Recently someone said to me “it’s a shame DiS isn’t still going…”
You can probably imagine how that feels to hear, given that I still put 15-20 hours into Drowned in Sound’s newsletter + podcast + YouTube channel every week, alongside managing artists and doing consultancy work.
To try to understand this disconnect and improve what DiS is offering editorially, I’ve set up a quick survey which will only take 3 mins to fill in.
Would really appreciate your time and iff you include your email, I’ll send some of you some books and records as a thank you for your time but otherwise it’s totally anonymous.
It would be good if there was some way to get the new newsletter and podcast to the top of Google because at the minute this is the top result when you search “drowned in sound”
You might also want to adapt that survey so that the questions
How would you rate the DiS newsletter?
and
How would you rate the DiS podcast?
have options to say “I don’t know”, espcially since your survey lists “I have never Read the newsletter” and “I have never Listened to the podcast” as valid options in later questions.
The “I have never” question should be multiple select too.
“When do you usually read a newsletter?” should also have an answer option of “I don’t” too.
Thanks, this is frustrating me no end and has been for over a year. Need to find someone who can get into the Ruby on Rails old site and make some changes
No surprise at all. I’ve been trying to fix that for a while. the site is now at w w w dot drownedinsound dot org but that doesn’t yet have the old site archive imported which isn’t easy as we don’t have a typical CMS
Kinda feel like the following questions would be interesting for you:
is there a demand per se for what you’re offering?
if so, are you reaching the right people?
if not, what (if anything) do regular DiS forum users actually want?
As an observation: for someone who spends 15-20 hours working on DiS, you spend almost no time with us, unless you’re after something or want us to engage with your stuff. I’m not saying we’d necessarily read a podcast if you did, but it does feel like your stuff and the DiS forums have been entirely different entities for years.
It’s been mentioned before, but something needs to be done about the boards’ googleability if DiS wants more visibility. These boards practically exist on the dark web until that’s fixed, and could bring more attention to everything else you’re doing, to a wider audience, if they weren’t completely obscured from the wider public. It might also bring in more donations etc.
I spend a lot of time reading and listening to recommendations from the forums but found that when I have been more active in conversations the vibe changes and there’s often quite a lot of bad faith thrown my way or grievances from 10-15 years ago resurfaced and my mental health can’t deal with it.
I think there’s sometimes an idea that as the sort of landlord, that people would rather get on with their conversations. It’s an odd dynamic and a difficult bridge to cross, despite trying quite a few times to find a balance.
In which case, maybe just chip in with your thoughts on them, or recommendations, like any other board member?
Personally I don’t see that you need to feel like that, particularly now the forums are run semi independently. I’m sorry about the MH stuff but maybe there might be ways to engage that put you in a less vulnerable position?
" To me, making space to escape our toxic timelines and illuminating pathways to help us make sense of the world, work together to build communities and to figure out how to resist seems more urgent than ever."
Personally, I think maybe more forum user stuff could be featured to link the community more to what you’re doing. There are people on here doing such cool stuff, and who have such insightful things to say.
I’d love to do that but it has been made clear by many users that I should seek consent before linking to or highlighting anything from the forums elsewhere. Whilst I totally understand this, it adds a lot of extra work into compiling things.
I do highlight the monthly album polls and things like Neptune prize. And have given props to users when their recommendations led to my discovery.
