wish there was a way to do something along these lines but since the website is built on the Ning platform we are somewhat limited. There is only one main blog area (Community Blogs) which all the blogs that are posted feed into. From there we have the ability to "feature" or "not feature" those blogs. If they are featured they end up on the home page and under the main "blogs" tab. If they aren't featured then they only show up under "Community Blogs". There isn't a way to segregate the blogs any further than that unless we were to do it manually. We already do that with the CD/DVD and Live Reviews and it's very time consuming.

I'm also not sure how we'd go about charging and collecting payment for "advertorial blogs" that were posted.

I ran into Craig Havighurst at SXSW and he is working on a web initiative for Music City Roots and mentioned the idea of "sponsored content" where an entity could produce a piece of editorial content that would be marked and presented as "sponsored content" that would be paid for. So essentially paid editorial content. It would be possible for us to do something like that but I'm not sure I really want to get into that.

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Permalink Reply by Kim Ruehl on March 19, 2012 at 10:41am

No, I'm totally with you Ed. As a reader, as a writer, as a musician, as a music fan, and as an employee of ND.

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Permalink Reply by Jack on March 15, 2012 at 3:23pm

Doug, I care. One of the things that makes this site so compelling is that it is largely of and by music lovers; a discussion of who is listening to what, what they think about it, and why. I've no desire to read a fusillade of biased, uncritical press releases and what amount to written ads by the musicians themselves. As an active participant since about day one of the site, I admire and support the deft if not imperfect touch exhibited by Kyla and Kim in walking that subtle line between allowing useful info by artists and people affiliated with them, and deleting obvious self serving articles. I want to read the good, bad and ugly from listeners and musicians, not puffery. Beyond that, No Depression does accept and need paid advertising and I don't think people ought to be expecting free advertising. Sure, there's a fine line between advertorials and what we want to read here, but again, Kyla and Kim do a great job of refereeing this issue. A less skilled approach would degrade the site badly.

Ed, you reminded me of a line from a Tom Robbins book: "if a hen and a half could lay an egg and a half in a day in a half, how long would it take for a monkey with a wooden leg to kick the seeds out of a dill pickle".

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Permalink Reply by Easy Ed on March 15, 2012 at 3:49pm

Plastic.

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Permalink Reply by Lucky Mud on March 20, 2012 at 8:03am

I've been away for awhile, time spent between a very busy touring season for us (a good thing), making great progress on building our own house concert site here at Maggie's (Musical) Farm and trying to learn how to promote my novel now that it's an e-book.

And that's what brought me to this discussion. If anyone would like a tutorial on what would happen without the very careful and caring process Kim and Kyla maintain here on ND, take a trip online to the Amazon Kindle Book pages just a click away from where you sit.

At least 70 percent of the posts there are either clumsy self-promotion or blasts by readers against the self-promoting authors, page after page of invective to the point where, more often than not, entire threads become unreadable and a waste of time.

Not having read enough of the replies to this subject to be fully functional in my response, I just want to say I trust these two to keep No Depression thriving, and I believe what they're doing is in the best interest of this society, though it may burn a few fingers now and then.

Trust me, after a few months on other online communities, this one's a treasure.

Mike

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Permalink Reply by Lucky Mud on March 20, 2012 at 8:07am

Jack,

I can think of no other place but ND where I can find someone referencing Tom Robbins. Thanks for that. I find myself quoting his books more than a little. Like: "The brain is the most important organ in the body, says the brain."

Mike