Reporting on Music in the Digital Age

During a recent “Happy Hour” event — dubbed ‘Reporting on Music in the Digital Age’ — we invited two respected music writers to discuss their unique experiences covering the music industry. They spoke about the challenges of analyzing and accurately reporting the news and offered advice for aspiring writers looking to apply their trade.

Happy Hour Guests

Paul Resnikoff — Paul is the founder and publisher of Digital Music News, a premier source for music industry news, information, and analysis. Before starting DMN, he worked in marketing at Epic Records (Sony Music Entertainment) and headed the digital music initiative at internet portal Lycos (sold to Terra Networks, SA). In that role, he managed relationships with major labels and many marquee indies and publishers, including the former BMG and Sony Music Entertainment.
Ashley King — Ashley is a noted authority and respected journalist who covers gaming, tech, and music. With her finger on the pulse of multiple industries and how they interact in new and innovative ways, Ashley is also a noted expert on Nintendo Switch! Throughout her career, she has contributed to publications like Phandroid and Digital Music News and runs her own gaming website Ninty Gamer.

The interview was conducted by Songtradr CXO, Victoria Wiltshire.

Founding a music industry news service

Beginning the conversation, Paul explained what motivated him to start an industry-focused news website. Founded more than a decade ago, that site — Digital Music News — is now a trusted name, delivering thoughtful, analytical music journalism to more than a million readers every month.

“The story is pretty organic,” confessed Paul. “The idea, really, was just an aggregation email that I put together for about twenty people who were trying to make their way, or figure out if they wanted to do something in the space. I knew I was onto something because that kept growing,” he said.

“I didn’t have any type of bulk email service, I was doing it all from my personal email, and I just kept getting requests to add more and more people. I was cutting and pasting this giant list of emails and then hitting spam filters cos I was sending a thousand emails at a time. So it just kept growing and growing until it evolved into something that became a trade publication.”

As noted by our previous ‘Happy Hour’ guest — WeTransfer CCO Damian Bradfield — it was still possible ten years ago to purchase a URL as simple as Digital Music News. Paul admitted it was pure luck that he landed his desired domain name.

“Up until about 15 years ago, you could still get certain names,” remembered Paul. “Now it’s really hard to get a name you want. Even back then, every common name was taken. So, like, music dot com or download dot com, everything was already taken. But then the two or three-word names, there was still some availability there — the land grab hadn’t completely finished. So yeah, I grabbed one of the last available ones.”

Becoming a music news writer

Both Ashley and Paul got their start in the digital news business around the same time. But while Paul was founding a site, Ashley was helping someone else do the same. It took another six years before the two joined forces, with Ashley eventually writing for Digital Music News for the first time three years ago. With Ashley onboard, DMN gained a talented music writer and a Nintendo Switch expert with a deep understanding of the gaming industry. Ashley shared how she got into the news business.

“I wrote extensively for a website that is now defunct called WiiUDaily, which was the console before Nintendo released the Switch. So I got my start even before the Switch became a thing,” explained Ashley. “When the Wii U was phasing out, I thought founding a site around a console when it only has a seven to eight-year lifecycle is not a good thing. So when I founded my personal site, I went with just a generic Nintendo site so that I could continue to cover it as Wii progressed.”

As the conversation continued, the topic shifted to how young writers can best develop their craft. Paul expressed his belief that every aspiring writer should simply write as much as possible.

“Even if you aren’t in a position where your pieces are going to be published — or at least published for a large-scale audience — there is no substitute for just being in the paint and writing all the time. You’ll subconsciously start ironing out all these different issues.”

Paul also recommended digital tools like Grammarly, which he said can mirror your writing and help you figure out which sentence structures connect quickly. Ashley agreed, especially on that second point.

“Practicing writing is important, but you should also practice writing in the right voice for communicating online,” suggested Ashley. “People online want to read active voice, they don’t want to feel like they’re being told a story… Using active voice as much as possible in your writing while you’re developing that skill is really important.”

The wiring of a news reporter

The conversation then turned to the subject of good news writing. Ashley explained that writers need to be passionate about the topic they are covering because the audience can always tell when you’re faking it.

“If you’re not projecting that passion in your writing, if you’re not showing your readers that you care about the things that you’re writing about, they will pick up on it,” declared Ashley. “They will know that you don’t care, so why would they continue to read you if you don’t project that passion.”

“I have seen a lot of people who stay in an industry maybe longer than they probably should have, and readers pick up on that,” added Ashley. “You have to be curious about all aspects of the industry, even parts that you maybe don’t know as well.

Paul agreed but asserted that curiosity could also be a curse. “Curiosity is essential, but I would say it’s frustrating chasing curiosity because it leads to dead ends. It constantly slaps you back in the face with a reminder of how little you actually know.

“It is a complex world out there,” added Paul. “You go down these curiosity adventures, and in some ways, it’s extremely stimulating because you’re discovering and learning new things, which is fantastic, and then you come back, and you’re humbled, I think.”

The different ways writers cover the music industry

While Paul and Ashley both identify as news writers and analysts, there are numerous ways journalists cover the industry. As Paul suggested, some are often considered more glamorous than others. Yet, all come with unique challenges that impact how an individual writer views the industry at large.

“I’ve seen many different types of attitudes, good and bad,” conveyed Paul. “There’s the writer who is star-struck; it’s all about getting close to the celebrity. I’m not judging that. That’s a style. That works extremely well for a lot of journalism that focuses on the celebrity side, and for that writer, it’s just a joy to get as close as they can to the action. On the other side of the spectrum, there’s more of the heavily analytical writer, and that can go one of two ways; it can be really great and insightful, but then there can be this tendency to start to see the industry a lot more behind the scenes. You see a lot of trends, a lot of patterns repeating, so you sort of lose a bit of touch with the consumer side of the industry, and that can go in a bad direction.”

“He’s mentioning analysts,” interjected Ashley. “I try to stay on both sides of that because if I get too deep into it, then I can get a bit more cynical about things. One topic to mention is TikTok. TikTok is all the rage now… but it’s basically a rehashed idea from 2014 — it’s Vine.”

Impartial news reporting

In the era of ‘fake news’ reporting, writing is now examined more than ever for accuracy. Midway through our conversation, Ashley and Paul discussed the news industry’s responsibility to the music community and whether it’s difficult to maintain trust while negatively reporting on it.

“There’s a lot of responsibility you have in reporting any news to be faithful to the industry you are reporting in,” professed Ashley. “But you also don’t want to be so faithful that you’re helping distinguish a voice that maybe is against the industry, but still relevant to the industry.

“There’s striking a fine balance between that and finding out what you want to report on that is accurate and helpful to the industry, without it necessarily being a bad thing to have published. You don’t want to stray into the realm of fake news.”

Paul was a little more philosophical. He recalled a time when the industry seemed done and dusted and when reporting that reality meant writing about a lot of bad news.

“I think that reality is sometimes hard to report,” declared Paul. “I really went through this… There was a time when the music industry was on the verge of getting KO’d… The industry couldn’t get its footing. There was a lot of money lost; there were a lot of existential issues confronting the music industry, including the wide-open question about whether the major labels that are thriving today would even be in existence. So that was a very stressful time for a lot of people.

“Reporting on the realities of those situations would, of course, lead to all sorts of blowback, but it taught me that reality is something that journalists should try to stick with as much as they possibly can, even when it’s bad news” concluded Paul. “It breeds trust, it develops your ability to have a spine and push back on people, and hey, when times are good, you can report on great things too.”

Questions From the Songtradr Community

Rounding out our conversation, we put your questions to our panel.

How to find the best person to contact at a media platform?

“Zero in on a publication and find out who has got that beat or who will be most likely interested and want to cover [what you’re pitching]. Publications are often far more decentralized than you think,” explained Paul.

How to approach and pitch to a music journalist?

“I’ve had people reach out to me on Twitter, which I don’t object to — I have my DMs open for that reason,” said Ashley. “Make your early pitch interesting. If I’m not hooked in the first two sentences, I’m not going to read your whole press release. Tell me the stats and everything I need to know in a short five-sentence summary that I can just skim.”

What is the best way to get attention from the media as an independent artist?

“The same answer for how an independent artist would get attention from a major media company, and that is through traction and specifically stats and data. If there’s a story, there’s a story, these days you can’t deny it,” expressed Paul. Ashley agreed: “You can’t deny what’s happening with data.”

Can you give an update on the state of the music industry in 2021?

“I would point to a lot of optimism that’s happening around the edges,” opined Paul. “There’s a lot of healthy optimism about artists getting prepared to return to the road, and there are endless amounts of pent-up demand.”

What do you think will happen to the music industry 10 years from now?

“I think gaming will be a much bigger part of the music industry than it is today,” suggested Ashley. “I would say that cryptocurrency might have a bigger portion of the music industry, too, because blockchain technology that powers cryptocurrency is really immutable; it’s something you can put into ticket sales, it’s something you can control artists’ merch with, there’s so many possibilities and applications that have not yet been explored.”

How do you turn listeners into fans?

“It’s achievable, but it has gotten trickier,” noted Paul. “Catching on with one song and getting on a marquee playlist is not necessarily the same as engaging with an audience. So I think that perspective has to always be there, that your audience and your relationship with your audience is absolutely critical and pay you the rich dividends in the long-term.”

“I would argue that it’s important to maintain a good social media presence, too,” added Ashley. “If somebody happens to run across your music on Spotify and is like, ‘oh, I’m curious about this artist, I wanna know more,’ they’re gonna go to your Twitter, Facebook, and your Instagram pages, and if you don’t have that, then you’re missing out on creating a fan.”

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