Music Blog Reviews

In order to check out my competition, I decided to review some blogs on a similar topic to my own, and here are a few of my favourites :


‘Welsh Music Blog’ 

The blog itself is pleasing to the eye with high quality photographs and is easy to navigate. Each post has links to Facebook and Twitter meaning readers can really get involved. The page displays the latest three blog posts in full with older posts at the bottom of the page, next to a complete archive dating back to 2011. Some of the blog posts are quite long in length, meaning readers’ attention may be lost by the time they reach the bottom of the page. Aside from this I would recommend this to any Welsh music fan and have subscribed to it myself!
The first thing I notice about this particular blog is the url address, it is clearly being used to make money by advertising a links sharing company, proving that blogs are a great way to monetise. The overall design of the page is simple and easy to read, although the brown background is slightly lacklustre. The statement at the top of the page clearly outlines what the site is about, and introduces a laid back and friendly style of writing from author Matt Keefer, which instantly creates a link with the audience, and draws our attention. The content of the blog is made of music reviews. It is fairly simple to navigate, with a search bar at the very top of the page.
6/10
The design of this blog is effective; simple but striking, and the pictures appear to be very good quality against the dark background. Despite the ambiguous title of the blog, once reading the titles it is instantly obvious that it is a music blog. The content is interesting and well written, with a lot of interactive content like mp3’s and embedded videos. As long as there is a fast enough internet connection, the page should load quickly, however some users might have to wait a while for the digital content to buffer. The links on the page are quite hard to understand, and as a result the blog is fairly hard to navigate.
5 / 10
On first glance this blog is extremely professional and well constructed. The navigation at the top of the page is clean, and easy to use. The page is extremely pleasing to the eye with an effective colour scheme and different colours used for different sections. The content is interesting and easy to follow, and although moving images are not always the most effective, in this instance the sliding photographs work very well. The newest content is ‘above the fold’, and the advertising is present, yet subtle. In a word, this blog is as close to perfect as it is possible to achieve.
10/10

'3hive’
This blog is perhaps the simplest out of the lot. Their tagline is, ‘Sharing the sharing’, and it does exactly what it says on the tin. The design is particularly effective; a simple teal background with white text boxes and professional style photographs. I particularly like the way the date of the post is displayed by a small, subtle circle on the edge of each photograph. The posts are kept short and snappy, and really draw the readers’ attention. It also has a helpful drop-down navigation bar. Altogether a clean, crisp and interesting blog.
8/10


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