Tofutti: A Music Blog Review #3
(Stop by here first if you have any questions about what musicblogs are or if you're having difficulty understanding the reviews.)
Authors: Blair Carswell, Mark Willett, J.P. Connolly, David, Anders Pearson, Saleem, Jon, Jeff and (full disclosure) myself (though far less often than I should...)
Primary Genre: We don' need no steenkeeng shanrahs here; M4R offers electronic, rock, Japanese-pop, funk, metal, indie-pop, DJ mixes and Randy Newman. That's just THIS week.
Type: Group
First Post: April 2004
Update Frequency: Copious and obsessive. Fifteen new tracks and eight or nine new articles on the artist is a pretty average week. Check in regularly or else you run the risk of missing some jewels.
Music Format: Almost entirely downloadable MP3. Tracks stay available for a little more than a week after posting.
Design Style: A bit cramped and utterly without frills, but boilerplate is all that's necessary when the content revolves so quickly.
Ease of Use: It is sometimes difficult to decide which links lead to music and which to artist sites. The post itself doesn't always make clear exactly what sort of music you're downloading and the bare bones design doesn't exactly encourage a reader to experiment. The lack of an archive accessible from the main page makes it harder to learn about tracks that have been posted as recently as a week ago.
Writing style: Varies by the contributor but always enthusiastic and almost always knowledgable and fun.
Anything else?: A short blogroll of some of the better known musicblogs, a collection of web comic links and an updated list of comments on the entries.
John Sez: Music for Robots' multiple members post a considerable diversity of tunage with songs for all tastes.
Music for Robots clocked in a full fifteen minutes of fame recently when they were contacted directly by Warner Brothers Records to promote a single from The Secret Machines. It marked the first time that a major label had reached out to musicbloggers and suggested, at the least, a sort of tacit approval of the work that we were doing. M4R posted the track in question but was stymied by some comments left behind that suggested corporate spam. The story broke nationally in the New York Times and M4R was on the mainstream map.
Past Offerings: Basement Jaxx b-sides, Badly Drawn Boy, Bjork, Buena Vista Social Club, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club... and that's just the B's!
What You're likely to find: What you least expect at any given time. Probably a few tracks that you'll be familiar with and almost certainly a few that you won't.
Bottom Line: Music for Robots has established itself as one of the best, most diverse, most frequently updated and most notorious musicblogs out there. Highly recommended.
John Seroff
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