Chapter Five is all about blogging - the importance of having a blog, reading other blogs, and participating in the blogging community. There are tips for searching blogs to find ones that resonate with you. Ariel's book mentions a NYU study that found that if 40 or more blogs were posted before an album's release, sales ended up being 3-4 times as high.
The link to the actually study seemed to be expired, but I found some comments about it here.
http://www.coolfer.com/blog/archives/2008/02/blog_posts_help.php
As with any study, there are a lot of variables, but from personal experience I can say that there are a TON of people reading blogs. On myspace for example, I was surpised to find there are often more people reading the blogs than listening to the music.
So I got to work making a blogroll as suggested ( this is actually the point of this book, to do the work not just read about it!!).
-A blogroll is a list of blogs that you read or like, that cover your genre of music
So I did that. Then I also synched my blog here with my fiddleandguitar.com site (at hostbaby) so people can get to it without me having to cut and paste.
Finally, I joined mybloglog.com. This seems to result in a lot of "friend requests" of all sorts, so the jury is still out on that one.
Mostly though I think the key in this chapter, once you get into the blogging and all, is that you can maximize all your efforts by linking them (doing a blogroll, adding your blog to your other sites, etc.).
So to sum up Chapter 5, blogs are a great way to find the community that loves and supports your music and interestes, and to become a part of it. The tips for searching blogs, linking blogs, really getting out there are all in this chapter.
I did want to mention on a more personal note, that there is another benefit to blogging. I actually started my blog when I was feeling the challenges of being a bandleader. I would write some of the adventures down when I was frustrated, and all of a sudden they were sort of funny and crazy and "who has a life like this anyway??".
So it helped me to put it all in perspective and see that, if the car breaks down on the way to a gig and the Triple A tow truck driver sees you and drives right by because he "saw these people playing music by the road and they looked too happy to be stranded", and you end up waiting 2 extra hours because the Boston highway has a new bridge and highway traffic is stalled, etc. etc. , it's going on your blog and you'll laugh about in the future.
(this was a gig I did with Welsh singer Jodee James that we laugh about to this day).
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