Music information is created through the everyday activities of performers, audiences, composers, journalists, teachers, students and scholars. They create scores, record music, and write letters, books and articles to document their interaction with music. Today we can add blogs and podcasts to the list, but the essential principles have been the same since antiquity. In a sense we all participate in one big "conversation" about music with innumerable smaller 'conversations'.
People in these groups have varying interests and approaches to music, so they bring different perspectives to these "conversations." This affects the way they communicate about music - the assumptions they start with, the opinions they hold, the kind of evidence they think is persuasive, and even the format of their communication!
The particular perspective from which we approach a musical conversation also affects the way we perceive information.
For example, an article about Baroque era tunings may be of great interest to the researcher who wrote it and to performers interested in contemporary-practice performances, but not be very useful for a student trying to understand the history of women opera singers.
When you find a source, such as blog post or newspaper article, you need to consider its original context and purpose in order to evaluate how you can use it. This task of evaluation is one of the biggest challenges facing music researchers. Fortunately, you can improve at it with practice, like any other musicianship skill.
