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These Chicago bloggers are in a class all their own.
We get it—music lovers are opinionated. Many think their views are so spot-on, they broadcast them to the world via a blog. The truth is blogging requires more than just taste, it takes dedication. Too often, would-be bloggers throw up a review or a free mp3, and next thing you know, months have gone by without one word or a second of audio to entice readers into visiting regularly. But these three bloggers go well beyond just opinions. They have a knack for trend spotting, a way with words and unparalleled dedication. Even while they juggle day jobs and other responsibilities, their sites offer daily news bytes, reviews, party announcements and plenty of music, and it keeps their readers coming back for more.
Name: Steve Mizek
Blog: littlewhiteearbuds.com
Founded: 2005
Mizek, who spends his days as an advertising analyst at Market Access International, approaches Little White Earbuds with the same eye for detail he displays during business hours. He started modestly, offering up thoughts on whatever he was digging at the time. Now the site sees contributions from more than 20 writers and publishes multiple posts daily. The Little White Earbuds team features at least seven album or singles reviews a week and boasts a weekly podcast from an electronic artist or DJ. While Mizek describes Earbuds’ focus as “everything from disco to dubstep,” it does have a heavy techno slant. The site has actually become so robust as a blog, it almost sells it short to call it such. “I try to look at it from the perspective of a website and less as a guy posting when he feels like it,” Mizek says. His model has a lot in common with popular electronic music e-zine Resident Advisor, and if Mizek keeps up the good work, RA is going to have some heavy competition on its hands.
Name: Nick Andrews
Blog: redthreat.wordpress.com
Founded: 2007
Originally launched while Andrews was living in Phoenix, Red Threat might not be here today if not for his move to the Windy City. A brief internship writing reviews for music and culture magazine 944 while still in Arizona helped him beef up the word play, and the vibrant music scene he found here helped solidify his passion for uncovering new electronic sounds. Andrews describes Red Threat as a music diary, saying that around the time of the site’s launch, so many of his peers were asking for new tunes, he felt a blog would be a good way to keep people abreast of new discoveries in real time. Now he wakes up each morning to a bloated inbox of music submissions from DJs, producers, PR companies and record labels, all hoping to garner a blog entry. A computer science graduate student at DePaul, Andrews has no intention of making Red Threat a commercial endeavor; he’d prefer for it to remain a labor of love where its quality comes from its authenticity. “It’s rewarding to be on people’s radar and know they want me to hear their music,” he says. The fact that he’s turning people on to new artists daily doesn’t hurt either.
Name: Veronica Murtagh
Blogs: strangersinstereo.com + creamteam.tv
Founded: 2008 + 2010
Talking to Murtagh, you get the sense she doesn’t get much sleep. A designer for legendary ad firm Ogilvy & Mather, she starts her daily blogging routine around 6am. Dividing her time between two sites, she focuses on directing web traffic to Strangers in Stereo, a commercially viable blog and events website. Throughout the day she’s torn between correspondence with contributors to the site and her design duties. An aggregate blog, Strangers in Stereo compiles entries from 20 other blogs from around the world and couples that with exclusive content. Once the workday’s done, Murtagh’s home for dinner before settling in and churning out more posts. Apart from Strangers in Stereo, she also updates Cream Team, a personal blog that’s less about garnering page views and more about showcasing her favorite musical finds (and a few guilty pleasures). A journalism major who switched to design before blogs proliferated, Murtagh says, “[blogging] started as something fun, but I realized that I’m organized and can turn this into something.” Now her hope is to phase design out altogether, returning to her original journalistic urges. Within the next year, she’d like to turn Strangers in Stereo into a full-time job.
