NGA RIP

The 2013 Nereffid's Guide Awards should be coming up around now, shouldn't they? Alas, there will be no more Nereffid's Guide Awards. Well, I say "alas" but that's in the general sense, the sense that it's a pity that after six years an entertaining and, to some small number of people at least, useful thing should come to an end. In the specific sense, the 2013 awards, I'm mostly relieved to be shut of it, which sounds a bit harsh but bear with me. 

There were a few reasons for the awards' demise. One was financial: the review magazines cost a bit of money over the course of a year, and cutbacks needed to be made. Another was one I referred to a while back: I've stopped waiting for reviews to decide what albums to get, instead looking for brand-new releases. That, inevitably, eliminated the immediate (as opposed to archival) value of getting any magazines, which made the decision to stop getting them a lot easier. The third, and not an insignificant one, was that collating all those reviews was bloody hard work. True, hobbies that require little effort aren't much fun, but I was finding that the work being put in wasn't balanced by the pleasure obtained at seeing it done.

Also, let's be honest, site traffic shows that I'm not going to be upsetting thousands of people by giving up. There was some buzz with it back in the eMusic days but that was a while ago, and I never did it for the publicity anyway. I'm sure that someone could carve out a nice successful niche with a web site that collates classical reviews (Classical Digest exists but doesn't have new material) and presents awards at the end of the year. But that person isn't me. (Though if you know someone with technical expertise and money, call me...)