This is a #noshots zone. I have a lot of respect for what eskay and company have accomplished at Nah Right and I have benefited from their support from the beginning. That said, Nah Right hasn’t had much value for me as a news filter in years and I haven’t been a regular reader in a while. At some point receiving dozens of items a day that I wasn’t going to care about, without any context or comment just became too much. I can’t begrudge eskay for growing the site’s page views by accelerating the post count but it did change the nature of the site and sent users like me away.
At the same time, the nature of news on the web has evolved since 2007 when I considered NR essential. Along with many others, I’ve found (and moved on from) a number of news filters I prefer since then: smaller bloggers who are more selective in what they post, peers sharing what they’re reading on Google Reader or Tumblr, and most recently the link exchange serendipity of Twitter.
But I do still like to check out the Nah Right sidebar for Nah Right Lite, a list of links to items on other sites that for whatever reason didn’t warrant a full post, even though the link-and-embed style of Nah Right proper means the main posts aren’t much “heavier” than the Lite ones.
So I was excited when I signed on to Twitter this morning and saw someone not associated with the site sharing the news that the Nah Right Lite RSS is working again after being broken for a ridiculous amount of time. The very discovery of that news I’d been waiting for is a perfect example of why I don’t use any big hip-hop news site. As the NY Times interview subject famously said, “If the news is important, it will find me.”
Nah Right Lite has become more useful than the main site. Its selections run toward the periphery of what the site is willing to cover and I live on the periphery (pause). You also don’t see much on NRL that leaves you wondering why the item got posted and that’s probably a byproduct of the slower posting cycle. Meanwhile, the main content of the site churns and churns. As I write this sentence, the Nah Right post linked in the paragraph above was posted less than 24 hours ago, but has already been pushed down to page 4 by the 36 posts that followed.
The conventional wisdom is that Nah Right and other big news / new music blogs are the new DJ, the force that will save music sales (ha!), and our modern gatekeepers. To eskay’s credit, I haven’t seen him spouting this “I want to believe” silliness (or much of anything, right?) but he does benefit from the prevalence of the sentiment.
And so that leads us to the other big thing that’s changed since 2007. All the attention blogs received attracted the money guys. One by one, and sometimes faster, the most industrious blog pushers have been joining up with networks like Complex, Uproxx and OkayPlayer. Now AOL’s in the game with StreetLevel. Rap Radar is struggling to put up Nah Right numbers because money + Nah Right imitator still equals Nah Right imitator. And while nobody was paying attention, Global Grind’s aggregator has been drinking everybody’s milkshake.
In 2009 the rap blogs everyone knows are run as businesses. They have big sponsors, put on CMJ events, even score awesome payola from actual recording artists! Though I think the artist in Gyant’s story is going to want the $2,000 back when he realizes how much money he owes his record label.
Rap stars shout out blogs, give them exclusive videos and sit down with them for interviews. At least that’s for the blogs that still do interviews. Artists and less popular bloggers looking for attention wonder how they can get on sites like Nah Right. They may attempt questionable stunts to get them there. Anything for that link.
It turns out that link might not be worth what you think it is. And it’s almost definitely worth less than it was last year or the year before. I say this having witnessed the phenomenon myself.
Back in the day when we would post new Internets Celebrities videos, they would end up running on different hip-hop blogs but Nah Right was always the dominant source for referrals. Only when Illseed at AllHipHop happened to post our videos did we see a force that could beat Nah Right and do it handedly. Man, I do miss that AllHipHop link-love. But at the blog level Nah Right was clearly king of the Youtube view-count.
When we released Vend Diagram two months ago it provided an interesting case study for how things have changed.
On September 1, just minutes after Vend Diagram went live at YouTube, Nah Right posted the video. Fifteen minutes later they posted something else, fourteen minutes later they posted something else, thirty-five minutes later they posted something else, twenty-six minutes later they posted something else, twenty-five minutes later they posted something else. Two hours hadn’t passed yet and we were already more than halfway down the front page.
Still some boost came. At the end of that day Nah Right had provided a few hundred views and was the number one referrer for the video. Miss Info’s post from the same day was a clear second but it was far behind. The next day it gained on Nah Right. The next day it gained on Nah Right. The next day it passed Nah Right. The next day it kept going… ultimately almost doubling the views that came from Nah Right.
The next week I was surprised to see Bol’s September 1 post of Vend Diagram pass Nah Right’s in the amount of YouTube views delivered.
Below is a chart comparing the number of unique visitors at the three blogs.
When it comes to site traffic Nah Right is clearly king. If we could look at page views it would probably be an even more dramatic lead since many use the comment section at nahright as a chat room. So what’s going on here – how is it that the two markedly less popular blogs delivered markedly more attention to my video?
Less is More
In September 2009:
MissInfo.tv had 155 blog posts.
ByronCrawford.com had 52 blog posts.
Nah Right had 758 blog posts.
The day after we were posted at Nah Right, there was basically no chance of a casual user finding our video in the archives. The action at Nah Right is never in the archives but always in the top post, where the conversation is almost never about the content. Commenters engage each other, eskay’s postings are the social object around which they congregate. As I’ve said to eskay before, no one actually cares about hip-hop news. People go to Nah Right because it provides a way for them to express their identity as being hip-hop alongside a bunch of other people doing the same.
Things have a different feel at the other two sites. It’s not just that the slower pace allows for posts to stay on the front page longer and stay discoverable in the shallow end of the archives – it’s also a different culture.
Like eskay, Miss Info is part of the Complex network but unlike most bloggers she comes from a background in print and broadcast journalism so it’s safe to say we won’t see her giving context-free link-blogging a go. Byron Crawford has kept his blog independent as ever and it’s hard not to root for a guy who consistently steps up to the table and creates and is hated on by those who can’t. I’ve had my off weeks but I remain a fan and agree with noz that Bol deserves a world of credit for his iconoclasm.
Info and Bol may post less often but they offer up more in the way of ideas and try in radically different ways to spark discussions around their content. Their efforts pay off in that the comments at these two sites are actually about the posts. So while they may not put up the overall traffic numbers of Nah Right, they create a culture at their sites where people engage with the content. Because they are more selective, the audience learns about their judgment and they earn a level of trust. Half the audience at Bol’s site may be there to argue with his choices but they still get an idea of where he’s coming from and that it rings true and that’s what makes the argument worthwhile in the first place.
This is about a level of reach that Compete.com isn’t measuring. A million people might visit your blogs every month but if you have no way to say to them what you think matters, what you have is a bus terminal.
So if you’re a blogger, let’s say you can get the page-view… does your audience trust you enough to let you convert that page load into a play, and then can you convert the play into a conversation? That’s reach with depth instead of breadth. It’s not how many people your blog reaches but how far your people will go with you.
Popularity vs Trust
Jesse Thorn is the host of The Sound of Young America “a public radio show about things that are awesome.” Because of Jesse’s dedication to delivering the awesome his small online audience (he hosts a forum and blog) is extremely loyal.
Luckily for us, Jesse likes to partake in Internets Celebrities goodness and to share it. He too posted Vend Diagram on 9/1. The next week he links my “hustle is showing” post and does a post about us offering our DVD on a pay what you like basis.
I get an email on 9/11 from someone who bought the dvd. It reads:
I just ordered your DVD.. Can I change address or is it too late.
side note: I found out about you guys from Jesse Thorn’s Sound of Young America blog. I have not seen any clips. I went on his word alone.
Jesse didn’t send us a large number of YouTube viewers. What he sent us was someone willing to plunk money down on our dvd going on his word alone. That is a level of reach earned only by building crazy amounts of trust from your community.
The visible, credible fan is your best evangelist. I think of Sweeney Kovar’s impassioned blogging about Jay Electronica that set everything in motion. Despite his small readership, Sweeney’s authenticity, credibility and passion were wildly infectious and the people rapidly followed Sweeney’s lead. Your “tastemaker” is a moving target.
If you’re an artist or a publicist, you need to consider the trade-off you’re pursuing when you target the high volume blogger. And if it’s Nah Right you’re pitching, see if they’ll give you a spot in the Nah Right Lite sidebar instead. You may get to sit in the top spot all weekend there.
{ 37 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for sharing that info. Because of the time you’ve been around and your relationship with all of the players you have a rare insight into what’s going on in hip-hop blogland.
My thoughts:
Media will always struggle to balance trust and attention, especially online. Often what builds trust won’t grow attention and vice versa.
Right now it feels like the only way to make money off your blog is to go for attention aka pageviews aka share of the market.
I hope young scrappers who want to start a blog know that there is another way to play the game. You can go for trust aka visitor loyalty aka share of cuustomer.
I haven’t updated my blog in years, yet even though the pageviews are dropping, the trust I built is still paying off for me today.
For readers like me that never visit actual blog sites except when clicking through from Google Reader, I don’t care too much about where a post is sitting in the queue. In fact, there’s really no other way to stay abreast with a “blog” like Nah because you’d have to skip 20-25 posts before finding the one that’s worth a click through.
Even with my G-Reader spitting real-time feeds and even if I click on a Nah post that dropped like one second ago, by the time I get to Nah (literally 2 seconds later) the comments are always like 50+ deep and most of the discussion is either a continuance of a previous post’s discussion, smack-talking about basketball, people swearing they’re not gay, or taking shots at each other’s comments – all of which is fine. But what is the value of any of it? To me, there is none. So I stay in my G-Reader knowing I don’t need to click through.
Raf, do people actually hang out on NR all day, like the actual site itself? That’s crazy to me. I’d be so frustrated by not being able to keep up with new posts that I’d bounce after a few minutes. I don’t see how you can build loyalty like that…
@J-Mass peep the Nah Right comments section; its the same people holding a convo, like a message board.
good read. thanks for sharing the info. like j-mass, i stick to google reader and pretty much ignore anyone w/out a good rss feed. i’ve contemplated dropping nahright because of their volume and dropping dallas because his feed is empty. i’ve kept both but pay them less attention than low volume sites w/full feeds.
Great read, very very honest approach. Around last year my debut mixtape was posted on NRL, at first I was thrown off, being that leading up to the actual debut each leak brought upon a full post. After about 8 days with my link still resting on the NRL It all finally made sense. Good call.
The “Lite” in Nah Right Lite is somewhat of a misnomer.
I think of it more as a “NR 2.”
It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not good enough for the main site. With most of the stuff there, it’s just too much content (i.e. long news article, interview, etc.) and it’s better just to link to source than do a “blockquote.”
Sometimes the determining factor between Lite or not is whether there’s any video or audio for said news, interview, etc. If there’s video/audio, it’s much more likely to get a post.
Other times, we might want something to be visible and we know it’ll get more focus in Lite since it’s less frequently updated.
And somethings are just “Lite.”
wow rafi u put in some work on this. i’ve always felt sort of like a bystander in the blogosphere because:
1. print journalism has always been my priority (that’s where my money is)
2. the content level some people are able to produce is type crazy. i’m lucky to get in 2-3 posts a week (refer to #1). so knowing that sometimes smaller is better gives me some comfort. thanks.
but i certainly wouldn’t mind enjoying more hits from more links. but yeah, i totally agree with you on smaller, tighter blogging to a niche audience has it’s advantages.
I guess for my part putting my blogroll back on my blogs might help…but does anybody use blogrolling nemore? i’m so out the loop right now…
neway, i don’t have time to peruse thru anyone’s massive list of links and posts every day. just opening up my feedreader now has become like a full time job. so now i tend to update all my feeds, glance over a few then dip off somewhere to do something else because it starts to feel like i’m giving too much time to what other people are writing about. and now as we approach xmas i’m getting more print assignments.
but i do really like blogging because of the editorial freedom of it, and this post has given me some thoughts on how to further cultivate my audience.
neway, that’s my 2 cents. great job rafi!
The realest shit you’ve ever wrote.
I’m pretty sure I overheard a guy asking for Jesse’s autograph at the TSOYA DC event last weekend.
nice post. the post was so good, i read every single comment left by readers, as well.
i guess that’s called total immersion. no homo, tho.
s
Fantastic post. As a new blogger I’m struggling to find that line where I post enough to attract visitors and yet deliver commentary that is informative, interesting, and at times intellectually stimulating enough to encourage them to return. It’s a hard line to walk, but I’m hoping more and more to shift into original content and analysis, because it is what I prefer, and I believe it attracts a more interesting and interested audience.
By the way, I was linked via Noz’ sidebar, and you’ve got a new reader now.
Very interesting and well thought-out post. I’m a big fan of NRLite myself, and I could see how in some cases that would be a more valuable post than a main one, if the speed of posting is high. I never really thought about it. I read every NR post, in my g-reader, a few times a day. So every post gets an eye ball. But I could see how the audience at large might miss some.
Wow.. Knowledge hath droppeth..
Fantastic post. I see how much thought was point into it, its incredibly thorough. Although I’m confused if this is a Nah Right bashing or just an observance of how music blogging has grown (granted possibly out of hand). The criticisms are warranted but lets not forget that NahRight is a pioneer of a certain style of blogging. One source can never be everything to everyone. That goes to show that the blogosphere is always open to new sites with new approaches. *wink wink*
Very nice piece. Well crafted.
Peace.
really well thought out post. i recently have been talking and collaborating with a few bloggers in the last year. one thing I noticed is that some only have the desire to make it to Nah Right or hit Nah Right numbers. But, there are good number of us that wouldn’t mind the Nah Right traffic but rather post content that explains our personality and perspective on the world. I guess some of us want to be on Nah Right, others on Nah Rite Lite. which one you? btw, salute to the 23 people that come KTL. You should visit everyone else’s blog who left a comment here. good company.
Rafi,
“It’s not how many people your blog reaches but how far your people will go with you.”
I have been going back and forth with writing “Hip Hop: A World Built on Black Pussy” and how when John put those pictures of Rihanna’s vagina on his blog in May, it became clear that the bloggers were like the rappers in their willingness to use us to stack they quotes.
I had no idea how valuable it was to have a concept to write about. Going to the new Honey magazine launch party last December confirmed this for me. Here was this social networking site, based on magazine, rooted in a brand that Black women loved, but it seemed directionless to me.
The site was pretty, but had no content.
Whereas my little blogspot blog has HELLA personality, pretty plain looking with a tag line that SAYS what it is “Thugs, Feminists and Boom Bap.”
Reading your piece further confirms the importance of having folks willing to go there with you, to plop down that money, on the STRENGTH.
That is 1 of a 1000 true fans.
This is probably the most reflective piece I have seen written about our world.
Nice reflective piece, Raf, a lot of hard info and an insider’s touch. It’s been a slow burn at The Ashcan, but you’re right, I’m glad to be gradually building a readership that leaves comments about the actual words written. It’s sometimes hard to remember that we (at least some of us) got into it for the interaction and ideas…it’s so easy to become a slave to your stats count. But thanks for the reminder.
very interesting post, thank you for it.
Internets Czar in the building…
Hashim,
Right, there are different ways to skin a cat. There are also different ways to get attention. Nah Right has earned themselves a loyal audience but a new site posting the same type of content 20 times a day will have a very difficult time building a large audience.
I’ve seen a few friends of mine try the music aggregator come lately route. I’ve seen some quit and can imagine more quitting in the future. Because it just doesn’t pay off for the amount of effort it takes.
Then there are some sites that are constantly bidding for attention by creating linkbait. I look at Complex or agent b’s old video game site for an example. They try to get all their traffic in spurts from Digg and other social media sites. Some would say you can’t argue with the results but to me, that game isn’t worth it either. It’s like they’re starting over every day.
But this long-ass post isn’t really about what path bloggers should take. What Nah Right does works tremendously for their aims. But what about the artist or whomever else that they’re posting about? I wanted to challenge conventional wisdom that the sites that are most visible are the best places to get attention from. These sources are not good at attention brokering because they miss that crucial ingredient of trust.
Sites that have trust but no attention aren’t good at it either. You need both elements to be great at transferring attention: people have to be paying attention to you and they need to trust your judgment.
Dre,
Thanks for breaking that down.
Hashim, cherryl and others have mentioned the difficulty of small sites seeking attention. It’s not really the focus of this piece but I understand that it is a question many of you probably wrestle with.
I’d say it basically comes down to being different in an interesting way (useful, insightful, entertaining, etc). Showmanship is an underrated characteristic for bloggers.
slimmy,
It’s not Nah Right bashing. I like eskay and in February of this year I chided Hashim and others harshly for the spirit of their Nah Right critique in the Hip-Hop Ads Group.
I don’t believe there’s any sense in bashing Nah Right. eskay is doing what works for him and his community. The choices he has made shapes his readership and he knows that.
I used to blog at Oh Word with the idea of writing for an audience of hip-hop bloggers. That’s not eskay’s thing, he’s playing his game exactly right.
The post is really addressing the question of what it means that a Nah Right post leads to less eyeballs than the same exact post, posted the same exact day at less popular sites. The conventional wisdom is that sites like NR are where you want to end up as an artist. My point is that the support of good mid-level or even obscure but influential sites (jesse thorn, sweeny kovar) can be a more valuable source of attention than the traffic leaders.
Dope post, Rafi. I’m grateful you took the time to break it down like this because you helped demystify some of the myths people have about the Internets. As someone who runs a marketing/PR firm, I find myself discussing the value of getting posts on certain sites with my clients often.
What you point out is that there are different types of publicity “currencies,” if I may call it that. I’ve noticed that exposure is valued differently by different clients. Some prefer quantity vs quality and even that dichotomy is subjective, based on how they perceive a certain site. To some its a numbers game, to others, it’s a feedback game. I can’t knock either approach b/c our goals vary from campaign to campaign.
This is good food for thought and I’ll be directing clients to this article to marinate on.
I’m surprised you didn’t mention WorldStarHipHop and their numbers game. Or is that like beating a dead horse? You’d be amazed at how many industry folks (even veterans that should know better) still regard the site as THE catalyst for fame.
Michelé,
Thanks. I probably should have given the fraudulent WSHH a mention in that paragraph. It’s funny how popularity is self-reinforcing. A crowd draws a crowd… Just where did those original Nah Right commenters come from?
Fuck! © Taylor Negron
One
Great post Rafi. Thanks. Not only does this give me a little more insight into how we should think of blogging on The Ashcan, it also provides me with some ammo for the naysayer, pro link-droppers out there.
Hey Rafi, finally had a chance to read this. It’s great to see someone stepping back and looking at the big picture once in a while. This post definitely made me reevaluate some assumptions I had, so thank you sir!
On point.
Ive been further disconnected from the Hip-Hop blogworld because of various reasons, but the lack of content on a lot of blogs I used to praise is definitely one of those variables (aside from just being busy with real life shit).
Couldn’t have put it any better.
When it comes to blogging quality > quantity, always.
Writing this as the Yankees win the World Series tonight!
As someone who has written a long-running hip hop-esque blog that has vacillated between specialty coverage and quasi-aggregator format, this post had a lot of resonance for me.
The aggregator angle is a tough one to work, not only from an effort point of view but also, since many artists, labels and companies value a post on NR over other blog sites for the reasons Rafi outlined above, because you end up having to swipe content for your posts from Eskay et al. because its not being sent to you as the same time as them. (For example, I had to bark on one dude who sent me an email yesterday with his main pitch point being that ‘Major Blog X’ had already posted it even though he admitted to me that it wasn’t a ‘Major Blog X presents’ exclusive. So I’m supposed to be happy being treated as a second class blogger and post your sh-t after you already sent it everyone else first? GTFOH.)
But it ends up being a clusterf-ck because not only do you always end up a day late and a dollar short with your content from a blogging perspective but also as a reader. I have a lot of hip hop blogs in my Google Reader that I’ve been using for the past few months and well over 50% of them are posting the exact same stuff as Eskay, YN or Shake & Meka every day!
Now that some other things in my life are demanding my attention, I’ve really thought about cutting out the NR clones from my daily RSS reading and just stick to the sites that I have always found the most thoughtful (yet not time consuming – big issue for me), original and useful: sites like Grandgood, OhWord, Rock the Dub, Steady Bloggin’, and eclectic sites like Couch Sessions and ATCN.
On the blogging side, I also want to pair down the number of posts I do for my site and focus less on posting stuff that you can already read multiple times over on NR and its clones and focus on stuff that sets me apart: supporting more youthful or clubby hip hop that a lot of the big dogs either hate and/or completely ignore, post more stuff from my new hometown of Toronto which I’ve already been doing as well as more eclectic stuff from the electronic and alternative worlds that I think hip hop fans would like and finally, step back up the social/political content I post that a lot of my readers used to tell me they liked, but I fell back on because it was so much work for me to digest and contextualize for the blog.
Trying to build a community around my blog has been one canard I’ve never been able to solve though. I started by posting tons of links with commentary in a single post each day in an almost on-steroids version of what Catchdubs used to do, but people told me it was too much to take in. So then I paired down the commentary because of that and also because I didn’t have time to write it any more after I started a new job. Slowly but surely though, I switched over from that to the one topic/post format that Eskay, if he didn’t pioneer, certainly popularized but nothing helped. But still, very few posts have ever generated more than 1 or 2 comments at best. Finding out that I had 1900 ‘visitors’ via Google Reader subscriptions and many more being referred to my site via the Elbo.ws and Hype Machine mp3 blog aggregators made me realize that I’ve never really built a community on my site, just another site where people think they can leech free music! :/
So if that’s the case and I no longer have the time, energy or any kind of financial incentive to try and post everything anyway, I may as well be more strategic about what I do post and go back to why I started the blog in the first place: as a platform for me to share stuff I am genuinely excited or intrigued about, especially when its not being talked about anywhere else and if it is being covered elsewhere, without regard to if I’m first or current with it or not.
All that being said, I agree with Rafi: hats off to Eskay (and his team, Nation & Dre) for building the movement they have at Nah Right but artists, labels and PR firms would do well to heed his other point that a placement in NRL or on other less-trafficked but possibly more influential specialty sites with unique or original editorial voices & perspectives might be more valuable than a post on the main NahRight site.
Rafi, how you find the time to do all this I’ll never know.
Unless you tell me…but you know what I mean…
I imagine you have to read, watch, and write so much more than I do and I’m sittin’ here having trouble trying to keep up with it all.
Keep the good work coming mayne.
sidenote: I’ve expressed the same sentiment to people before (the whole less is more, popularity vs. trust thing as it applies to the hip-hop blogosphere) but it was mostly just in passing. Its something I do often. I’ll pass up on writing something up because I’ve either seen or somehow, “know,” that somebody else is saying it or will say it, maybe even better than I could. Do you ever have that problem and if so how do you get passed it? Is it just a confidence thing or what? Things like that are what keep me coming back to the blogs I read. Insight into another person’s thought process is a cool thing.
PEACE
re: nah right lite
“It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not good enough for the main site. ”
i remember asking eskay why my (the?) first interview with Jay Elect was linked on Nah Right Lite and not the main page few years ago and the response was pretty much that it was interesting but not really enough for the main site.
Rafi,
Great breakdown of the trajectory that hip hop blogs have taken since 2007 – as a print journalist (dinosaur) transitioning into online, I’ve been pondering what the lasting effects of breaking a new artist on NR are as opposed to smaller, more content-focused sites such as TSS. I posted an interview up on Nah Right and got crazy hits, but no one willing to build on the conversation or even stay around long enough to look for more. So while some people looking to break a new artist would think that hits = success, I agree that introducing them to a community willing to discuss their impact would do them far better in the long run, and actually give them feedback that isn’t some asshole pause reference meant to tickle their immature peers. And also, sites like this, that I’d rather entertain my RSS feeder with. Kudos.
Very nice breakdown Rafi.
“This is about a level of reach that Compete.com isn’t measuring. A million people might visit your blogs every month but if you have no way to say to them what you think matters, what you have is a bus terminal.”
I very seldom say this, but hot damn, I wish I’d written that.
This was a great piece…grazing over to the follow-up now. As always, thanks for putting in the time to do it right and post meaningful, detailed content instead of PR commentary.
I know this post is a couple weeks old now, but I just landed on it today and had to comment. Real dope piece and really does make me reconsider the approach on the content I post and direction I’m going with on my site. Great article.
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