Are album review sites worth it? (my concept)

Hi,

I just got into internet marketing after completing a college education in International Business. Seeing I've always been into online business, and don't feel like working for a boss, I've decided to try my hand at setting up some sites.

As for skillset / experience I have ordered and read into some SEO books, so I should have the basics covered. I can also do a lot of Photoshop designing, and have read a LOT about SEO / online marketing lately. Also, I've been experimenting with WordPress a lot as of lately, and additionally learning some CSS / PHP / HTML to customize if needed. However, I must add that my coding knowledge is still rather low, but this is why I will use WordPress.

The idea to start something in a niche which is not familiar to me feels uncomfortable, and to work on my other ideas I will need some capital, which I don't have at the moment.

So my idea is to start a review site for a certain niche of music. I'm planning to make it look like a blog, while also creating a good overview of song / album reviews that are archived. Additionally, I will create a forum where people can submit either music they want reviewed or a review as a whole, and discuss anything posted.

The reasons for this set up are:

• I want to build rich content rather than a general affiliate site. This will also passively help my Google ranking.
• I want to actually have returning visitors, that will visit my site frequently to check for new music. I've always searched for sites like this, and asked around and there don't seem to be any worthy ones.
• I want to help / support the artists while doing this. If the site won't yield money in the long run, I will hopefully still have produced something that I can be proud of, learned from, and helped the artists.

Additional notes:

• I searched for competitors, and there don't seem to be a lot of them on the key words I focused on. Speaking with producers in this genre who have a lot of fans, they see it as a good idea and can hardly mention good examples. (or my view, competitors)
• I wrote a couple of reviews to see if I can actually do it. I've gotten a lot of positive responses on this, so that should be ok.

Now, a few points which I would like some advice on are:
I think, if I ever want to turn this into a good money:time-investment ratio, I will have to get outsiders to help contribute and submit content. My idea is that if you create a site which people like and create a sort of community, people will be willing to submit content. Also, people can promote music of their own / people they are related to. Do I have the right idea here?


How can I actually monetize this concept? I'm thinking Amazon affiliate links, but I'm kind of doubting the fact whether people will buy from there. The pros are that because this is a community kind of niche, people will support artists by buying there music. This will bring the con that people will prefer to buy from the artists directly instead of Amazon. The other cons are that some artists offer their album for free, which means no commission. And a lot of the smaller artists will even not have their products on Amazon.

Another issue is the prize of Digital music / Albums on Amazon, which is generally low. Al though, this has 2 sides; it will yield low actual commissions, but will convert people more easily since the price is low.
The second idea is the common adsense ads, al though I heard the payout from this is negligible.


What do you advice me to do, and what do you expect will be the barriers I will face. Also, since I don't just want demotivating advice, what are the pro's of my concept which I overlooked?


Thanks, and I'm sorry for any sort of lack of insight in the information / expectations I posted.


~Bas

Edit:
I have to add that for now, I just graduated, and hardly spend any money. I have freelance based work next to this to build up some money before deciding what I actually want to do, but if deemed profitable I can adjust my time to invest more into this than my day-job.