Happy Birthday, Death By Algorithm
Your favorite music blog turns 1
This post only exists to give myself a little self-indulgent pat on the back. It’s brief, but if you read ‘til the end I have a birthday present for y’all in the form of a new playlist & some stickers.
One year ago today, I sent out the first ever Death By Algorithm post. Like most of my posts, it was a ‘What I’ve Been Listening To’ article, where I talked about eight projects, one song, and one video that I’d been digging lately. At first it was just the eight projects, but John O’Connor told me I should add a song and a video too, so I did. It’s a format I’ve ended up sticking with for a year now. The first few newsletters were read by a handful of my close friends.
Once I got a month or two into the routine of posting regularly, I noticed some of the emails that were subscribing were unfamiliar. Up until that point I knew everyone who read the blog, and I could pretty much pinpoint the post or tweet or instagram story they must have seen that made them subscribe. But that started to change. Complete strangers were reading my posts and signing up for more, and this become larger than just an outlet to share music with friends. It’s not a huge number of subscribers right now (considering our digital age where numbers and followers are everything), but it’s a number I’m proud of.
It could probably be higher if I put all my time, energy, and money behind this. But for now my mentality is the same as when I started, “if you build it, they will come.” ‘They’ in this case referring to people that are passionate about their music, and the artists that they listen to. I’m building this for us, and slowly but surely, I’ve seen you all come to be a part of this. I couldn’t be happier that you’re here. Thank you. I started this during truly unpredictable times, and ended my first post saying “I hope [this] will grow into something cool and not flame out after a few months.” One tumultuous year later, I’m proud to see that it’s still going and growing stronger by the day.
In addition to my friends and everyone who reads, I want to give a special thank you to everyone I’ve interviewed in year one, from Paris Williams who I did my first ever interview with, to my most recent with Harry Teardrop. An extra special thank you goes out to my dear friend Camden. Not only is he the best hype man a friend could ask for, but my interview with him detailing the work behind Dissect podcast’s seventh season is still my most viewed article to this day, with more than double the views my average post gets.
To celebrate the first year, I’ve made a birthday playlist of my favorite songs/artists that I’ve discovered and covered in the first year of Death By Algorithm. I love every artist I feature the same way a mother loves all their children, but there are some that I come back to with more frequency. I’ve always been one to keep my ear to the ground to find new music (which is why I started this in the first place), but I feel like I’ve really kicked it into a new gear this year to keep the pace of the blog, and have found some incredible music in the process.
Happy Birthday DBA playlist!!!
Those are my favorites, but I want to know yours too! It would be sick if people would share the blog somewhere and tag their favorite artist that they found through Death By Algorithm. All the tags and shares really amount to clicks, and views, and subscribers. Trust me, I’ve seen it.
While I can see the numbers behind my content, I can never see the part I care about the most, which is what people take away from the posts. Cause I know not everyone that subscribes actually opens every post, and not everyone who clicks each post reads it all, and not everyone who reads the posts stops and listens to each artist. But when people have the time to, and they start to find artists they really like and connect with, that’s special to me. It makes me feel like all this work I’m putting in is worth it. I’d love to know what has stuck with y’all the most.
If you need extra motivation and want some DBA stickers in exchange for sharing the blog, I’ll send you some! Just make your post and shoot me a dm. My socials are in the blog’s about section.
Cheers to one year of DBA, and hopefully many more in the future