Any artist is obviously free to choose whichever website they want to premiere their new album, but I honestly feel perturbed by Sleigh Bells‘ decision to use The Times. It must be noted that this is not a game The Deli is involved in (we deal with emerging acts, not with established ones), so this feeling is not generated by envy, but I guess by some kind of solidarity towards other music blogs. All blogs survive because of advertising, and advertising is supported by traffic. An album première by Sleigh Bells means a decent amount of traffic for any music blog, but for the NY Times, it means ALMOST NOTHING (because its web traffic is about 200 times the one of – say – Pitchfork). So you may think that since the newspaper’s site has so much more traffic, the promotion will be more effective for the band, right? I doubt it. The announcement of the Sleigh Bells release is at the bottom of the NYT homepage where hardly anybody reads anything, and it will probably go away by the end of the day. I wish artists would stick with their favorite music blog for stuff like that. Blogs provide constant exposure for these bands at no cost to them; it would be nice if they could reciprocate when they have the opportunity. Rated: not very cool.
