I was actually inspired to make That Whiiiite after seeing The Chuckness. While most of the music blogs I was used to posted dozens of songs per day in an attempt to completely cover a genre, here was an unpretentious blog geared towards college students. After following it for a few weeks, I liked the idea so much that I decided to give it a shot for myself.
Here are my current “rules” for the site:
1) Don’t make posts for the sake of making them. Quality over quantity. Only post a song if I really like the song and I think it will resonate with people. If there’s a song out that’s the “newest, hottest shit” but I’m not that fond of it, make a review of the song and say so! Otherwise, avoid it and let the 10,000 other blogs cover it. I want people to come to this website because of the consistently good music and the passion the writers put into their posts.
2) Recruit others as passionate about music as I am. It’s too hectic to do this solo dolo. People love music and are willing to volunteer to write about music they’re passionate about. People can help you cover genres you’re not familiar with. People can make posts on days you’re busy so the website stays active.
3) Make the website well-organized and easy to get around. I think at this point the website is well-organized, but it is unfortunately limited to “get around” because of the limits of the free WordPress design. One of the things I will be most proud of when they are fully fleshed out are the different categories we have (Samplepedia, Thirsty Thursdays, Sample of the Week, etc…), but unfortunately, as a reader you don’t know they exist unless 1) you religiously check the site or 2) you happen to see them as small categories on the right side of the page. This is one thing I want to fix when I move to a new domain.
4) Stay focused on new music, but feel free to embrace older songs. The age-old question of passion vs. relevancy plays in here. I want this blog to read like a blog I would go to, and I honestly wouldn’t visit a blog if it didn’t have a lot of new music on it. If a blog was very very expert in a certain niche, then perhaps I would visit it, but I don’t think I have the expertise to make a blog like that consistently interesting.
5) Don’t act like I’m a prime authority on music. I’m 22 years old. I do listen to music all the time. But I’m still learning, especially in a lot of genres outside of hip-hop. I want to give you music I enjoy, but don’t want to act like I’m better than someone who’s visiting my website. I want to be honest about artists I’m posting about – if I’m listening to them for the first time, I want to say so.
6) Post good quality audio. This one’s self-explanatory. If people can get better quality audio of the songs I’m posting at other websites, they’ll go to the other websites.
The next subject I want to cover: How do I make my blog stand out among the saturated market of college music blogs? What brings people to my site, and brings them back once I get there?
The Science Behind a Music Blog 