Published: October 8, 2009

Offering Jay-Z’s latest album (before it went on sale), an exceptional take on Glenn Beck and an allotment of up-and-coming artists and other Internet phenomena, three college students from Connecticut have added a fresh blog to the expansive online music community.

The undergrad bloggers, Ryan Scanlan, Fordham College at Lincoln Center (FCLC) ’11, Dustin Pawlow, Tunxis Community College ’11, and Brent Higgins, also of Tunxis Community College ’11, founded “yeahDevelop” (yeahD) in July with the goals of discovering and promoting alternative electronic, hip hop and indie rock music. Scanlan, Pawlow, formerly of Hampshire College, and Higgins, formerly of Savannah College of Art and Design, are high school friends with similar musical tastes, situated at varying college campuses, united by “yeahD.”

Of all the music blogs voicing opinion about the latest underground act, the bloggers at “yeahD” seem to offer music reviews and mood-oriented playlists as one friend recommends a new band to another. For over a year Scanlan considered starting a music blog, but he was concerned not only about getting it off the ground, but also his ability to evaluate music without simply recycling material from other blogs.

While setting up the initial infrastructure through a free publishing platform called “WordPress” was relatively easy, “like running a Facebook or Myspace account,” according to Scanlan, producing unique content was not. Without access to professional sources of new music, the student bloggers were forced to seek out obscure blogs and put forward their own views of already discovered, albeit still largely unheard, musical artists.

Scanlan’s remedy for this quasi-aggregator conundrum was to attempt to endorse a new artist as early as possible since being the first was nearly impossible. He provided “Toro Y Moi” as an example of “someone we would stumble upon in our own searches of blogs,” and then review while the artist was still gaining popularity online. Scanlan also sees hosting leaked tracks before many other music blogs as a way to differentiate “yeahD.” In fact, the name “yeahDevelop” refers to a song from the original version of Lil Wayne’s “Tha Carter III,” which was never officially released after it was leaked online in 2007.

Another content-generating plan Scanlan revealed was to review music from the 1980s and 1990s that “gets lost and that wasn’t promoted” when it was first released. For now though, the majority of source material comes from other blogs. Yet, Scanlan and friends have hopes of intensifying “yeahD” from a simple blog with no start-up cost to something more.

“My goal for yeahDevelop would be to get the type of ‘ins’ that let you break music,” Scanlan said. He would like to network with band managers and musicians so that he is actually the first to discover artists that he reviews. By communicating via blogs, fan lists and Myspace, the “yeahD” bloggers have been contacted by artists in appreciation of free promotion, some even sending free unreleased tracks to be reviewed.

“yeahD” has already featured one Fordham musician (the solo project of Eric Littmann, FCLC ’11, called Phantom Power) and would like to seek out other on-campus acts as a means to break out new music, according to Scanlan. Music scenes on college campuses are “one of the strongest potential pools for growth,” Scanlan said. He recognized that “the opportunity to discover new acts that people all over the Internet haven’t heard” is one way in which college music bloggers have an edge over the average music critic. In the future, he also hopes to purchase a domain name.

With hopes to progress as an online vehicle of musical tastes and passions rise problems of legality, which exist for all amateur bloggers. Since two thirds of the content of each “yeahD” post is not original, copyright law seems to be an obvious danger, but Scanlan sounded confident that the blog’s disclaimer would protect them from any lawsuit.

Asserting that bloggers are usually safe from legal trouble “as long as you offer the option to take something down if… the person who controls the rights to the music contacts you and request that,” Scanlan also made clear that he is not interested in stealing music, but in spreading and promoting music that he and his friends enjoy.

Blogging about untapped musical talent is not something Scanlan believes one must be a professional critic to undertake. In fact, he acknowledged that despite having no expert credentials, his blog is now viewed by people (musicians and other bloggers that have contacted him) outside the original readership—his circle of Facebook friends. While he maintained that developing “yeahD” is something he has done with pleasure, Scanlan confessed that “researching the music that we’re posting…[is] probably the most professional thing that any of us do in our lives.”