Musical Carnival Musings
This week's Carnival finds its emergency home this week here, where it all began on my blog. I hope this is not where it will end.
Structurally, I think I have done everything necessary to make the Carnival a success. We are listed on a couple of Blog Carnival referral pages, and for most of the carnivals I have notified the major bloggers.
I wonder what I am doing wrong. I certainly cannot blame the submitters and wonderful volunteer hosts, whose fine efforts have distinguished the Carnival of Music as one of the most interesting in the blogosphere.
Is the blogosphere just oversaturated with carnivals? Is the topic of "music" too broad? Does there need to be a Carnival of Jazz, or Composers, or Rock??
I have not been as engaged in the Carnival over the last few weeks as I should be, and I'm sure that hasn't helped much. Still, it seems like the Carnival hasn't ever reached that critical mass of readers to stimulate volunteers for hosting and posting.
I would be interested in any suggestions.
In the meantime, please spread the word and check out the many fine submissions we have received over the last 2 weeks in Carnival of Music #24.
Hey, don't get down on yourself here. Carnivals aren't too hard to get started, but boy, are they hard to maintain.
If you want a few suggestions, here you go:
-The Washington Post has a technorati feature on all of its articles that tracks what blogs have linked to that particular article. If you want to find some music-focused blogs, I'd go to the music reviews and look at who's blogging on the articles there.
-Try and set up a community, on yahoogroups, on TruthLaidBear, or both. Having a central place that will automatically e-mail subscribers to remind them of the Carnival's existence is always a boon.
-Write to any blogger with decent traffic who might potentially be interested. Conservative Cat, Reynolds, the Watcher of Weasels...anyone
-If you don't have a lot of submissions, give the host permission to go ahead and link to any blog posts they know about that are talking about music. The longer the list of links, the more people will find the carnival through technorati as well as Google.
You can do it, and just drop me a line if you're in need of assistance.
Everything on the blogosphere is subject to fluctuates--just look at Instapundit's own yearly traffic breakdown. Don't let a down moment discourage you, use it as motivation
Posted by: Adam at December 19, 2005 09:50 PMOk. I admit it. I'm completely missing the point.
Carnival of Music? So? Who cares and what does this do for me?
BTW, love the Heinlein quotes. He's been my favorite author longer than most folks have been alive. The first sci-fi book I ever read was Heinlein. (The second was Jules Verne, I think.)
-Bear
Posted by: Bear at December 20, 2005 03:05 AMI think every Carnival has a purpose; this one gets together post about music that might normally get swallowed up in say the CoTV. (In fact one of my music posts was not inc in a CoTV because the host could not see its "worth"...another was slagged off mercilessly.)
I have linked to this in my carnival round-up.
Posted by: Andrew Ian Dodge at December 21, 2005 09:45 AMThere doesn't seem to be a group of regular submitters, which would really help to keep it going. Why that is, I'm not sure. You might be able to get more excitement around a more specific carnival, but maybe not.
Posted by: owlish at December 23, 2005 11:53 AM