The TL;DR -
2014 was the heyday of music blogging. Hypem's popular chart was the most influential thing in the music industry, and blogs such as Earmilk, The Music Ninja, Stereofox, and my own Indie Shuffle, were your ticket to inclusion. On top of that, there were the millions of users browsing music blogs daily, mostly with an eye toward free MP3s.
Around this time, Spotify also grew to prominence. The convenience it offered meant fewer people visiting blogs to discover new music. Over time playlists grew to replace them.
Google SEO and "long lasting" content
A blog post sticks around for years. Unlike a playlist share (which usually disappears after 30 days), articles indexed by Google keep showing up when people search for your name, your song, or even just the right combination of keywords. That means every write-up is a little breadcrumb trail back to you, one that never really expires.
They're easy to share with your existing fanbase
When you've got a fresh piece of press, you don't need to overthink how to promote it. Drop the link in your socials, send it to your mailing list, stick it in your Linktree - it's quick and digestible. Fans are more likely to click and read a proper article than they are to rewatch your own self-promotion for the 10th time.
Press quotes to be used for your marketing
Having someone else say nice things about your music goes a lot further than you saying it yourself. A single flattering sentence can turn into an Instagram story caption, a line on your EPK, or even part of your Spotify bio. It gives you credibility, and it gives journalists and curators down the road something concrete to latch onto when they write about you.
Help trigger Spotify's algorithm
Spotify’s recommendation engine uses natural language processing (NLP) to crawl the web and see how people are talking about music [1]. Blogs posts give Spotify context about a song: is it "summery" or "alt pop" or "inspired by 90s rock"? Those phrases cues can influence how the algorithm understands your track and who it might recommend it to.
On top of that, blog coverage often comes with a Spotify embed or link. Every time someone clicks through and streams your track, it feeds the in-app data Spotify cares about most: plays, saves, skips, playlist adds.
[NEW] Get ChatGPT and other LLMs to know your name
This one's new, but important. AI models like ChatGPT are trained on huge amounts of text from the open web, and blog posts are one of the easiest ways to get your name into that pool. The more times your music shows up in online articles, the more likely it is that when someone asks an AI about you in the future, it will actually have something to say.
They're not the influential players they once were, but they're still a solid part of the puzzle. A blog post today won't single-handedly break your career, but it can keep your name searchable, give you credibility, feed the algorithms (both human and machine), and spark those little bursts of activity that add up over time. In other words.
We recommend focusing on two categories of blogs on SubmitHub:
1. Hype Machine-listed
2. Really Good Bloggers
Hope you find that helpful 😀