An Update For East Of 8th Music Blog – Same Values, New Affiliate Disclosure
The East of 8th Music Blog has always been a project of our love for music. Since day one, this blog has brought you honest coverage of indie rock, alternative, and indie pop music. While we’re located in Nashville and we love to focus on the scene in Music City, we try to extend our coverage to anything that we’re passionate about. We have always covered music that we like to listen to…and hope you will like as well. We’ve never reviewed albums just to take shots at artists and we don’t go to concerts just to belittle an artist’s hard work, and we never will.
Like many things in the music industry, small time blogging is not profitable. In fact, running East of 8th costs us money each and every year. And, while it’s not about the money, we’ve decided it’s time to help offset the costs by working with some partners.
The first company that we are going to work with is Amazon. For better or worse, with the current set up of the blog, Amazon is the easiest company to start adding to the site. We’re not going to do excessive banner ads. We’re absolutely not going to take payments from artists, managers…or anyone…to promote anything. We’re not implementing mass advertising, paywalls, or memberships. The implementation of the Amazon affiliate program onto the site should be almost unnoticeable to our readers.
How does it work? Starting now, when available, there will be an affiliate link for each album or song contained in our reviews, previews, or other posts that will take the reader to Amazon where the item, song, album, etc. can be purchased. If the song or album is not available as a stand-alone product on Amazon, we’ll add a link to the Amazon Music Unlimited — a music streaming service that has an amazing variety of music. These links will be back-added to some of our more popular posts. This does not cost you, the artists, the labels—anyone—anything. They get paid the same as if you naturally went to Amazon to make the purchase. We only get paid if you then decide to purchase items from Amazon after you decide to click the link. The prices you see at Amazon are not increased because of this. We’re not going to hide these links. You’ll know that you’re going to Amazon before you click. (Please see our related web cookie policy and privacy policy.) We’re also not removing the direct links we always put in our articles that connect you directly with the artists. As we said, this change should not affect the experience for our readers in any way.
As we continue to implement this program, you may see some new article types come your way—product reviews, editorials, etc. However, the music is always going to come first.
It is with renewed energy and a hope that this helps make the blogs more sustainable, we look forward to a bunch of new content coming your way!
Thank you to all our loyal readers, artists, publicists, and everyone else who make East of 8th Music Blog a special place for indie rock, alternative music, and indie pop!
Best,
George Maifair
Editor of East of 8th
