GMU Pop Culture Journalism

Website Response: AbsolutePunk

AbsolutePunk is the go-to source for pop-punk fans.  It offers news, album reviews, free MP3’s, fan forums and more.  Since its creation nearly ten years ago, it has become one of the largest and most trusted online sources for punk fans.

AbsolutePunk offers readers a forum for news, new music, interviews and more.  What makes the site so unique is that it allows readers to create profiles and comment on the content and/or post their own content.  This creates an interactive forum, where members feel included in the site.  AbsolutePunk is a place where fans can be heard.  The site features things like daily polls, AbsolutExclusives (which are songs or interviews that are only released on AP) and discussion forums with links to different topics (not just music, but sports and politics as well). There are currently 332,000 active members in the discussion forum.  The site also features album reviews and often streams new music that has not yet been released directly on the site.

AbsolutePunk is a great site, but it is not without weaknesses. While AbsolutePunk has been increasing the number and frequency of their more in-depth feature articles, there still are not enough.  The site is too much of a forum than a respectable source for news.  Letting everyone post their own links is cool, but I think they need to be more selective about what gets posted, because it can be overwhelming at times.  Another weakness of the site is that there are too many links to outside stories from other pop-punk sites or magazines, as opposed to creating their own stories.  AbsolutePunk has enough writers/members to do their own stories, and just linking to other stories seems lazy, and again, prevents the site from becoming a reliable source for first-hand news. The layout of the page is too busy, and at times the number of posts can be a little overwhelming- most casual users could not realistically hope to read every new post made to the site each day.

AbsolutePunk features a variety of content.  Some of their more popular postings are their album reviews, which give a brief review and an author rating and an average member rating (in percentages).  Their staff reviews tend to be the most popular, like this recent review of the new Sufjan Stevens album. The site also features exclusive interviews with pop-punk bands, new and old, like this recent posting of an interview with the band Valencia.  AbsolutePunk also has more in-depth features, articles which tackle larger issues in the music industry.  This recent article about smaller labels surviving the onslaught of illegal downloading was one of the best examples of their features.

If I were to pitch article ideas for AbsolutePunk I would stick to the longer more in-depth feature stories.  I would want to write an article about how smaller bands are using the Internet (Myspace, Purevolume, etc.) to get their songs heard by labels, and how often bands are actually contacted by labels as a result of posting their songs online as opposed to bands sending their music to the labels.  Another story idea could be a review of a show.  AbsolutePunk doesn’t normally review shows, but I think that a review of the first night of a big tour would be well-received, so I would pitch a story about the opening night of the Saves the Day/Say Anything co-headlining tour that is coming up later this month.  A third story I would pitch could be an article about the best pop-punk music venues throughout the United States.  It could be a list of the top ten, with a little description about who has toured there and what makes that particular venue special.