Drowned in Sound

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Canal • 2 programas

Entrevistas musicales

Entrevistas musicales

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27 may

Media Bias, Gaza and the Search for Radical Empathy | Karishma Patel

What happens when a journalist follows their conscience all the way out of the BBC? Karishma Patel spent months covering Gaza as a BBC Middle East specialist. She pitched the story of Hind Rajab, the six-year-old Palestinian girl who called the Red Crescent for help from a car surrounded by her dead family... and yet Karishma was told she was too emotionally attached to the story. She talks about the gap between impartiality and truth, why she left, and how music has been the thread running through all of it: from a piano piece she composed during the genocide to Elgar on long walks in the English countryside. Karishma Patel is also an ambassador for Amnesty UK's Defend Dissent campaign (protecting the right to protest at British universities), works with the Britain Palestine Media Centre, and is currently writing a book critiquing the concept of impartiality in journalism. She is published in Cultures of London: Legacies of Migration (Bloomsbury, 2024), was shortlisted for the #Merky Books New Writers' Prize in 2022, and holds an MPhil in English Literature from the University of Cambridge. She is also a classically trained pianist and opera singer. 🎵 Song choice: Sospiri by Edward Elgar Find Karishma: https://www.instagram.com/karishmapatel1/ | https://x.com/karishmapatel99 Sounds Like Change: https://linktr.ee/soundslikechange About the host: Ariana Alexander-Sefre has spent over a decade working at the intersection of music and social justice. An Iranian-British social innovator, she is the founder of SPOKE, a TEDx speaker, and an SXSW Innovation Award winner. A Drowned in Sound Network production. Edited by Tell Studio (tell.studio).

27 may

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56 min
22/10/2023

Introduction to S2: The Editor’s Letter / Voice Note

Where is music journalism headed? Sean Adams (@seaninsound) introduces season* two of the Drowned in Sound podcast in the style of an editor's letter meets a meandering, unscripted voice memo. TL;DR? To mark 23 years of Drowned in Sound, I decided to embark on a series of interviews with TikTokkers, rock writers, tech reporters and more to try to figure out whether things could be headed. * = series?!

22/10/2023

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13 min
16/02/2025

Will music survive the next 25 years? - Season 3 Prologue

How will music survive until 2050? Will streaming monopolies and economic pressures lead to music’s decline, or can we build a fairer, more sustainable future? In this season three prologue of the Drowned in Sound Podcast, host Sean Adams (founder of Drowned in Sound) reflects on his lifelong love of music, the systemic challenges facing artists, and what the next 25 years could mean for independent musicians, grassroots venues, and the future of the industry. In this series, expect big questions, deep dives, and conversations with artists, industry leaders, and changemakers who are shaping what comes next. Drowned in Sound’s podcast is about a life built around music—but also how music shapes culture, communities, and change. Topics in this episode: Why grassroots venues are struggling How streaming giants control music discovery The economic realities of being an artist today Lessons from past music movements and how they shaped the industry Why music’s future depends on the choices we make now 🎵 Music by Sound Mirror – https://www.soundmirror.co.uk/ 📩 Subscribe to the Drowned in Sound newsletter: http://drownedinsound.org 00:00 Introduction: The Future of Music in 2050 00:25 Personal Journey with Music 01:45 Climate Activism & Music’s Role in Change 02:20 Challenges Facing Artists & the Music Industry 03:34 Streaming, Labels & Who Holds the Power 06:13 Economic Disparities & the Struggles of Independent Artists 07:36 The Importance of Community in Music 10:46 Conclusion: The Power & Potential of Music What do you think the future of music looks like?What challenges should the industry fix first? 💬 Leave a review on your podcast app. 🔔 Follow, rate & subscribe to never miss an episode.

16/02/2025

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15 min
12/04/2025

Synths, Sound & Music’s Future with Martyn Ware (The Human League / Heaven 17 / BEF / Electronically Yours podcast)

What did the future sound like when the synthesizer first arrived? What does it feel like now, with AI looming and immersive audio spaces on the rise? In this special episode of the Drowned in Sound Podcast, recorded at Tallinn Music Week, Sean Adams speaks with Martyn Ware — founder of The Human League and Heaven 17, producer for acts ranging from Tina Turner to Erasure, and creator of some of the UK’s most ambitious sound installations. This is a conversation about optimism and dystopia, about punk and purpose, and about how DIY culture in Sheffield shaped a career that’s still future-facing today. Martyn also reflects on his podcast Electronically Yours, the legacy of sound, and how creative freedom can reshape confidence, community, and cultural memory. Timestamps & Topics: 01:32 – Synths, Sheffield, and starting out 07:00 – Curiosity and creative confidence 10:00 – From charts to immersive installations 14:30 – Podcasting and preserving legacy 20:00 – What would a Martyn Ware bar sound like? 25:00 – Optimism, memory, and what comes next Further Listening & Resources: 🎙️ Electronically Yours podcast 🔊 Illustrious Company (immersive audio) 🧠 Sounds of Our Shores installation Stay Connected: 🗣 Drowned in Sound Community 📩 Email Sean → sean@drownedinsound.org 🔵 Follow Sean on Bluesky 📰 Subscribe to the DiS Newsletter About the Guest: Martyn Ware is a pioneering British musician, producer, and sound artist. As a founding member of The Human League and Heaven 17, and co-founder of British Electric Foundation, he helped define the sound of synth-pop while pushing boundaries in spatial audio, immersive installations, and political music-making. He also hosts the acclaimed podcast Electronically Yours. About the Host: Sean Adams turned his passion for music into Drowned in Sound, a UK-based music platform that launched in 2000. He also manages artists like Charlotte Church and The Anchoress, and works across strategic communications in the music and creative sectors.

12/04/2025

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31 min
27/02/2024

What is the function of record reviews in 2024?

Elijah is a profound thinker and this conversations draws on his influential grime nights with Stormzy & Skepta, writing about music, DJing and to his Yellow Square instagram posts, which are a form of community-building journalism that act as prods and prompts that agitate thoughts into focus. DiS021 | S2: The Future of the Music Press EP13 From his experience as a pirate radio DJ to running Butterz label & clubnights to being a musician and artist manager, Elijah considers yellow squares to be a former of journalism and the conversation explores the ecosystem that feeds into it and swirls around it. In this conversation with Drowned in Sound founder Sean Adams, we discuss mediums and spaces, online platforms and club cultures. The conversation sways from curation as a form of journalism, the YouTube mindset, Twitter, 10 minute or 10 hour radio shows. We also try to deconstruct the gatekeeper and the creative challenges facing people working in music, journalism and anything that involves publishing online. We also discuss the joy of Tumblr, yow electronic music in the UK clusters around its pirate radio, BBC media structures, and why not all clubs closing is a bad thing. Quotes out of context: “What’s the musical equivalent of a community note?” “Some people say ‘I don’t make any money’. Well, what do you sell?” “Imagine if a review is all the possibilities that the album lays down” “It's one bit of work. With all these different mediums, but it’s just the language hasn't adjusted to, to serve that yet, you know what I'm saying?” “…there's a hundred thousand, ten thousand histories happening at once. And that's like something that music journalism, the box, cannot fully capture.” “People just think, ‘oh, that's their job to write about music.’ And it's like, no, their job is to sell advertising space wrapped around the coverage of music. That's what magazines have been historically. Right?” Links Eli1ah on Instagram Various links: https://linktr.ee/Eli1ah YouTube recommendation: Super Eyepatch Wolf YouTube recommendation: Nathan Zed Make The Ting album Eli1ah's Resident Advisor Takeover Further reading: "Close The App, Make The Ting": Elijah's Yellow Squares are making a difference by cutting through the noise (DMY) Podcast referenced with Bandcamp founder Please note, this conversation took place in November 2023. If you're enjoying this podcast, please sign up and support our new newsletter at DrownedinSound.org.

27/02/2024

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1 h 3 min
22/02/2023

DiS005: How music can embrace the power of AI with ChatGPT expert David Boyle

“If you start out and it doesn't do something that you're very impressed by, your assumption should be that your prompt wasn't very good,” this summarises the advice from music industry veteran David Boyle, who specialises in understanding audiences, and over the last few months has become an expert in using ChatGPT (if you've not already, give it a go here). So much so he's co-written a book called PROMPT about, you guessed it, writing prompts to get artificial intelligence to give you better answers. This conversation is aimed at musicians and people who work in the music industry, but the takeaways should be fairly obvious whatever you're trying to achieve. Our host, Drowned in Sound founder Sean Adams, shares some of the ways he's been using ChatGPT to get movie recommendations based on the songs that are on the soundtrack and using it to better understand the complex legalese in a contract. This conversation has also inspired David and his team to write a new edit of PROMPT for musicians, taking in some of the elements and workflows we discussed. Drowned in Sound listeners can grab it at a special rate using this link. We hope you will find the practical examples and advice in this episode useful, and we would love to see screenshots or hear about how you've used it. Tweet @seaninsound and @beglen if you get chance. Actually, a sneaky tip, there's also a Twitter bot that you can send Qs to here. Related Links the Hannah Peel tweet that inspired this episode. the Nick Cave blog post about ChatGPT. here's MidJourney, the AI image generator that's mentioned in this episode. this is where you can sign up to the Drowned in Sound newsletter on Substack. Water & Music have just released an interesting deep dive into AI and music - summed up in this Twitter thread

22/02/2023

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54 min
07/11/2023

Has music become a sub-genre of internet culture?

NBC News' tech and culture reporter Kat Tenbarge has her finger firmly on the pulse of internet culture and the influencer economy. She honed her expertise at Insider through investigative forays into the complexities of digital fame. Her coverage is much more than product launches and squillion dollar deals, and touches upon MeToo, fandoms, exploring how internet mobs chill free speech, and so much more. In this episode, we explore what the music press can learn from technology journalism. Related links Read Kat's reporting on NBC here. Q&A about how Kat reported on the David Dobrik allegations for Insider Kat's piece about Angelina Jolie and Amber Heard Find Kat and her tweets about Evan Rachel Wood and others cases against Marilyn Manson here Reporting: 'Free Britney' organizers and influencers took over a bar, threw a drag brunch, and blasted Britney Spears in a weekend devoted to the pop star Follow Kat on Threads here Reporting: How Tory Lanez trial bloggers are shaping the conversation around Megan Thee Stallion Also mentioned on this podcast was the defunding Check My Ads and Stop Funding Hate Podcast recommendation: Offline by Crooked Media Episode Highlights: "The Influencer Economy": Sean and Kat unravel the fabric of online influence, pondering its implications on cultural consumption and the MeToo movement's resonance within this sphere. "Music and Memes": They delve into the curious interplay of internet culture and the music industry, where virality can be both a career catalyst and a capricious whirlwind. "Ethics in the Age of Exposure": The conversation takes a contemplative turn, probing the moral compass guiding journalists amidst the relentless glare of the digital age. "The Future of Influence": Kat shares her prognostications on the influencer culture's trajectory, contemplating its impact on the internet's burgeoning denizens. This podcast was produced, researched, and hosted by Sean Adams (@seaninsound), the founder of Drowned in Sound website (est. 2000). For more deep dives into cultural currents and explorations of the musical zeitgeist, tune in and subscribe to DiS' Substack. Quotes from this episode: “I’m telling the story of our downfall as it's happening” on reporting on the downfall of the media “Honestly, one of the most, like, mind bending things to watch someone like say to the public what they do and then have those people turn around and be like, he could never do this.” On Marilyn Manson “I think that reporting that takes a point of view is actually going to be what is successful” “This is a period that's going to redefine the next few centuries. "The way that technology has evolved in the past 15 years. is going to change the rest of history. It already has” “I worked at News websites that were dominated by the clicks and the traffic. And I recognized that in order to get people to click on something, there had to be conflict. This is how all storytelling, whether it's fiction or non fiction, works. You have to have conflict. There has to be a narrative. Um, if you're telling a story about a new product being launched, no one's going to click on that unless There's some element of this product launched and it's offensive “

07/11/2023

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59 min
04/02/2024

Should music critics ’pivot to video’?

Meet the YouTube music critic who runs whilst reviewing records. Probably not all of them, but there are some people evolving music criticism onto new mediums. To understand what it's like to be a "creator" on YouTube, we spoke to Jimmy Watkins, who gave up his career as an athlete (he reached the 800m final in the World Indoor Athletics Championships in 2006 and set a Welsh indoor record!) to play guitar for DiS favourites Future of the Left. After leaving the band, he started a project called Running Punks with a friend which has become a community of music-lovin' runners. A spin off of this has been his videos where he reviews records, whilst running in the Welsh countryside. In this conversation, Drowned in Sound founder Sean Adams continues his search for where music journalism is headed and explores where the idea for 'running reviews' came from, how Jimmy approaches them, when music writing got under his skin from (spoiler: it was music biographies and reading magazines in Tesco). We also touch upon Jimmy's upcoming documentary running across America and his new music project Joyce, which you can listen to on Bandcamp here. Timestamps 00:00 Sean's Introduction: The Pivot to Video Journalism 00:56 The Running Review of The Art of Losing by The Anchoress 03:17 Understanding Journalism with Jimmy Watkins 04:55 The Evolution of Running Reviews 25:44 The Unique Appeal of Running Reviews 33:43 The Role of Music in Personal and Cultural Understanding 48:31 The Upcoming Projects and Final Thoughts Links Subscribe: Jimmy's channel on YouTube here. Visit: Running Punks Drowned in Sound's newsletter has now left Substack and is available on our new website at drownedinsound.org

04/02/2024

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52 min
09/10/2015

From the Archive: Blogs that became labels with Toby L from Rockfeedback / Transgressive (2015)

Toby L who founded music website, concert promoter and TV show Rockfeedback, as well as the Transgressive label (home to releases by Foals, The Antlers, Regina Spektor, Alvvays, Songhoy Blues and many more) chats about the past decade and a half with our hosts Absolute radio's Danielle Perry and Drowned in Sound (which also turned 15 this week) founder Sean Adams.

09/10/2015

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1 h 10 min
28/10/2023

How will the music coverage of the future be funded?

Kickstarter's co-founder Yancey Strickler shares lessons from Fugazi's label and Beastie Boys' Grand Royal magazine and discusses the forward-thinking ethos of The Royal Society, a prestigious fellowship of the world's most eminent scientists. Yancey is a big thinker, a music lover, writer and a 'zine publisher. He wrote about music for Pitchfork, Village Voice, eMusic (with many of the current Bandcamp Editorial team) and more, before becoming a notable figure in creative project funding at Kickstarter and now Metalabel. He shares a wealth of insights on the intersection of music journalism and the quest for authentic creative expression in the digital age. Discover more about Yancey's work on ystrickler.com or follow him on Twitter @ystrickler. Learn more about The Royal Society Read Yancey's viral essay on The Dark Forest Theory Discover Meta Label, an endeavour aimed at building infrastructure for the creative economy and making collective projects easier. Read about Grand Royal's fleeting yet impactful existence (The Atlantic). Some Yancey Strickler quotes from this episode: "To use the most obvious example, but you know, what if Taylor Swift had a magazine, right? Like, what if? What if Taylor Swift wanted to create a space to platform things that she celebrated, the things that she cared about, things she thought her fans wanted." "Frank Ocean has been on that, you know, I think a lot of people in the hip-hop space have done a lot of creating wider platforms for themselves through fashion. Through other lines of cultural output that I think have proven to be extremely meaningful." "...what is music journalism? I'm just gonna say it's ethnography and I'll go to your cartography comment. To me it's explaining lineages... What are the connections? What are the origins? What is the broader sweep in which this work appears? ...like, take me inside a world I wouldn't know otherwise. Help me appreciate that world the way people inside do. And I would say any, any, any piece, anybody that can do that I'm interested and that I think is a, true service and not that music journalism needs to be a service, but if I think it, how do you elevate above sharing an opinion, which is something that anyone can do. And so that has been rendered... Mapping the context, making that context, something that people can appreciate, that I think is maybe the highest form it can attain."

28/10/2023

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1 h 7 min

Established in the year 2000, as a publication, community and now podcast network, Drowned in Sound has always advocated for a better future. DiS is in the crossfade between systemic change and the deep impact music has on our lives and cultures. It's that feeling of the power of music on the Monday morning on the way home from Glastonbury but all year round.

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Drowned in Sound

Top programas

Media Bias, Gaza and the Search for Radical Empathy | Karishma Patel

Introduction to S2: The Editor’s Letter / Voice Note

Will music survive the next 25 years? - Season 3 Prologue

Synths, Sound & Music’s Future with Martyn Ware (The Human League / Heaven 17 / BEF / Electronically Yours podcast)

What is the function of record reviews in 2024?

DiS005: How music can embrace the power of AI with ChatGPT expert David Boyle

Has music become a sub-genre of internet culture?

Should music critics ’pivot to video’?

From the Archive: Blogs that became labels with Toby L from Rockfeedback / Transgressive (2015)

How will the music coverage of the future be funded?

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