Drowned in Sound

How do you become a magazine editor that can put Kate Bush on the cover? And what’s it like running a genre-specific title in 2023?

In a world where the digital age is rapidly redefining media, Sean Adams (@seaninsound) meets a titan of the magazine world, Jerry Ewing, editor of PROG magazine for a rare interview. From his roots starting a Marillion-inspired fanzine to being at the helm of genre-defining publications such as Classi...

Award-winning reporter Julia MacFarlane explains what the music press can learn from traditional news journalism.

As Drowned in Sound's podcast season looking at the future of music media continues, we wander into the world of international journalism with award-winning reporter Julia MacFarlane. With a wealth of experience reporting on major global events for the BBC to ABC News, Julia shares her unique insights into the art o...

Meet the YouTube music critic who runs whilst reviewing records.

Probably not all of them, but there are some people evolving music criticism onto new mediums. To understand what it's like to be a "creator" on YouTube, we spoke to Jimmy Watkins, who gave up his career as an athlete (he reached the 800m final in the World Indoor Athletics Championships in 2006 and set a Welsh indoor record!) to play guitar for DiS favo...

The Quietus' John Doran reflects on the demise of Pitchfork and whether music journalism is now destined to be a hobby or can writing/thinking/talking about music thrive in a reader-funded era?

DiS020 | S2: The Future of the Music Press EP12

In his widely-shared piece for The Guardian, this episode's guest John Doran, co-founder of the esteemed music publication The Quietus, wrote about the importance of music criticism:

&q...

Does the music industry still need the music press? Do new acts still care about media coverage?

Explore the shifting landscape of music promotion in the digital era with Atlanta Cobb, the award-winning Music Business Coach and manager of multi-platinum selling artists.

In this episode, Drowned in Sound's founder Sean Adams delves deep into the existential questions surrounding the relevance of traditional music press in a tim...

In a digital world awash with advertising money, why are music publications and media outlets facing extinction?

As we explore the future of the music press, we take a detour into the world of marketing to help make sense of the economics of the media landscape. Especially as the brilliant Jezebel closed last week and so far this year we've seen huge amount of job cuts across the media (especially at media behemoths VICE and B...

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 e...

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 ...

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 ...

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 cult...

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 Editori...

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...

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 inte...

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 c...

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...

“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, wr...

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 surro...

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 n...