Blog Building: Peace To The Blogs

Before I get to the main topic of this post, I'll hit you off with some thoughts and ideas:

• Gang Starr Month is still in effect, and this week will be densely packed with Gang Starr related posts. Also, in last week's poll you chose "Soliloquy Of Chaos" as having the best lyrics out of the bunch. In this week's poll you'll be deciding who has dropped the illest cameo verse on a Gang Starr track, so head for the sidebar and cast your ballot.
• Skypager is our Google Group/ Mailing List. Members get access to music downloads and new items that will not appear on the blog. Over 120 of you have joined, but I suspect that many of you are not aware of its features. It is both a Google Group and a Mailing List. Once you sign up you can choose to receive updates by mail or choose simply to visit the group directly, where you can click on "Discussions" and review any previously posted topic (meaning you can get those compilations that were posted before you joined). You can post messages of your own to the whole group (please don't spam) from there, or email the group. You have to sign up first to do any of this, though, so look for the pager in the sidbar and get to it, already.
• To our friends on Twitter, if you like any of our posts, keep tweeting and retweeting them. And thanks for your support for us on followfridays - keep that up too!
• A reader has alerted us to the fact that the embedded DivShare players, which we use with nearly every post, do not display in Google Reader. This is odd because they display just fine in the actual site feed. This is hugely inconvenient to our subscribers who use Google Reader, and if any one reading this knows of an alternative to DivShare (we like them because the players are compact and easy to embed and their deals on storage and bandwidth are great) or a fix to the problem, please let us know.
• Are you keeping track of our a-alike blog, Steady Bloggin? Add them to your RSS Reader, or just check for their recent posts in the fancy dedicated widget in our sidebar.

Okay, now to today's business. I'd like to send a special shout-out to the blogs that have sent us the most traffic since we've been keeping track (three months). It may seem odd for us to show love to other blogs for a statistical reason, but it just so happens that our top blog referrers are blogs that we respect and check for on the regular. So, without further adieu, I'd like to direct the readers to these purveyors of that ol' blog bap:

It's Coming Out Of Your Speaker - They are temporarily de-funked, but their generous redirect to T.R.O.Y. has played a huge part in building our base in these competitive blogosphere. Thanks, duns, and we got your back when you return.

Cocaine Blunts - One of the most respected music blogs, period, and also among the most thought provoking. I rarely agree with Noz on contemporary music taste, but I fully support his notion that blogging should be about new ideas, first and foremost.

OhWord - My first home as a blogger. Rafi, if you're reading this, bring it back in full force.

Grandgood - If it wasn't for Ming-Tzu and co. I'd be even more clueless about contemporary rap than I am.

Wake Your Daughter Up - One of the first blogs out there to place a significant emphasis on throwback material and do it well.

Those are the top five, by far; following them are blogs like THIMK, When They Reminisce, Isako-Hardcore, Bust The Facts, Crystaline, CRDS, and others that regularly appear in our shared items. Props to all.

-- Thun