Open Stats

Everyone likes a plucky underdog, right?

I (Kieran) started A Certain Taste initially to write a little something about five new albums I liked every month. as a way to encourage myself to listen to at least five new things every month. And that’s what I did for a whole year. Ok, April 2020 was a wash, but for the most part, I sought out new music, discovered new artists and found a new appreciation for genres I had never touched before.

As I got more comfortable doing this, I wanted to spread my wings a little and start reviewing albums. There are always way more than five new albums I enjoy and want to talk about each month, and I am back to enjoying writing so why not? It was at this point I started looking at the stats.

Initially, this site was on blogger.com. While you can hook up Google Analytics, I didn’t bother. All Blogger shows you are pageviews. So that’s all I initially had to go on, and the stats here will lack detail for previous months because of that.

Wait, what? Stats?

In the startup world, there’s a trend of opening up and showing the world your data. The Open Startup movement was kicked off by Buffer, but many other companies and founders have picked it up. It’s part motivational tool, part marketing tactic and very interesting. I decided to adapt this for A Certain Taste.

I’ve worked in digital for close to ten years now, with and for many different industries, but I’ve never seen behind the curtains of a successful blog. I have no idea what is good or bad for a blog of this age in this industry. I have no real measuring stick. So, why not be that measuring stick for others? Maybe people will look at this and realise their stats are good comparatively. Maybe they will see this blog’s numbers and growth after x months or y years and feel aspirational. Who knows?

Hopefully, people appreciate the underdog story of a new website trying to push through all of the noise of basic bitches filling their sites up with copied and pasted press releases and gossip about controversial figures of years gone by.

I will update this monthly, and it’s likely the reporting will get better as time goes on.