Music Review Show

NBC News' tech and culture reporter Kat Tenbarge has her finger firmly on the pulse of internet culture and the influencer economy. She honed her expertise at Insider through investigative forays into the complexities of digital fame. Her coverage is much more than product launches and squillion dollar deals, and touches upon MeToo, fandoms, exploring how internet mobs chill free speech, and so much more. In this episode, we explore what the music press can learn from technology journalism. Related links Read Kat's reporting on NBC here. Q&A about how Kat reported on the David Dobrik allegations for Insider Kat's piece about Angelina Jolie and Amber Heard Find Kat and her tweets about Evan Rachel Wood and others cases against Marilyn Manson here Reporting: 'Free Britney' organizers and influencers took over a bar, threw a drag brunch, and blasted Britney Spears in a weekend devoted to the pop star Follow Kat on Threads here Reporting: How Tory Lanez trial bloggers are shaping the conversatio

From revolutions in Iran to the pleasures of Lana Del Rey journalist Emma Garland has written for Vice, Huck, The Quietus, The Face, Crack, Dazed, Sunday Times, Rolling Stone and many more great publications. Emma's interviewed everyone from Emily Ratajkowski to Lingua Ignota, capturing their essence in a style of writing inspired by the journalists from a more literary tradition like Joan Didion and Hunter S Thompson, so who better to talk to about music writing that's intersectional, encompassing far more of life and what it means to be human than 50 word reviews of the latest major label debut. The conversation begins about the differences between journalism, culture writing and music criticism, before spiralling in a range of directions from psychoanalysing the cast of Love Island to the way the culture war means interviewees are now a lot more guarded because they're speaking far beyond the readers and their fans. Emma Garland shares insights into her creative process, using humour to tackle weighty top

What's it really like to edit a music website? DIY Magazine co-founder Emma Swann joins DiS founder Sean Adams on season two of the Drowned in Sound podcast about the future of music journalism. We journey from the early days of the website to its current print & online format with a discussion that contrasts and compares DiS & DIY's stories, the thrills, the challenges, building a trusted voice, how brilliant the new Bully album is, some White Stripes fandom, a fair few mentions of Wolf Alice, red carpets, and much more. We explore DIY's origin story, the value of human curation versus algorithms, and whether print magazines could make a comeback. Emma shares her unique perspective from the front lines of music media. "Music journalism isn't just about reviews; it's about making connections, about showing the humanity behind every note." "Print magazines have their own magic; they offer a pause, a moment of engagement you won't find online." Learn more about Emma's work at DIY Magazine and follow

Journalist, podcaster and climate communicator Greg Cochrane shares how interviewing ANOHNI changed his life, what it was like editing NME’s website, the joy of being involved in Loud & Quiet magazine plus a little bit about writing for The Guardian, interviewing Lady Gaga for the BBC, and plenty more. The focus of our conversation is around the importance of understanding the intersection between the climate emergency and culture. “We need more stories about what’s happening” said Greg, in a really moving section of the podcast involving his hopes for the future of journalism. Toward the end, we also touch upon the economics of media and the creative economy as a self-sustaining ecosystem, including a shout out to Novara Media’s subscription model where people are encouraged to donate an hour of their salary. Related Links Read Greg’s life-changing interview with ANOHNI https://www.loudandquiet.com/interview/anohni-hoping-for-a-miracle-cover-feature-interview/  Greg’s coverage of Billie Eilish’s recent “

Kickstarter's co-founder Yancey Strickler shares lessons from Fugazi's label and Beastie Boys' Grand Royal magazine and discusses the forward-thinking ethos of The Royal Society, a prestigious fellowship of the world's most eminent scientists. Yancey is a big thinker, a music lover, writer and a 'zine publisher. He wrote about music for Pitchfork, Village Voice, eMusic (with many of the current Bandcamp Editorial team) and more, before becoming a notable figure in creative project funding at Kickstarter and now Metalabel. He shares a wealth of insights on the intersection of music journalism and the quest for authentic creative expression in the digital age. Discover more about Yancey's work on ystrickler.com or follow him on Twitter @ystrickler. Learn more about The Royal Society Read Yancey's viral essay on The Dark Forest Theory Discover Meta Label, an endeavour aimed at building infrastructure for the creative economy and making collective projects easier. Read about Grand Royal's fleeting yet

The Big Issue's Culture Editor Laura Kelly on their campaigning work, like Venue Watch to help save grassroots music venues across the UK. As Laura says, "Across the UK, there was more than two venues closing every single week." Through Venue Watch, The Big Issue is raising awareness of the challenges facing venues and driving action by "telling the story of a venue" each week. As part of Drowned in Sound's new season of podcasts about where music journalism is headed, we explore how sharing these stories and putting "values to the fore" allows The Big Issue's activist journalism to kickstart national conversations and create change. We asked Laura how music journalism can go beyond entertainment to activism, and she responds "I think music journalism is about building that bridge between the art and the artist and the world around." Laura offers an insightful look into The Big Issue's unique social mission and using journalism as "a force for good." We also shoutout James O'Brien, The Skinny, Music Venue Tru

Where is music journalism headed? Sean Adams (@seaninsound) introduces season* two of the Drowned in Sound podcast in the style of an editor's letter meets a meandering, unscripted voice memo. TL;DR? To mark 23 years of Drowned in Sound, I decided to embark on a series of interviews with TikTokkers, rock writers, tech reporters and more to try to figure out whether things could be headed. * = series?!

Everyone from Radiohead to Sugababes to industry insiders are raving about a new book by therapist and live music expert Tamsin Embleton. It's an extraordinary body of work entitled Touring and Mental Health: The Music Industry Manual, which includes contributions from a series of mental health experts providing insights and advice covering everything from breath-work to nutrition, and resilience to rest. The book contains interviews with people who live and work on the road, alongside musicians including Pixies, Pharoahe Monch, Nile Rodgers, Radiohead, Four Tet, Lauren from Chvrches, Will Young, Justin Hawkins from The Darkness, and many more. In this conversation with the author you'll learn more about the realities of the road, how touring with Nick Cave & Anna Calvi fed into the initial stages of this book, and why Live Nation has bought 3000 copies of it to put in dressing rooms. We discussed some of the topics in the book such as dressing room environments, dealing with the media and some simple ch

Our series of conversations about Artificial Intelligence and music continues with a look at the ethics and legal implications of these new forms of technology that inhales creativity and spits out creativity using everything that has been fed into it. And not everything has gone in with permission, let alone consent. At the spring 2023 budget, the UK government announced that they would be allowing AI firms to more easily access copyrighted material.... this seemed somewhat alarming to us as people who run a record label, manage musicians and care about the creative industries. Should be be worried?! We asked Dr Hayleigh Bosher, a leading expert on intellectual property to help us understand the law and the bigger philosophical issues with Artificial Intelligence technology using existing music to create new music. Dr Hayleigh Bosher (@BosherHayleigh) is the author of Copyright in the Music Industry, is a senior lecturer in Intellectual Property Law at Brunel University, and hosts the brilliant Who's Song Is

In case it wasn't obvious, this a music podcast that hasn't had enough of experts and to mark International Women's Day 2023 we spoke to Vick Bain the founder of The F-List and President of ISM (the independent society of musicians), to her PhD research into inequality in the music industry. This episodes covers everything from her research into the Ivors songwriting awards having a pitiful amount of women winners to setting up the F List database of female+ musicians. In recent days, Vick Bain has appeared on the BBC's flagship programmes Woman's Hour and Newsnight, as well as spoken to The Guardian about what Glastonbury's Emily Eavis called a "pipeline problem" in trying to secure festival headliners that aren't male. This is the first in a series of conversations about inequality and the future of the music industry. If you've been impacted by harassment within the music industry, visit WeAreMusic for a selection of links. For more about Drowned in Sound, join our Substack newsletter and follow our foun

“If you start out and it doesn't do something that you're very impressed by, your assumption should be that your prompt wasn't very good,” this summarises the advice from music industry veteran David Boyle, who specialises in understanding audiences, and over the last few months has become an expert in using ChatGPT (if you've not already, give it a go here). So much so he's co-written a book called PROMPT about, you guessed it, writing prompts to get artificial intelligence to give you better answers. This conversation is aimed at musicians and people who work in the music industry, but the takeaways should be fairly obvious whatever you're trying to achieve. Our host, Drowned in Sound founder Sean Adams, shares some of the ways he's been using ChatGPT to get movie recommendations based on the songs that are on the soundtrack and using it to better understand the complex legalese in a contract. This conversation has also inspired David and his team to write a new edit of PROMPT for musicians, taking in some

The robots are coming, and people are fearful and excited about the potential for AI and music to collide. It's hard to escape the discourse surrounding artificial intelligence, with various projects launches or low-level things reaching critical max in 2023. As someone who is pretty cynical and emo about everything, Drowned in Sound founder Sean Adams is oddly optimistic about some of AI music's potential futures, especially surrounding the collision of science, technology and more 'functional' strands of music. As a lover of Sigur Ros, side two of Bowie's Low and contemporary composers like Poppy Ackroyd and Grouper, he's been a heavy user of the Endel app, which composes/generates music in real time, using sounds, textures, samples and frequencies, to create a soundscapes to listen to whilst you focus, relax, walk, sleep and more. In this episode, two of the co-founders Oleg Stavitsky and Dmitry Evgrafov (listen to some of his non-AI music on bandcamp here) discuss everything from circadian rhythms to the

TikTok is so important, but what on earth are you meant to be doing on it? Here at Drowned in Sound we have not had a enough of experts, so we found one who can help us and you get our heads around TikTok. Our guest this week is musician and producer (and soon to be stand up comedian) Eleanor Fletcher, who's also a member of festival favourites Crystal Fighters, to find out how she's garnered 900k like on the platform and found a new audience in just a few months. Give her feed a scroll and follow her here tiktok.com/@eleanorkishere This is part of a sub-series of podcasts, looking at the foundations of where the music industry is at. It's sort of a mini masterclass for musicians but the advice applies for anyone who wants to have a better understanding on creating "content" for the platform. There's some really simple tips about how to introduce a video (the first few seconds are known as the 'hook' to 'hook people in', rather than the melody of a pop song...) and Eleanor mentions the key things of being "in

Faith Vern has collaborated with the likes Iggy Pop and Maxine Peake, and played huge sets on main stages of festivals such as Reading with her band PINS. In this episode, Faith tells us all about the debut single of her new solo project The Faux Faux, which is the first release on the rebooted Drowned in Sound Singles Club (drownedinsound.org). Drowned in Sound founder and podcast host Sean Adams (@seaninsound) introduces the podcast with a little history of the Drowned in Sound label and asks questions about how this solo material is different to the fun party punk that PINS were known for, what it's like writing music for big HBO, Netflix and Apple TV shows, how a mixture of Plath and moving out of Manchester inspired the track, and in a world where liner notes are rare, there's credits and more background to the track. Watch the music video shot in the North of England using 500ft of film and find out more here https://www.thefauxfaux.co.uk/music Go deeper and hear tracks by acts involved in this track on

How do we "fix" music streaming? It's a question that has plagued the music industry and musicians for a decade and a half, whilst debating the pounds, pennies and slithers of a pence per stream... so this discussion about music streaming seemed like a great place to restart our podcast, which is will focus on music, through the prism of creativity, sustainability, pioneers and big ideas. There are now a range of campaigns around the world and several organisations unifying in the UK to try to change the law, to ensure musicians and those who invest in them receive fairer pay from Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, Apple, Amazon, etc, etc, etc... In the UK, there's been a UK government DCMS (Department of Culture, Media and Sport) enquiry exploring the issue of music streaming royalties and the challenges faced by musicians in receiving fair compensation for their work. In this relaunch episode of our podcast, DiS founder Sean Adams (@seaninsound | drownedinsound.org) spoke to Naomi Pohl, the General Secretary of

If this is an "audio publication" then this episode is the editor's (voice) note, as Sean Adams introduces some of the topics, ideas and thinking this new phase of the Drowned in Sound podcast. To begin, help yourself to a David Bowie and Janelle Monáe sandwich. drownedinsound.org | @seaninsound

Mercury Music Prize 2015 judges John Kennedy from Radio X and Kate Mossman from New Statesman/BBC Four, join DiS editor Sean Adams and podcast co-host Danielle Perry from Absolute Radio to discuss this year's Mercury nominees and what this year's 12 albums say about the current state of music plus we ponder what makes a truly great album? The winner of this year's Mercury Prize will be revealed live on the BBC on Friday 20th Nov The 2015 Mercury Prize ‘Albums of the Year’ in association with BBC Music were announced on Friday 16 October. The 2015 Albums of the Year are: Aphex Twin 'Syro' Benjamin Clementine 'At Least For Now' C Duncan 'Architect' Eska 'Eska' Florence + The Machine 'How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful' Gaz Coombes 'Matador' Ghostpoet 'Shedding Skin' Jamie xx 'In Colour' Róisín Murphy 'Hairless Toys' Slaves 'Are You Satisfied?' SOAK 'Before We Forgot How To Dream'  Wolf Alice 'My Love Is Cool'

Toby L who founded music website, concert promoter and TV show Rockfeedback, as well as the Transgressive label (home to releases by Foals, The Antlers, Regina Spektor, Alvvays, Songhoy Blues and many more) chats about the past decade and a half with our hosts Absolute radio's Danielle Perry and Drowned in Sound (which also turned 15 this week) founder Sean Adams.