Originally intended to be integrated into the entire series, the discussion below took a slightly different shape than the rest of the revealing interviews contained in "Listening to the Blogs," published in three parts at the end of last year. Thus, we decided to run it separately.  BY SAM HOUGHTON

The music blogosphere—at times—feels inorganic, almost mechanical, like at the end of every type writer is some weird, conceited little hipster with no real emotion or love for music; just some bimbo keen on stating his contemptuous, all important message. I threw caution to the wind when assigned to produce the three-part series, "Listening to the Blogs" and began with a phone interview of Joseph Huttner from Sad Steve. Something new and exciting happened. He was not a machine at the end of the line, but another dude, concerned about music's fleeting era. This reaction might sound strange to some people, but given my previous suspicion of bloggers, this proved to be interesting to me. Where I netted out as I finished the project was this: imagine a huge discussion table of all the smartest, dumbest, intriguing, most vile hearted, most positive music critics gathered together, passing a joint around, and discussing open-heartedly... music. Just music. It's amazing, something no generation before ours has had.


SAM: What role do you think your site serves in the larger picture of music and how does that make you feel?

JOE: Well I think it’s unfiltered which people seem to like, and it’s very simple in terms of what I feature. Bands email me and if I think it’s good, or if I think other people think it’s good, because I’m not the be all, end all, judge of talent, I post it. It’s really that simple



SAM: So what are some surprising moments that you’ve had coming from a post, either a satisfying or exciting moment coming from a reader?

JOE: A lot of people write in with just general praise for the site and it’s actually really rewarding. I guess what’s surprising to me is that it’s really good for fans but really bad for bands. I thought bands would flock to the site to use it, and maybe users might like it or maybe not because there are so many other music sites out there. It turns out it’s been really hard to draw in bands because they all have their myspace and twitter now and it’s just hard to compete with their digital attention. But actually the users seem to love these feature bands on my site. It skewed in the direction opposite of what I thought it would be.


SAM: Why do you think that is?

JOE: For one reason, the band has to create the profile. We don’t work for them. They can’t just send me the album so it’s not as easy as maybe they want it to be. I’ve tried to make it as little effort as possible. That might be one reason, but besides that, I’m not really sure.



SAM: So how do the artists do it?

JOE: They get to upload their music, upload one picture, and then they get to write a description. And that’s it. There’s a little pledge space that allows the user to pledge money through paypal to the band. The whole monetary thing would seem attractive to the band never mind from the exposure for them by just being on the site. But they seem to be reluctant to put up their profiles and I’m not really sure why.


SAM: Do you think it’s a popularity thing?

JOE: Well popularity on the internet is a funny thing. Some things seem more popular that they are and some things are a lot more popular than they appear to be. But I think a lot of things on the internet have a tipping point whether that it’s in the entire internet or a certain community like the music community. Maybe my site hasn’t reached the tipping point where everyone knows about it. I don’t know. The whole process leads to of hard questions that are very difficult to figure out. A lot of things are up in the air still. But it’s fun to think about

Promotion is another hard one that I think about. If you take facebook, it didn’t do a lot of promotion back when it was cool, but now it’s lame because every site has a thing where you can share articles on facebook, or join the facebook group for Macy’s or whatever. It’s just overload. I think you turn away your core user base or initial base, which are some of the best users, when you start doing that. So I’m very careful with how overt the promotional aspects of the site are. Sometimes you can do more harm than good.



SAM: Have you ever checked out the site, 8 tracks? I mention it is because they somehow attract people that listen to good music. Most music websites have sections where you can listen to other people’s playlists, but no one ever does because they usually suck. But on 8 tracks, people listen to random people’s mixes because they have faith they’ll be good. How do they attract a certain people?

JOE: That’s a great point. Honestly I didn’t make that connection, but now that you say that, that’s right on. How do you prevent lame people? I don’t know. That’s very important information we need to get our hands on.



SAM: What was your writing experience before your site?

JOE: Well I never wrote for a school newspaper or anything. I guess my writing experiences is that I went to a liberal arts school for college. 



SAM: What do you attribute to your success?

JOE: Well I’d probably say being focused on my users and making sure they’re happy. When they email me, I email them back. When they have a problem, I fix it. The other thing that goes along with making the users happy, is making the site as simple as it can be. I tell my mom to try and do a certain feature and I look over her shoulder. If she can get it, that’s it, but if she can’t, then maybe I should change it. There’s a lot of moms out there that should be able to use it too. And also how fun is it to use? I think by putting your own spin and having your own voice is very cool.


SAM: But at the same time, if you started a blog, it could be the best blog in the world, you had everything going for you, but no one ever knew about it, no one would ever read it. So I guess promoting is one thing and telling friends is another thing.

JOE: Anything that’s good and has value to people, something that people will like, it will promote itself. You have a good product. Promotion gets into the mix when you want to take it to the next level. You can’t be too worried about promotion, you just have to worry about content.


SAM: Part of my goal writing for this blog is that I promote bands basically. I was really frustrated because some of these bands don’t go anywhere. And I was talking to my brother and he goes “four years ago, I was listening to the black keys for the frist time and I was like ”˜holy shit’ these guys are really good. Four years down the road a lot of people know about them. You can have some faith in humans and word of mouth.

JOE: Yeah. That’s a testament to a band that hasn’t forced publicity.


SAM: In a perfect world, where do you see your blog in ten years and what are your goals?

JOE: Well”¦ it would be nice if bands were making serious money on the site. When they can do that, it forces them to make their profiles look good, creating more music, and making things better for the users so that it will make things reciprocate more users, more bands, more bands, more users.


SAM: Any last words?

JOE: I keep telling people, that if you like this site, the best thing you can do is tell someone about it. it’s not to share it over facebook or send someone an email, but to actually tell someone.




**To read all the interviews along with more of Sam's commentary, start with part one of "Listening to the Blogs"