If you’ve followed me on social media or read any of my newsletters over the last year, and probably seen some of my posts on here, you’ll know that there are always plans afoot to bring back the editorial side of DiS. Plans I’ve had since it went on pause in 2019 and never quite been able to articulate or find the right format for.
This “big plan” has felt increasingly stupid as media industry implodes and publications like Pitchfork go through corporate changes… to put it politely. Having released records last year, it was pretty bleak seeing the change in last few years of the level of resource publications have, and how so many of them have disappeared. Not to mention the challenges of reaching and engaging with audiences given how much social media platforms have changed and the habits of music fans. But I still have hope that if DiS is something quite simple and focussed, it can still help connect some music to some music fans.
For now, it’s going to be a weekly newsletter and the continuation of the podcast, which I’m really loving doing (and alongside that, some more releases on my label).
In the newsletter, once a month I’m hoping to reflect some of my discoveries from the chat on here and share things like the monthly polls if that’s cool with everyone?
If you didn’t get the email, here’s a summary of what’s to come that just went out to our free subscribers New Year, New DiS
Hope it all makes sense (I’ve been in bed sick for 2 weeks so not firing on all cylinders) and would love to hear any ideas you have to what you’d like to see in the newsletter - it reaches 7k people currently who have opted in, many of them are musicians, old forum users, music industry folks and there are even a few who respond whose are names I recognise as they’ve followed DiS since it was my fanzine called The Last Resort back in 1998.
shout at me if you want any naval gazing longform reflections on working in the fringes of the music industry, interacting with the music press in the last gasps of the pre-Zuckerberg world
That’s a really lovely idea. Maybe there’s a nice way to try this for February? I only have a couple of hours a week for the newsletter, so maybe it’s just one brilliant bit and link to a thread with contributions of the month or something? Might be fun.
My suggestion would be get Richard Keys to write a blog on Ocean Colour Scene every week.
My actual suggestion would be choose one of the releases in the weekly new releases and ask if anyone wants to write something small for the newsletter and then from the monthly results that @BMS1 runs ask if anyone wants to write about 2 or 3 of any of them that might have been missed.
Hadn’t intended to write about this but seemed too important not to. Compiled some reactions and resources around a massive government report into misogyny in music inquiry. There’s also a small request if you have a few mins and wanna help.
