The Ebb and Flow of Blogging

At Musical Assumptions, Elaine Fine is lamenting what she calls the fall of musical bloggery. First off, the ebb and flow of one blog doesn't mean the blogosphere is dying. Second, there is a seasonal aspect to all of this; there's less going on in the summer musically (at least in my neck of the woods) and people are more likely to be outdoors than blogging, reading blogs, or attending musical events. I mean, Dial M for Musicology had no postings in January, but they're back in business and have had several this month.

Here are some of my own statistics for this year, with apologies for formatting issues:

Month      Number of Postings      Number of Visits    Number of Page Views

July               24                                   2900                             3800
June              27                                   3600                             4500
May               17                                   3800                             4800
April               20                                  3700                             4700                           
March            32                                   5400                            7500
February       26                                   4400                            5800
January         34                                   3900                            5200

Now, what might account for some of the ups and downs? In my case, there were a few things going on in the first three months of the year:

• Season announcements, which I track and comment on.
• San Francisco Symphony strike, which I didn't cover as closely as I should have (a planned summary posting was pre-empted when the strike was settled, for example).
• The death of SFS principal oboist William Bennett.

I was out of town for the first 11 days of May and tired out after that, so May was slim pickings in posting. I had readers anyway.

I'd like to see statistics for a number of blogs over a several-year period showing a fall of musical bloggery. The stats for one or two blogs over less than half a year don't show a pattern. I can definitely say that my readership has increased over the last few years. I obviously can't speak for anyone else.

What I can say is that the 50 or so music blogs I read are alive and well, and with the Proms on right now, there's almost more than I can keep up with. Anyone who thinks there's a gradual fall of music blogging might just consider a change of reading material.

UPDATE: I originally labeled the third column Number of Visitors. It is now corrected to Number of Visits. They're not the same thing.