Proposal 1:
My first idea for my passion blog is to select a specific genre of music for each entry and then provide a few albums to help the reader understand what the genre is and provide a pathway to begin to explore what the genre has to offer. I think that the basic structure would be to introduce the genre in a very general sense and then go into the recommendations. As far as recommendations, I would probably provide one or two albums that represent the genesis of the genre, one or two albums that are quintessential examples of what to expect from the genre, and one or two albums that are doing something new or interesting within the genre. Even though each section could have up to two albums, I think that I would limit my overall number of albums to four in order to ensure that I am able to fully discuss each one within the allotted word count. The utility of this blog would be that it can provide readers with a resource to more easily explore a new genre that they may not have listened to or even heard of. I know that many genres, especially those with an expansive catalog of releases, can be intimidating to delve into, but hopefully, through the recommendations of this blog, readers could find new genres to enjoy.
Proposal 2:
My second idea for my passion blog would be to share an artist in each entry that is relatively small. I would probably use a metric like under a certain number of monthly listeners on Spotify or under a certain number of record sales. In addition to the artist being small, I would also strive to select artists whose works are unique in some way. The purpose of these two restrictions on who to present is that it would make it more likely that the reader has not heard of the artist and/or not listened to music that makes the same stylistic choices as the recommendation. In the posts themselves, I would provide a short biography of the artist, an explanation of what genre they generally fall under or what stylistic choices of interest that they make, and a recommendation of which album(s) to explore first. The appeal of this blog for potential readers would be that it is nearly guaranteed to provide them with new music to listen to. Since the artists would be so small, it would be incredibly unlikely that the readers have heard of the artist before, so they would be assured that the recommendations would be of potential interest. Additionally, beyond just the recommendation of the artists themselves, the exposure to new music could also introduce the reader to more general genres of styles that they come to enjoy. This would provide further utility and further opportunity to find new and interesting music.