And sometimes they don’t.  In June of this year, we launched a new design for our music publication, Tunes News.  As part of the new design we decided to add a new section, Featured Artist.  Our plan was two-fold.  One, it would give a closer look at a band or artist, their albums, changes in the band, and more.  Two, we were hoping to generate more reader involvement by having them help to choose the artist or band.

For the first month, we chose the artist and asked our readers to suggest artists that we should review.  We received exactly zero (0) responses.  So, we decided that since this was a new feature, we might want to try a different approach.  Our columnist suggested three potential artists, and we placed a poll on Tunes News in which our readers could vote.  This had a small amount of success and helped to choose our third artist of the month.

With a little steam behind the project, we decided to return to the original plan of having readers make suggestions.  The result? Again, no one named an artist or band. We didn’t even receive any joke replies, such as Mickey Mouse.

Although the open-response format seems to be a failure, it allowed me to learn something.  While our readers may not feel the need to name the artist, they do seem to like to have some options.  Thus, when October ends, we will be returning to the poll-style format.  I am hopeful that this will allow our readers to participate, and maybe encourage new readers to share their thoughts.

So, be sure to take a peek at Tunes News in November and weigh in on which artist we should review in December.