October 1st marks 25 years since Drowned in Sound published its first review.
I had grand plans of what I wanted to say to mark the occasion, but I’ve been struggling to find the words of awe, gratitude, and incredulity to write to you today.
Prepared remarks for an after-dinner speech, this is not. I mean, who wears an Elliott Smith sweatshirt, a Motown t-shirt and a pair of Vans with the remnants of Reading Festival's dust on them to one of those fancy dinners?
What I could and maybe one day will write about the last quarter century and how this publication grew to 3 million readers could fill a few books. From the artists I've met, to being a blogger before the word blog existed and an influencer according to The Sunday Times long before the term was in common use, to the shows I've seen, the albums I've been obsessed with, the hyped tech that came and went, the millions spent on doomed to fail music platforms, the weird promo items, the kindness of strangers, the brilliance of some of the writers we've published... and, and... and as you'll know if you listen to the podcast, I can and do go on and on, but I’m gonna be respectful of your time.
Just to pre-warn you, I think this will be the first of a trilogy of newsletters this week, so I better get on with it...
Firstly, I want to say thank you to you, dear reader. You’ve trusted us with your time and attention. You’ve followed us through our many shades of emo, early experiments with podcasts back in 2005, MySpace hair, our waxing lyrical about political hip hop, our aborted YouTube channels, our forays into Tumblr, our breathlessness about exquisite pop, the time we decided to scrap staff democracy and name Emeralds’ lush sprawling guitars and warm synths album of the year...
You’ve been there with us, through the rise of indie-art-rock (that moment of being out most nights seeing acts like Bloc Party, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Interpol was incredible) to our sudden enthusiasm for minimal techno and various forays into nu-metal, edm, and other genres that made some of you grimace.
You've devoured our 10/10s for Gazelle Twin, Nils Frahm, Kendrick Lamar and Alien Ant Farm(!). You've leant in to our endless gushing about acts like - off the top of my head - Twilight Sad, Chromatics, Marissa Nadler, Thundercat, D'Angelo, The Radio Dept., Frank Ocean, Ariana Grande, Young Fathers, Hot Snakes, Laurel Halo, Deftones, Daughter, Zomby, Janelle Monae, The Icarus Line, Why?, At the Drive-in, Liars, Twin Shadow, Sharon Van Etten, The National, Low, FOE, EMA, M83, The Postal Service, Mynabirds, White Hinterland, The Knife, F' Buttons, FKA Twigs, Villagers, Marina, Grouper, Hayley Williams, Efterklang, Antlers, The Weeknd, and many many many more.
You listened to our excitement about seeing acts like Adele, Foals and Lizzo play some of their first shows to less than 40 people, nodding along when we put on Tame Impala as the support act at Manchester's Deaf Institute, and came along for the ride when we published things like British Sea Power sharing their top 5 castles and Grizzly Bear's gumbo recipe. You even stomached us having a weekly column called "The Fangasm" where our writers revisited an album they adore.
You’ve followed us around the world to festivals in Iceland and Mexico. Heard us rave about acts from Auckland to Beirut (and the band Beirut who I never shut up about how he once played for us in a fish restaurant at SXSW!).
There have been many of "us". Well over 300 music fans turned music "critics" have contributed to DiS since our launch and 10,000s more have been regulars in our community. Some writers dipped in, wrote one article, and vanished. Others, like Dom Gourlay, wrote for DiS a few times a week for most of the 19 years we were publishing daily reviews, interviews, and more before returning in 2023 as a solo project (and I'm so glad to have Emma Wilkes aboard now, I hope you've been enjoying her newsletters as much as I have).
There are a lot of people to thank for their patience, passion, illuminating writing, insightful prose, hilarious quips, devastating dunks, and doing the operational bits behind the scenes that aren't as glamorous as drinking 'til dawn at Sonar or popping along to interview Bjork or My Bloody Valentine or any number of legends we've met over the years.
For fear of forgetting someone beyond the obvious (Mike D, Cate B, Peter W, Raz R, Gen W, Rochelle, Derek R, Kev K, Sam S, Ollie A, Liz A, Wendy R, Rob W, James M, Vic, Sara, Luke S, Tom W, Matt W, Colin W, etc), and boring on and on with unfamiliar names, I'm slowly writing personally to various people who continue to be beacons in the past, present and future of DiS. And I'm tempted to be indulge in some special podcast catch ups with a few of them over the coming year.
Yeah, I'm going to turn celebrating a quarter century into a slow, year-long, gentle background hum. Partly because the odd bit of nostalgia is fun, but also because to find the footing for our collective future, I think there are a lot of clues in the past.
I have various plans afoot, from the 21 most influential humans of the 21st century to listicles with titles that would probably make a Buzzfeed slopwriter blush.
For now, I wanna say thank you to you for being here now, signed up to this newsletter, trusting us continue to drop into your inbox with our thoughts, fears, news digests, calls to action, and human recommendations in a time of robot personalisation.
Tomorrow, we'll be revealing our new mission statement which should bring into focus a new vision for the future of Drowned in Sound. We'll also be releasing an episode of the DiS podcast where Emma and I answer all the questions I've been asking our recent guests, including how I'd fix music with the $450m that Spotify have reportedly paid to Joe Rogan.
Until tomorrow,
Sean
p.s. be sure to subscribe to our podcast on Apple and DiS' YouTube channel if you're not already. You'll never miss an episode and can browse my recent interviews with Idlewild, Stealing Sheep, Enter Shikari, campaigners leading the Spotify exodus, and much more.