In this week's edition of the DiS newsletter
- This Week's Podcast
- Reflections on 25 years of Music Discovery
- Submit now: Nominate albums for The Neptune Prize 2025 (our Mercury Prize alternative)
- Track of the Week
New Podcast
Recently I spoke to one of my favourite music journalists. She's written incredible AltPress cover features about acts like boygenius. She's written about acts like Billie Eilish from their grassroots shows to enormodomes. She managed to get the amazing Zola Jesus into Vogue and wrote a brilliant oral history of 10 Things I Hate About You for Vanity Fair.
On this week's podcast, my conversation is with Ilana Kaplan about what she's learned about music journalism throughout her star-studded career, and how we need to approach the media to ensure it doesn't become extinct (spoiler: the word "community" comes up again!).
🎧 Subscribe for new episodes every Tuesday on Apple Podcasts, YouTube or search for "Drowned in Sound" wherever you get your podcasts.
Drowned in Sound's podcast is a series of conversations with community builders and innovative musicians, focussed on solutions to make music a much fairer and far more welcoming place.
Reflections on the state of Music Discovery in 2025
I've spent most of the past week researching and discussing the last 25 years of music discovery for a feature I'm writing to coincide with Drowned in Sound's anniversary.
Since DiS first started back in October 2000, the ways we have discovered new acts, browsed new releases, and explored music's rich history has changed both a lot and not that much.
How those life-changing acts entered our world and why some acts had lengthy careers is perhaps less discussed in our recent history than the who. It's been really interesting to dip back into the career-changing moments for different artists and it's been fascinating to be reminded of things that have faded from my memory.
I'm talking about the impactful destinations artists were trampling over themselves to be featured on. I'm thinking things like Gonzo on MTV2, MTV VMAs, MySpace's homepage (and Coca-Cola's very similar project), The OC, NME's Radar, SBTV, MP3 blogs, Tumblr, Black Cab Sessions, Careless Talk Costs Lives, All Tomorrow's Parties Weekenders, RDIO, Xfm, iTunes Festival, Queens of Noize, Mary Anne Hobbs' Dubstep Warz, Radio 1's In New Music We Trust, New Music Friday, "Twitter", etc and many more that emerged, were highly impactful, and then slowly faded away.
Of course, not all of the big players are relics, many still do what they've always done. Others disappeared (completely...). Entire ecosystems of forums and fawning media felt like they became extinct and there was barely an obit.
I mean, did you see this article published in January? It really hit home: XLR8R Closed Up Shop, and Nobody Really Noticed a.k.a. Once one of electronic music's most vital media outlets, the publication quietly paused its editorial operations last month.
A lot of the cultural shifts and societal changes are part of the natural ebbs of the tidal pulls of music. A scene would wash in and we would lap it up. The way we frantically devoured a pile of new names or a new sound (or a new platform) would reach a high tide line of over saturation, the stars of the scene would slide from the shop window back into the record store racks. Of course, as with any scene, a few big names would remain to the fore but the platforms or media formats that carried the acts into our world would potentially get stuck at low tide (ok, sorry, this sea metaphor ends here!).
Technology in terms of devices, as well as the economic models of platforms have played a huge role as to how music has entered our lives most efficiently or had an impact at scale.
This is very much a live conversation online and in my head, partly inspired by this week's podcast with one of my favourite music journalists Ilana Kaplan and also by a video essay I watched from Derrick Gee (if you have 3 mins, I would love your reactions and thoughts in this forum thread).
I've also been pondering this stat from Emily White's newsletter about fan-driven discovery, because I follow a tonne of acts and media outlets, and I barely get any music related posts in my feed which is really frustrating:
TikTok is the top of the funnel for music discovery for many listeners: 82% of Gen Z discover music through social media or user-generated content, compared to just 33% via recommendations on streaming music services (Source: Deloitte’s 2024 Digital Media Trends study)
Current discourse around music discovery underscores the importance of things like the soundtrack to TV shows like Skins and Stranger Things, video games like GTA, and the power of radio, but also it's highlighting the passionless impotence of the current algorithmic platforms and the dwindling impact of what you could call 'legacy media'. The latter is heartbreaking because I still believe human-made, context-rich, trusted, well written/hosted music editorial, whether it's on infectiously excited TikTok, a meticulously curated festival/radio show/DJ mix or a hefty coffee table magazine, I believe, as the AI wars play out, we will increasingly want these islands in a sea of slop.
Media, in all its forms, is a key part of our need to connect, human to human, and find communities of music fans both locally and globally online.
Right now, sophisticated, billionaire-funded algorithms are keeping us satiated with highly personalised music picks (and other stuff to satisfy or distract our attention), as well as leaving us divided into our silos. The result of this is an abundance of music, filtered in some functional manner but very few acts able to reach a critical mass in order to have a sustainable tour, let alone a lasting career. And I really believe that much like vinyl came back, magazines and the role of other human-made media will do so too. If magazines don't have their vinyl moment, I'll eat my vintage edition of Beastie Boys Grand Royal magazine.
If I sound like a broken record, it's because this is what I care about. As you may have noticed if you're a regular listener to my conversations with changemakers and innovators on the podcast, I have so many thoughts on music's role in society and us craving connection, belonging, and a desire to become communities. How we think about collective wisdom and apply that to music taste and our shared passion for music, will be critical to a better future for music...
Speaking of which:
The Neptune Music Prize Returns for 2025
One of my favourite moments of the year is here. It's when you nominate extraordinary albums for our alternative to the Mercury Prize, and I create a shortlist of exceptional records... and then you get to vote for the winner.
Because this is public, you can also browse the submissions, most of which have Bandcamp or YouTube players. So much good stuff to dip into already.
TRACK OF THE WEEK
Die Hard by Holiday Sidewinder
I saw an Instagram Reel a few days that tried to argue that the idea of the "song of the summer" is over. We're too fragmented. There's no critical mass. Monoculture is over, and that Brat Summer may have been quite a niche concern. And whilst I didn't massively disagree with the theory, I also feel like it has always been like this but perhaps it's much more obvious to people who live and breath music.
With that in mind, I think we can all have our personal songs of the summer, and this is instantly one of mine. It's the first new material from Holiday Sidewinder since her fantastic album The Last Resort, which made our albums of 2024 list.
Lyrically, as you might guess from the song's title, Holiday has made a cinematic collage of legends, including being f'd up like Bruce Lee, being kissed upsidedown (Spiderman?), and James Bond double-o-me alongside a little nod to Lethal Weapon slipped in for good measure. This sits atop shoulder-swaying beat and a snake-charmer flute on the chorus. It's as fun as smashing plates at sunset and drinking mescal in a bath tub. Get it on your songs of the summer playlist.
New additions to our 2025 Favourites playlist on YouTube includes new videos from Casey Dienel (pka White Hinterland) and Paramore's Hayley Williams.
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