amateur disclosure; destroyers of the hugpile

1. Vaguely inspired by this post, I was thinking that journalists are required to disclose conflicts of interests. For the world of professional reviewing, I'm not sure how that works, but probably an editor would avoid assigning someone's best friend (or worst enemy) to review their book? (However, it might be hard, in some literary circles, to find a completely unrelated reviewer)

Yet, it seems increasingly, as review sections shrink in publications, that people are relying on amateur, online sources for their reviews. Simultaneously, authors are like anyone else, going online and meeting and befriending readers, as well as other writers (perhaps to an even greater extent which they did in the past?) Is there a problem, either practical or ethical, with the amateur reviewers not disclosing any dealings or relationships they might have with the author or entity publishing the author? Are amateurs bound by any codes? If you endorse a friend's work in your blog, will you need to add a disclosure statement?

2. ( write-up of a conversation which might make no sense, depending on how well I write it up )

more random thoughts, again w/ the Shiba Ryoutarou

SubD had an interesting tangential comment in the last entry. Unfortunately, I'm totally unqualified to respond to it in any way, because I didn't even know that apparently indie concerts are cheaper than rap/pop/metal concerts. According to jokersama, though, this is mostly a reflection of the relative lack of popularity that indie acts have. Pop and rock cost a lot because they play arenas which use Ticketmaster. Such indie acts, even if they can sell out popular venues, can't fill up huge arenas, therefore, they don't play there, don't use Ticketmaster, and prices are low, so it seems to be less of a reflection of the nature of indie than a reflection on its relative popularity. (Unless a band gets to that level and deliberately rejects playing large venues)

Anyway, was talking to Sabina about this, and what seems to have happened, according to her, is that in recent years, indie bands which were formerly obscure are hitting the top ten, not because they've become more popular, but because everything else has gotten less. Indie fans often love to buy things like vinyl, therefore they're overrepresented among that portion of the music-buying public who actually puts down cash to buy albums. Therefore, they've become more influential.

(So the audience has been reduced to the hardcore fans, with everyone else streaming or buying less or downloading?)

In other news, reading Harimanan Monogatari, which is SUPPOSED to be about Kuroda Kanbei (the dude who was Hideyoshi's strategist after Takenaka Hanbei dies, and now a new character in SW3), but I'm like forty pages in, and Kanbei hasn't even been born.　This was serialized in a newspaper, so I'm kind of er dude are you trying to pad this story, which is why it's four books long? ( talking to myself here, as you either can't read this book or have no interest in doing so )