I think everybody here has made some good points. The CPMAs are essentially a marketing scheme for the paper. They get all of us sharing the link to vote, driving traffic to the City Paper website. And then when we vote, they have our contact info for the future, thus increasing their readerbase.
In the past there was a genuine connection between the Charleston City Paper and the Charleston music scene. They were actively contributing to the growth of the scene and it really made a difference. I’m talking back to the pre-pandemic days, when Kelly Rae was the music editor and then Heath picked up and did a good job too. Of course, @chelseagreenheart was great as well but she had to deal with a completely different environment than existed before the pandemic, and the paper’s priorities have changed.
There are a lot of things at play here, but the main, most important element is that the City Paper does not currently have a music editor. So, they probably aren’t paying attention to the scene at all.
However, there is also a major lack of interest in the up-and-coming music scene from Charleston’s general population. We have sold out shows all over town from touring Live Nation artists and then our amazing local artists struggle to get people to come to their shows, most of the time.
We can’t blame this on the City Paper but really Charleston is changing. The Paper could help with the amount of reach they have, and the printed version of the paper going out all over town every week. However, it would likely be a monetary sacrifice for them.
The lack of current local interest in the scene means that there will not be a huge readerbase for local music content in the beginning. This may start to shift over time with exciting content coupled with strong local talent, but when budgets are tight, it is hard to justify sinking money into something that may never return a profit.
This is something that I am very familiar with as the editor of Extra Chill. Do y’all understand how hard it is to get people to care about the things we write about local artists that nobody has ever heard of? There are bills to pay and covering the scene takes time that could be spent on things that do make money.
Overall, I don’t know what the solution is. I can see both sides of the coin here. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
