Music blogs are available all sizes and shapes. That’s why on this publish, we’re rounding up one of the best music blogs from across the internet.
We attempt to cowl each base of the music trade whereas specializing in blogs that generate lower than 1 million visits in visitors each month.
We used the next instruments to uncover metrics for every weblog:
- MozBar – Area authority (DA).
- Similarweb – Visitors.
- Pingdom – Load time.
- Wappalyzer – CMS.
We listed these blogs primarily based on the quantity of visitors they obtain monthly. The visitors metric comes from the typical of the final three months of visitors.
You’ll additionally discover an evaluation of their method to content material, social media, and monetization.
Let’s begin on the high.
The perfect music weblog examples
- Music Enterprise Worldwide – Knowledgeable look into the internal workings of the worldwide music trade.
- Lambgoat – A weblog devoted to publishing evaluations and information for the metallic trade.
- Guitar Foyer – A incredible supply for guitar gear and shopping for guides.
- EARMILK – A basic on-line music publication that covers all the pieces from music information and trade information to album and equipment evaluations.
1. Music Enterprise Worldwide
DA: 73 | Visitors: 545,500 monthly | Load Time: 645ms | CMS: WordPress
Music Enterprise World is likely one of the most influential and professionally-operated music blogs to launch in recent times.
It was based by London-based music journalist Tim Ingham, who’s written for NME, The Guardian, The Impartial, The Observer and Rolling Stone, the latter of which he wrote 100 columns for.
Tim based the positioning in 2015, sharing music trade information and knowledge from world wide.
He now works with a number of editors and reporters in addition to administrators and consultants.
The positioning has even acquired testimonials from Sony Music Group, Warner Music Group, Atlantic Information, Reside Nation, influential expertise administration businesses, together with Adele and Glass Animals’ administration firm September Administration, and extra.
Content material
As a information weblog, Music Enterprise Worldwide publishes fairly a little bit of content material, together with a number of new articles a day.
Even so, their content material is effectively represented by the weblog’s main classes: Information, Interviews and Evaluation.
However keep in mind, Music Enterprise Worldwide’s focus is the worldwide music trade as an entire, so that you received’t discover articles concerning the newest hits or greatest new artists right here.
The weblog’s editors concentrate on information associated to report labels, administration corporations, ticket distributors and venues as an alternative.
Even a lot of the weblog’s interviews are with music trade professionals somewhat than artists.
The Evaluation class has op-eds and heavily-researched articles that dive deep into the music trade’s internal workings., uncovering key statistics and hidden truths.
The articles themselves are sometimes written in brief or medium format.
Many are gentle on photographs, though articles within the Evaluation class have fairly just a few infographics depicting statistics.
Earnings streams
Promoting is a vital revenue stream for Music Enterprise Worldwide.
They insert adverts in fairly just a few locations: on the high of each article, on both facet of the principle content material space, in the appropriate sidebar and all through the physique part of every publish.
Happily, the weblog works with advertisers instantly, so readers don’t should cope with adverts that aren’t associated to the music trade.
The web site additionally has a job board wherein they promote the most recent jobs from across the world music trade.
The weblog’s promoting charges aren’t out there on the web site, however they do encourage corporations to contact their Operations Director to promote job vacancies at “reasonably priced charges.”
Lastly, the weblog publishes three magazines yearly. These are sometimes collections of the weblog’s greatest content material all year long, solely they’re revealed in a a lot nicer format (in print).
Readers can subscribe to all three magazines for $92.03/month.
Social media exercise + different content material ventures
Music Enterprise Worldwide is energetic on Fb, Twitter and LinkedIn, however they solely obtain just a few dozen engagements throughout all platforms usually.
Exterior of written content material, the weblog publishes podcast episodes usually, often for interviews and short-form episodes on the most recent music trade tendencies.
2. Lambgoat
DA: 51 | Visitors: 333,000 monthly | Load Time: 2.21s | CMS: N/A
Lambgoat is a web based music publication that focuses on information from across the metallic style of music.
It was based by Alex Arnold in 1999, who launched the positioning as a strategy to publish album evaluations to the broader metallic group.
The weblog nonetheless publishes album evaluations, however they’ve expanded their content material effectively sufficient to cowl information and new music from the world of metallic.
The group itself has even expanded to incorporate a number of writers, executives, and in-house builders and video producers.
Content material
Lambgoat publishes content material to classes named Information, Opinions, Options and Releases.
Information articles are sometimes a few particular band or artist, resembling album information, live performance information and private updates.
The positioning publishes a few dozen information articles every single day.
Album evaluations are revealed extra sometimes, however the web site nonetheless manages to pump out a number of evaluations each month.
Album evaluations have a rating and the author’s opinion of particular person tracks and the album as an entire. That is often depicted in just a few paragraphs.
Articles revealed to the Options part are information, evaluations and content material, together with interviews and reader feedback, Lambgoat needs to advertise extra prominently.
The positioning additionally has a web based discussion board readers can use to debate Lambgoat content material, music information, music suggestions and extra.
It’s a good way to get readers to have interaction with a web site, and it will possibly even have search engine optimisation worth for metal-related key phrases.
Lambgoat publishes brief (very brief) articles with little to no photographs.
They usually embed official music movies from YouTube to posts.
Earnings streams
Lambgoat inserts adverts in a number of locations on weblog publish pages.
The obvious advert is the one which stays hooked up to the underside of your browser’s viewport as you scroll.
There are additionally fastened adverts on the high of the web page, within the sidebar and within the content material itself.
Lambgoat additionally dabbles in online marketing, particularly Amazon affiliate hyperlinks.
In addition they companion with manufacturers and usually promote these manufacturers’ merchandise on their web site.
The weblog additionally has an energetic Patreon account, however they solely have 10 patrons on the time this text was written.
Even at their highest tier of $10/month, that’s solely $100/month earlier than Patreon takes their reduce.
Lastly, Lambgoat has a small on-line store wherein they promote CDs, cassettes, vinyls and merch.
Social media exercise + different content material ventures
Lambgoat usually posts new content material to Fb, Twitter and Instagram.
They obtain most of their engagements on Instagram. They’ve over 9,000 followers, and most posts obtain just a few hundred likes.
The weblog additionally has an energetic podcast wherein they interview outstanding figures within the metallic trade.
3. Guitar Foyer
DA: 32 | Visitors: 294,400 monthly | Load Time: 774ms | CMS: WordPress
Guitar Foyer is a superb supply for the technical facet of the music trade.
That’s, studying the best way to play an instrument in addition to deciding which gear to purchase.
Guitar Foyer focuses on all subjects associated to those two factors, making it among the best music blogs for musicians and audiophiles.
It was based by long-time guitarist Chris Schiebel, who has a bachelor’s diploma in electrical engineering. This has allowed him to develop his personal guitar amplifiers and results in addition to share his information with the world.
He now works with a group of fellow writers and musicians.
Content material
Guitar Foyer publishes new content material just a few occasions a month.
Whereas their focus is music tutorials and music gear, they publish content material to an extended checklist of classes associated to those two subjects.
Their main classes are Guitars, Gear, Devices and Music.
The Gear part is residence to baby classes like Amps, Pedals, and Studio and Audio.
The Devices class is crammed with baby classes for non-guitar devices, together with the piano/keyboard, the banjo and the violin.
The Music class is residence to the weblog’s recommendations on studying the best way to play the guitar.
Guitar Foyer publishes long-form posts with lots of embedded movies.
In addition they are likely to concentrate on checklist posts over different forms of content material.
Earnings streams
Guitar Foyer makes use of sticky adverts: one on the backside of the viewport and one within the sidebar.
There are additionally fastened adverts within the sidebar.
The model additionally makes use of affiliate hyperlinks from Amazon and Sweetwater, particularly of their gear roundups.
Social media exercise + different content material ventures
Guitar Foyer is just not energetic on social media, nor do they participate in different content material ventures.
4. EARMILK
DA: 61 | Visitors: 66,300 monthly | Load Time: 3.04s | CMS: WordPress
EARMILK is a well-respected weblog within the impartial music house. It operates fairly professionally, so effectively, actually, that some think about it a correct on-line music journal.
The weblog operates by way of a group of contributors.
Content material
EARMILK publishes new content material a number of occasions a day, particularly to their New Music and Trade Information classes.
These classes are incredible sources for music discovery, worldwide music information, leisure information and popular culture updates.
The weblog additionally publishes op-eds and music evaluations, particularly gear and album evaluations.
You’ll additionally discover interviews and options in addition to quite a few common collection. These might be regarded as being much like columns in newspapers and print magazines.
Like most blogs on this checklist, EARMILK’s secret to publishing a lot content material is publishing short-form posts completely.
Most posts don’t have many photographs, both.
They do have embedded movies, although.
Earnings streams
EARMILK is an ad-heavy weblog.
Actually, the posts are so brief that a few of them have extra adverts than content material.
Sticky and floating adverts seem on the backside of the viewport, within the sidebar and to the underside, right-hand nook of the web page.
They’re additionally situated beneath the positioning’s menu and between paragraphs within the content material part of the posts themselves.
Social media exercise
EARMILK has profiles for Fb, Twitter and Instagram, however they don’t use these social channels that a lot.
Plus, their Instagram profile has hidden like counts, so it’s exhausting to inform what number of engagements they obtain.
Closing ideas
Beginning a weblog within the music trade is hard.
Each style, from hip hop and indie rock to digital dance music (EDM), already has a number of blogs devoted to it.
Some even have tens of millions of visits each month.
Even so, there’s loads of room on this house for learners.
It’s greatest to decide on a style, and keep it up as you develop your weblog. This may will let you goal a particular viewers and develop a loyal following from it.
Additionally, if you happen to check out the blogs on this checklist, you’ll be taught that publishing consistency performs an enormous position in your web site’s potential to look in search engines like google and yahoo.
Not solely do you have to publish on the similar time of each week, you must publish content material to the identical classes.
You can even make observe of some tendencies amongst these blogs and use them to enhance your personal web site’s affect.
The primary is the format most of those blogs write in.
Most profitable music web sites appear to publish short-form content material, even for issues like album evaluations.
Nonetheless, a few of these websites have the luxurious of getting a long time to develop their followings whereas others had connections previous to launching.
You don’t have that first luxurious, and you might not have connections that may take your weblog to the following stage as quickly as you launch.
What you can do, nevertheless, is publish authoritative content material from the get go. That is content material written in long-form format that targets key phrases naturally but successfully and contains lots of high-quality photographs.
It is a technique nearly no profitable music weblog makes use of.
The second pattern has to do with social media.
It’s clear that you just don’t want an energetic following on social media to be able to drive visitors to your weblog.
Nonetheless, that doesn’t imply that you just shouldn’t concentrate on this kind of content material in a technique or one other.
The blogs on this checklist aren’t paying a lot consideration to social media. That implies that, like weblog posts, you’ll be able to actually make a distinction within the quantity of visitors you obtain early on by specializing in social media as quickly as you launch, and even earlier than you launch.
With all that mentioned, we want you luck in your journey as a music blogger.
Lastly, if you happen to’d wish to uncover insights from profitable blogs in different niches, listed below are another posts from this collection:
