Hey now, we are flattered and honored to be given the thumbs up by the coolest music trade going, bar none, HITS (what, you think Billboard is cool?). Check out their smoking hot HITS Daily Double column daily.

Here's the Blogcritics salute from the hypercool Roy Trakin:

Blogcritics.org: Some of the best music writing around can be found in the digital realm, where the distance between journalist, artist and fan is obliterated within a community of shared ideas. Blogs, short for web logs, allow one and all to maintain an ongoing conversation with a potential audience, reflecting the Platonic ideal of a true synthesis/antithesis dialogue. Tireless Cleveland rock journalist Eric Olsen, author of Billboard’s comprehensive Encyclopedia of Record Producers, has one of the best blog sites around, with a full array of pundits aboard, each represented by their own site, and all at least somewhat monetized, by the way, with links to buy the stuff being written about on Amazon.com, no small innovation by itself. I was also turned on to similar destinations, from the relatively mainstream Slate arts and culture pundit Jan Herman to more obscure Spy-like sites such as gawker.com (specializing in "celebrity" sightings like Conde Nast’s James Truman riding the subway) and gothamist.com. All feature comprehensive links to other bloggers and cited news sources. It’s enough to make you excited about a world in which everyone can at once be both critic and consumer. It also brings me back to the reason I first got into this - as a young, impressionable suburban kid forming my own opinions by reading the likes of Newsday film critic Joseph Gelmis and sportswriter Stan Isaacs, back in the days when hard copy still meant something.

Speaking of Roy, he has his own section up now on the inimitable Rock's Back Pages site:

ROY TRAKIN is a pop culture critic, pop and rock music aficionado, published author and online talk show host, not to mention diehard Mets/Knicks/Jets fan. Since 1992, this Brooklyn-born, L.I.-raised Jewish American prince has been exiled in the depths of the San Fernando Valley (north of the Boulevard, natch), paying off the SBA loan on the earthquake-damaged, still-hasn't-recovered-its-full-value house he shares with his indispensable wife of 18 years, Jill Merrill, and two auteur theorist kinder, Taylor, 12, and Tara, 10.
Continued on the next page Page 1 — Page 2 — Page 3

Article Author: Eric Olsen

Career media professional Eric Olsen is honored to be the founder and publisher of Blogcritics.org, which, quite frankly, rules - as do his wife and four children.

Visit Eric Olsen's author page — Eric Olsen's Blog