RCRD LBL, the legit, vowel-free MP3 blog that's the combined effort of a bunch of indie/quasi-indie record labels and Gizmodo/Engadget's Peter Rojas, launched yesterday. And the occasion had
Maura wondering if there were enough regular folks out there familiar with the well-established, but still essentially marginal, concept of an MP3 blog to make the site profitable for the labels and artists trying to turn the format into a money-maker. But surely if nothing else, "Rojas' gadget-blogging background will probably earn him some extra love/eyeballs from the 'free music at all costs' crowd at Digg." Ah, but perhaps not. Because
the Diggers have responded in their inimitably whiny fashion, and while they have some of the same complaints that Idolator's readers did (the site is too busy, no vowels), they're (shockingly!) even less impressed with the RCRD LBL than y'all were.
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Idolator
Fortune reports on "OMG blogs can be record labels" poster child RCRD LBL hooking up with The Fader's site, indie-leaning tipsheet The Tripwire, and the members-only DJ site 1200 Squad to form an ad network: "Thefader.com, for instance, has 93,000 unique monthly users. RCRD LBL has 125,000. Thetripwire.com, an 'indie' rock destination, has 15,000. The hip-hop oriented 1200squad.com has only registered users.... By rolling the sites into a network, Cohen and Stone can now approach advertisers with an audience of nearly 240,000." Is it just me, or does simply adding up those unique users and reaching a nice, big, round number equal some faulty math? Especially since the two largest sites in the equation frequently give each other the linkaround, and presumably have some unique-visitor overlap?
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