Don't call it a comeback... actually, do!
This is Sean Adams, the founder of Drowned in Sound.
Firstly, I'm sorry for the radio silence on this site for the last 18 months or so. I wrote a goodbye message a few times but didn't have the heart to publish it. It felt too final to say farewell.
As you may have seen on our social channels or in the media (even Billboard reported on our demise!), we decided to "pause" publishing due to what you could call financial constraints. Or to put it another way... our advertising revenue went from being an inhabitable house on a hillside to the entire cliff crumbling into the sea, hitting every rock on its way in... the camera slowly zoomed in as the debris was ravaged by the waves... and the director lingered on the shot for far longer than was necessary.
However, just before the end credits started rolling, we shared news that we managed to keep our "infamous" forums going.
I just wanted to offer a MASSIVE heart-felt thank you (THANK YOU!) to everyone who made a donation and continues to help keep the lights on and our community alive. It costs $600 a month due to the continued popularity of this free service, and every £1 you can spare makes a huge different. Learn more about how you can help with a regular or one-off contributoion, here.
Anyway...
What's this newsletter...?
Drowned in Sound turns 20 on October 1st, so to mark the occasion and to keep the flame of the site alive, I'm starting a newsletter. Or rather, going back to DiS' roots, as before the site started, it was my personal newsletter under the guise of The Last Resort, featuring my incoherent teenage ramblings about Muse's first demo and stuff like that.
In this new newsletter, you can expect a mixture of my personal recommendations and hopefully cogent and coherent reflections on the last 20 years of music, alongside some gems from our archive, playlists, and recommend reads around the web. It's also quite likely I'll fail to resist sharing cat photos and existential memes...
Plus I'll likely drop in some bits about the class of 2021 too. I've posted a few reminders of DiS' past over on https://drownedinsound.substack.com, which will soon become easy to find on our homepage.
Without further ado... you can subscribe for free here:
To ensure it stays celebratory and doesn't get too self-indulgent, I've also decided to set up a slightly more personal newsletter in parallel, which ties in with the current Unhappy Hour strand of the monthly DiS radio show mixing together the two best flavours of music: melancholy and mellow. If that sad cocktail sounds of interest, here's the first edition about mittens, mezcal, and Lykke Li.
Sorry! I don't want your emails
That's fair enough. Who needs another email in their inbox?! All of the posts will be available online and promoted on our social channels.
If you're not already, you can follow us/me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
More news soon...
Bye for now,
Sean xo