A Letter from the Editor

Dear friends and readers,

Last summer, I started Paper Stereo with a group of people who all share a love for music. Nine months and 116 posts later, we are still going strong, working to gain repute in a sea of countless other mp3 blogs and doing our best to bring new, good music to you.

Unfortunately, I write today with bad news. Starting today, Paper Stereo will not operate as it has in the past. There was a time that we posted five times a week, until I found that the burden of writing fell on me, and that I could not keep up. We reduced our postings to three times a week, and that sufficed for a long while. Now I realize that I am not able to keep up this pace, and that Paper Stereo’s blogging will reduce drastically, if not completely.

My reasons for this decision are several. This blog is a truly labor of love and has brought me a great amount of joy as well as provided me an output for my endless thoughts about music. But lately the negative has outweighed the positive.

The main negative is my inability to keep up with the pace of blogging. My writers have written less and less frequently since the beginning of Paper Stereo, and I can no longer pick up the slack. I am busy with a great many other things, and I find that the constant thought of having to write a blog post not only takes time away from these other (and, as far as I’m concerned, more important) things but decreases my drive to do them. I have never operated well when constantly busy and, in the interest of my own mental health, I need to cut a few things out, one of the first of which is regular Paper Stereo posts.

Another reason for this change is that, in constantly searching for music to write about and spending a good deal of time analyzing albums and songs, I lose some of the joy inherent to the music. It becomes a chore to overthink every piece of music I come across, even if that overthinking is a simple jotting down of thoughts. The demand and strain that posting puts on me often keeps me from enjoying the music, making it more like a job than a hobby. That joy that comes from listening—simply sitting down and listening in its purest form—to music is something I’ve experienced less and less frequently since I’ve taken on the brunt of the blogging, and I do not consider this diminisihing joy worth it.

The final reason is that, despite my dedication and effort, we just don’t have the readership we’d like. After nine months of consistent blogging, I thought we’d have more recognition than we do, but with so many other mp3 blogs out there, many of which have been around fairly long and have secured their readership, I can see why a new blog on the block would have problems getting started. We were starting to get heads up from bands and PR people, but I just don’t feel like we’re reaching a sizeable enough audience for me to continue working myself this hard.

And so things must change. If any of my writers turns in a piece to me, I will still post it on the blog, but I will not make up for a lack of articles by writing them myself. As for me, I will be posting articles spontaneously and much less often. Though I’m not making any promises, I see myself posting a few brief track reviews maybe once a week, maybe once every two weeks. If the mood strikes, I’ll write more, but I’m leaving my schedule open to my whims and my needs.

So I guess Paper Stereo is going to be a part-time blog from now on. I have nothing but gratitude for anyone that has ever written anything for me: Sarah, Charlie, Felix, Ryan, Matt, Stacey, Austin, and especially John, who’s been so dependable and beautiful and devoted that I cannot thank him enough. Thanks to the bands that have taken interest in the blog—Delta Spirit, Bodies of Water, and The Parson Red Heads—you’ve given the world beautiful music and I feel that little post on the blog is the least I can do to repay you. I also want to thank anyone and everyone who reads the blog—you’re the reason we started this in the first place.

Thanks for reading all this trash and I hope you’ll continue to check back every now and then. I encourage you all to look for the beautiful music all around you and to share that beautiful music with anyone and everyone you meet.

- Dominick -