Hyperbole. R.I.P.
Sad news filtered throughout the Australian music blog community last week (via Pity The Cool, WhoTheHell and Sound Alliance) when it became apparent that the Google-owned free blogging service, Blogger, removed Hyperbole. We deemed the site the second best Australian music blog in March 2009.
Turns out that Blogger didn’t agree; its moderators decided that the site had received one too many MP3 takedown requests. With a few clicks from ’some gung-ho web sherrif’, three years and 600 posts passionately supporting the Australian music industry - all gone.
Hyperbole was run by inthemix.com.au deputy editor Dave Ruby Howe [pictured right], who took the time to answer some questions in the wake of what he deems an ‘excruciating’ experience.
Andrew: As you see it, what happened? Why did Blogger kill the blog?
Dave: Well I think it really comes from poor moderation services on somebody’s behalf. There was a time when I would post MP3s on there that were not cleared and looking back that was a poor decision. But for at least the past year I’ve only posted material sent to me by artists, labels, PR people, etc, which was cleared for blogging. I wasn’t trying to break exclusives with my blog anymore, it was more about writing and enjoying music.
So I kept receiving individual post takedowns for posts that were years old, and with no functioning links, so some gung-ho web sherrif saw that a post had once linked to some relatively high profile remix and then complained. My thinking is that Google got one too many of these and pulled the plug, neither party bothering to check what the content on the blog was.
All that work, down the drain. How do you feel right now?
I won’t sugar-coat it, it really does feel excruciating. Three years and six hundred posts later and it’s all flushed away. It’s brutal. And the worst thing is I have no way of redirecting any incoming traffic to the blog to my new host - hyperbole.tv. That stings the most I think, because readers might think that I have pulled the pin myself.
Do you think it’s possible for a Blogger-based music/mp3 blog to survive and thrive without being taken down?
Unfortunately, it’s becoming increasingly clearer that that’s no longer an option. It’s a combination of Blogger’s lax moderation and overzealous label and industry tattle-tales that’s causing this, I’d say.
I’ll give you an example: Ellie Goulding. A UK singer who’s now a chart-scaling artist on Universal. I’ve done several posts on her in the last year or so, and those were with material provided by a friend and fellow blogger Derek Davies, who also runs the indie lable Neon Gold, which was putting out Ellie’s records. So he gives me and scores of other blog contacts some tracks from Ellie, and I remember specifically a Russ Chimes remix of her tune ‘Starry Eyed’, and I post it and it’s fine. That is, until after Ellie’s album has been released internationally and I get a takedown notice for it. It’s infuriating, and any contact you try to open with Google about these takedowns is never responded to.
For any blogger that wants to develop any kind of profile as an MP3 blog: don’t do it on Blogger. Simple as that.
What would you have done differently, knowing what you now know?
Well for one, I wish I’d taken more action. I actually registered the domain hyperbole.tv in March 2009, looking to overhaul my blog onto its own hosting and turn it into something more personal that I could use as a site for my own freelance activities and not just as an MP3 blog. But I just didn’t get my act together. The writing was on the wall earlier this year when a bunch of other blogs got yanked and I was determined to get out whilst I still could but I just wasn’t quick enough. As for the content, as I said, I was blogging cleared tracks for the past year so that didn’t need to be altered, I just needed to be off Blogger.
I’m trying to be positive about the whole thing though and treat it as a cleansing fire, of sorts. It’s sort of made me scramble and get things together for the next phase of Hyperbole which will hopefully achieve what I outlined earlier.
Thanks for your time, Dave.
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Bereaved Hyperbole fans can follow the site over to hyperbole.tv. For old times’ sake, we’ve included some screenshots of the old site below. Click for larger versions.
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Jan L. 05.13.10 at 9:41 pm
Best blog in my opinion, shame he doesn’t answer his emails.