Today marks 26 years since we flicked our website on and published a test review of a record by Ween.
Our publication and community has changed a little since then, and evolved into what it is today. Here are a few things I’ve learnt over the years:
26 - Building a community is about getting out of people’s way but acting like a pub landlord when you need to.
25 - Sigh-Fi, Throbtronica, Historical Reenactment Rock… inventing genre names is fun.
24 - If you’re a working class kid with no connections, at every step people will doubt you. Don’t let that become your self-talk. You’ve got this.
23 - Naming a website in your teens and it still feeling like a great name is more luck than skill. Trust your intuition in the rhythm of the words and the sensory feeling of it.
22 - Passion for music is one of the most infectious things.
21 - A lesson from this week: If you tweet Liam Gallagher to see if fans attending their 2027 tour will contribute £1 per ticket, which collectively adds up to an estimated £1.5m, to support grassroots music, he will send a sweary response that seems to confirm they are in fact doing their bit.
If you've not heard me wanging on about the levy on our podcast, read a bit about it on the Live Trust website.
20 - No matter if you’ve published over 34,000 articles, people will always bring up the rare few negative ones about awful records like the 0/10 of Beady Eye’s second and final album.
19 - If hundreds of people contribute over the years, you will lose people. Never forget them. RIP Rochelle, Dan, Sophie, and Scott.
18 - For every great human you meet in music, you’ll meet three toxic a-holes (they'll 99.9% be men).
17 - Learn to accept that getting 50-100 emails an hour from PRs and bands and solo artists from all over the world is not something you or anyone will ever get atop of. To everyone I never replied to, I am sorry.
16 - Lead by example. However, sometimes you’ll need to explain your critique of capitalism in a Jessie J review was not opening a door to dunk on artists.
15 - If you start doing things too early, like podcasting in 2005, you’ll spend a lot of time explaining what it is and how to access your 'on demand mp3 file that’s a bit like a radio show but with lots more chat'.
14 - Gush. Write and publish things that are uniquely something you can do. One day artists like Hayley Williams will post a thank you when you do go a bit over the top.
13 - Local music columns will be far more impactful for building an audience than interviewing mega stars.
12 - Democracy doesn’t make for a great album of the year list.
11 - When people tell you not to describe yourself as an “online fanzine” because it sounds amateur, ignore them. Or just don’t describe what you do until a term like “blog” is finally invented.
10 - Spend far more time on figuring out what and who you’re for, rather than dwelling on what you’re against.
9 - When people tell you to tone it down and be more apolitical, ignore them. Do the partnership with Love Music Hate Racism. Record the podcast about boycotts. Live your values and you’ll find your people. Or they'll find you. Eventually.
8 - If you send an email asking thousands of people to help get an album into the charts by a band you’ve written about since their first demo, put them on at your club night, and given glowing reviews to for years, people will moan. Especially if it’s Bloc Party.
7 - If media outlets are reporting someone’s dead, don’t just re-report it. Double check FFS!
6 - Allowing reviewers to publish directly to the website unedited for the first few years will cause issues. And lore.
5 - Editing a website full of contributors with a lot of different tastes and opinions will mean a lot of your favourite records get luke warm reviews and some records you think are terrible will get the gushing ones. Learn to accept it but realise the outside world still sees everything a media outlet publishes as the editor’s opinion for some baffling reason.
4 - In the rear view mirror your few regrets will be more in focus than your everyday successes. Perspectives can shift.
3 - Learn to pepper everything with music recommendations like a politician going back to their talking points.
2 - Believe in music journalism, even when and especially when the AI slop machine arrives.
1 - Music will save you again and again (and again).
Thank you to everyone for reading, engaging, sharing, and supporting our work over the last 26 years. Special thanks to everyone who has contributed to DiS over the years and to our current team who are busy working on the first edition of our new print magazine SHOWNOTES, which is coming in November, as well as our new network of podcasts (more on those here).
One bit of exciting housekeeping is that today our old .com website now sends you to our home for the last few years on Drowned in Sound dot org. The entire site archive has been moved across. You can browse the archive here and please let us know if you find any issues. We have intentionally stripped back all the images and coding