Recently we came across some sites that took countless opportunities to lambaste some new albums dropped by known acts. They took pride in their creative way of basically saying, “This album is not worth your time”. And while we appreciate a good critique, these lowball attempts at gaining clicks to your site not only feed into the culture of negativity, but they lower the standard of writing on a platform that is already rampant with cheap writing. At Ear to the Ground, we come across hundreds of acts each month. Of course there are some that are difficult for us to listen to, but in such an abstract art medium, we could never stomach publicly criticizing the difficult work of someone else’s self-expression. We decided years ago to add something to the Internet – an honest take on a critical culture. It is too elementary to merely curse the darkness. It takes skill and a ridiculous amount of heart to point out the light in these dark corners of sound. When you are focused on the waves of great music being created by genuine artists, you lose time to waste on critical pot shots that lower the bar for artistic journalism.
Our mission is to connect great fans to great music and with the support of both; we have been able to make a small dent in the musical landscape. Our subscribers believe in this mission as much as we do and the result has seen an honest push in recognition for well deserving artists. Utilizing platforms like Soundcloud and Spotify, fans have been able to connect with performers who otherwise would have been missing out. We exist as a grassroots campaign of exposure for the singer songwriter in Utah playing in dingy basements.
Of course, as long as there has been music, there have been those who seek commercial gain alone. There are those who curse integrity to gain popularity. We understand this all too well. We are simply too busy trying to uncover and promote great art to worry about those who have sold their musical souls to the “pop” gods. There are too many struggling musicians out there playing dive bars, sinking in debt, and worrying about scraping enough gas money to get to the next gig for us to sink to the standard of mere click bait. Frankly, we don’t have time for the bullshit of negativity. We take our mission seriously and thank you for doing the same.
