A survey of post-pandemic nightlife, with Shawn Reynaldo

28:46You know, some of these same complaints were happening back then. It's kind of unstoppable with technology, but I do think it's okay to at least point out and say like, hey, this is different than before and what does that mean for the culture? it's so interesting also if you like zoom out and think about it that it's these primarily visual platforms that ended up being the mode of discovery whereas the platforms that are like supposed to help with music discovery like spotify did not really serve that role probably by design like spotify's business model it's kind of about like getting you to listen more and more it's not about like helping you find your next favorite underground artist.

29:27So it's interesting that these visual platforms are driving music or like the sound. And I'm wondering, like, how is the primacy of these largely visual mediums changing what nightlife sounds like? Like if DJs are pop stars now, does the music get poppier? Does the music matter less? Like I know that you have a story in your book about how you got hired to do an artist bio, but you weren't required to say anything about the music that they play. Yeah, that's a true story that happened. And I've seen it in a lot of other artists bios that I've read recently. But yeah, in this particular case, it was a DJ who I didn't name them in the piece.

30:12I'm not going to name them now. But they're now like an international touring DJ, someone who's played a lot of different festivals all around the world during the past year. And when they hired me to write their bio, I said, okay, well, what do you want to talk about? What are the most important things for me to mention? And, you know, they sent over a huge list of like accomplishments, you know, parties they'd played and festivals that they'd been booked on and their biographical background, you know, where they were born and grew up. And I realized, I was like, there's literally nothing here about music.

30:48Like There was nothing about what style of music they play, nothing about what influenced them. The only things that stuck out in the piece was really what they represented in the scene or what kind of role they filled in the scene. And that was a definite wake-up call for me of like, oh, this has changed. And again, it's just like the system has kind of worked in a way that it incentivizes all these things that aren't music. And I do think that it's affected the club experience. One thing that's really interesting is like anyone who follows DJs on Instagram now has probably noticed that anytime a DJ plays on the lot radio or boiler room or horror radio in Berlin that, you know, which people talk about as the bathroom.

31:36Anytime that a DJ is playing a filmed set, they usually will post clips of it afterwards. words. And these clips have become one of the primary ways that DJs promote themselves. And it's a way of showing like, look, I was playing music and I was playing great tunes. And, you know, if they were by themselves on the radio, they were having fun and dancing. And if they're at a club or festival, you know, they're quote unquote killing it and the crowd's going crazy. And this is it's an effective marketing tool. Like it makes someone look like, oh, look, They're a good DJ. They're creating a fun environment.

32:11But this is like a facsimile of club culture. You know, a DJ set isn't meant to be experienced in 30 second clips. And a DJ set is not meant to just be a nonstop parade of banger after banger after banger. But I think younger audiences whose introductions have come primarily via social media and via live streams, they just have a sort of altered expectation of what's going to happen when they get into an IRL club or festival space. So you start to see audiences getting bored if there's not a drop after two or three minutes. And it's making DJs play songs for less time. They mix quicker. Producers have started shortening their tracks as well, and you have to get to the drop faster or get to the buildup faster.

33:04And it's just kind of changed the sort of dynamic of how a night unfolds because, yeah, crowds want this like sort of constant endorphin hit, you know, big drop after big tune after another big tune. And one way to accomplish that as well is by dropping these familiar pop songs because it's an easy way to perk up a crowd and everyone will know it. A lot of the DJs who I mentioned in that being a DJ is embarrassing piece have talked about these same things and just like the way that they used to play not functioning as well as it used to. Like building up to the big drop over the course of, I don't know, 45 minutes or even a night, like having a journey that is a night long journey.

33:47It doesn't feel like that anymore. I would say no. I mean, of course, there are still some DJs who can get away with, you know, playing a six hour deep house set that will, you know, have a climax halfway through. But I think in general, the culture is moving away from that. And as corny as it sounds like I used to cringe when I hear DJs talk about creating a journey for the night just because it sounds kind of hokey. sorry no no you don't need to apologize but like I miss those days now because when I go to the club I don't feel like I'm being taken on a journey as much as I used to now I feel like more and more I'm seeing DJs scrambling to hold people's attention and it's worsened by the fact of like you know if what's attracting people to the club in the first place isn't the music that they expect a DJ to play.

34:40It doesn't take long for someone to get bored at the club. And it does sort of mess up the vibe. And as fees have gone up, so it's the size of many parties. So it's like DJs who maybe, you know, five or 10 years ago would have topped out at playing for crowds of like 300 or 500 people. Now, even quote unquote underground DJs are routinely playing for like 2 ,000 people, 5 ,000 people. And that's just a totally different dance floor experience than being in a more intimate club space. And one that feels, at least to me, like farther away from the roots of what the culture used to be.

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36:00And to celebrate our three-year anniversary, we're offering 50 % off. 25 bucks for a year of all of the above. You can go get it at theculturejournalist.substack.com. I want to talk more about the physicality of dance music and electronic music. I think there's an argument to be made that maybe more than any other genre, electronic music and dance music is like really bound to physicality because it's about like origins anyway have been about like communing and communing in a physical space together you said earlier like when we asked about like what was the original role of the dj and you're like well it was basically just to like dj really really well but by extension that was also a form of cultural curation and that's kind of a context that's being lost with you know people now being able to like go online and like read about things and absorb music and all this stuff really quickly, but they are like, losing that context of the physical space and the community of it.

37:05So I'm curious, what role do you see the physical space of the club serving today, especially post pandemic? Do you think it still fulfills some of those same like, socio cultural spaces, and needs that it once held? Or maybe have those spaces moved elsewhere? I mean, I will say that people getting together in the dark and dancing to loud music is something that probably goes back to the earliest days of human history. I think there's something in us that just wants that experience. Granted, for cavemen and women, it was happening around a fire while people were playing drums. But I think even in the glory days of raving, I don't want to overly idealize those times.

37:56Because as much as I can say, yeah, it was more about the music and it was a secret society and you had to work to get in. And when I went to raves in the late 90s, there was still a lot of people there who were there because they wanted to party. And this was a place that they could do it. And it was loud music and there was a bunch of kids and it felt like there was no rules. And, you know, it was a place just outside of the mainstream. And, you know, some of that danger has certainly been lost. You know, there's still underground events in certain places here and there. But a lot of the culture has gone above ground.

38:30It usually happens in licensed clubs and festivals. But yeah, I don't know. It doesn't feel to me as much like an opportunity for community building. There's no absolutes here. Of course, there are still young DJs that meet each other and make friends and start new labels and new projects. But, and this is with any culture, when you lower the bar for access, it's always a double-edged sword because it's like on the positive side, more people can get in. There aren't these arbitrary barriers to entry that lots of times privileged, you know, middle and upper class white guys who were, you know, in the know.

39:06But at the same time, when those people came in, you know, without having to like put in much effort, you know, where they could just look at the resident advisor website and see, oh, what parties are happening? I'll go to this one. And, you know, it doesn't require a lot of effort anymore. And it just becomes more disposable. I mean, it feels like all cultures become more disposable and streaming feeds into this as well. Like there's just not as much of people identifying or primarily identifying themselves by their affinity for certain kinds of music or their participation in strict sort of genre based communities.

39:48That just doesn't really happen anymore. and it's been replaced to a certain degree by like you know people interact online and you know form connections with people who might live in other countries or other continents but is that good for us as humans like it's hard to tell like it doesn't feel like the online interactions are an adequate replacement for what we're losing in terms of in-person interactions and although you know clubs and parties are still big and attract big crowds like if the experience is the same as going to the movies in terms of how much you're personally invested in it, it's not going to be as meaningful for the bulk of the people that are attending the average party.

40:32Was the internet's impact on electronic music culture always like this? This greater emphasis on poppiness, spectacle, maybe isolation? Or were there points in your career where it felt like Like the internet was functioning to reinforce other kinds of values within electronic music culture, like, you know, outsider-ness or connoisseurship. This is a tough one to answer because like electronic music culture has always been really intertwined with the internet. If you think back to the 90s when, you know, the internet was first coming together in places like Silicon Valley. That's also one of the first huge hubs of rave culture in the U.S.

41:21And things like message boards were really big in electronic music since the 90s. And as far as I can remember, whatever has been the cutting edge of what's happening online has usually had some kind of application in rave culture. You know, whether that was message boards or MySpace for people promoting their parties, like MySpace definitely helped kill the like physical rave flyer. So I wouldn't say that technology has always pushed the culture in this sort of like more superficial or pop direction. Like this trend of pop music specifically is kind of like a pendulum in electronic music. Like there's been so many moments in the past where electronic music kind of got interested in pop music and was flirting with pop tropes.

42:17You know, you think about like mashups during the early 2000s. And then like EDM had a lot of like pop overlap with, you know, Calvin Harris making songs for Rihanna. Genres like Baltimore Club and Juke and Footwork did a lot of experimenting with reinterpreting pop songs and sort of presenting them in a new way. So I don't want to lay it all at technology's feet. I'd say social media has been the primary driver of a lot of the trends I've been talking about. And that combined with the rise of streaming video, which I almost kind of lump that in together with social media. And I think those two things together.

43:00Those are the culprits for what we're talking about. Because in like the late aughts and early tens, which is like when I started out, it really felt like this moment where I guess it was blogs and early social media, maybe not Instagram, but Twitter, Facebook. It felt like there was this like really nice zone for a while where the internet was allowing more underground and independent music to sort of take on this new life like I feel like I'm a product of that generation where it was like this stuff that was maybe more experimental was connecting with new audiences in a way it hadn't before and artists were finally able to you know dream of making a living from their work for the first time maybe instead of like performing for a crowd of 15 people.

43:57Do you know what I mean? Like, I feel like there was a time where it was almost like the internet was helping the weirder stuff. And now it's not like that anymore. Yeah, I would agree. Like, I was definitely participating in that era. And remember, you know, some blogs totally helping me to like, crack open my knowledge base and teach me about new genres and they were written by mostly just passionate fans who were, you know, doing it in their spare time. And I don't think that was the first time either, like going back to that sort of message board era that was, you know, in the late 90s and early 2000s that helped bring people together.

44:38So I think where technology has been helpful is like when it allows communities, especially communities that exist outside the mainstream, to connect with one another without having to go through traditional media outlets or without having to deal with quote-unquote gatekeepers. Although I hate using that word as a pejorative. Yeah, I feel like history has evolved in such a way that that word used to be very pejorative, but it means something different now. I mean, I actually long for the return of gatekeepers. I feel like the pendulum has gone way too far in the like down with gatekeepers movement.

45:21And now we're seeing the consequences of no gatekeepers. And, you know, when you live in a culture where you're presented with infinite choice and very few guidelines, most people are not going to do deep dives trying to discover new things. Most people are just going to go for whatever's familiar and whatever makes them feel good because honestly, all of us are being hit by this content fire hose between streaming, social media, TV, politics, the news. I think everyone is just exhausted by the amount of content in general. So when the time comes to come home and put on a piece of music and you go on Spotify and you could choose one of several million songs, are you really going to be like, oh, today's the day that I'm going to look for the new, I don't know, death metal band?

46:13Or are you just going to put on like the Depeche Mode song that you know you like already? And this is what happens when there's no one who's, you know, a quote unquote expert or just someone who has a deeper knowledge base is put in a position of power to like help guide people towards the good stuff. Like that's what gatekeepers should be doing. And I think we've kind of gotten caught up in this like, you don't need anyone to tell you what to do. You can make your own choices. And yeah, everyone can make their own choices. But unfortunately, like left to their own devices, I think a lot of people end up making bad ones or just lazy ones.

46:51And that's not had a great impact on the culture and especially not on like independent music culture. I would argue that it's not that there aren't gatekeepers. It's that the gatekeeper is the platform and literally just like an algorithm. There is an entity that is deciding whether something, you know, is shown on Twitter, for example, to, you know, 3000 people or 40 people. I would say that you're right in that. And algorithms, they're like ruthlessly efficient, right? It's just, you know, doing whatever makes the most sense on a purely numbers basis. And the The music industry as a whole used to have so many inefficiencies cooked in to formats that helped foster the presentation of a more diverse cultural palette.

47:44I'll give you an example. Like with magazines, for instance, right? Like it used to be if you wanted to read about dance music, like let's say you really like Jeff Mills and you knew that there was an article about Jeff Mills and the new issue of DJ Mag. the only way to access that was to buy the entire magazine you only bought it for jeff mills but you have it so you would end up going through and reading about other stuff and even if you didn't really read about the other stuff you still paid for the whole magazine which helped fund the broader content offering and now now you can just go to everything direct it's like trimmed the fat to such a degree that the only things it's going to prioritize, whether it's a social media algorithm or a streaming algorithm, is just going to prioritize the stuff that's familiar, the stuff that's popular.

48:36And that really doesn't leave much space for genuine discovery or just artists that have a lower ceiling. They could be making amazing work, but just have a lower ceiling in terms of impact and audience. They still deserve to be celebrated, but there's no space for them in this sort of algorithm driven content landscape. And even where there are human curators involved who still have jobs, like a magazine editor, they're still making choices based on the gatekeeper that is the platform. Like they're trying to make their calls based on what they think will work. So it kind of like censors the good stuff automatically.

49:16Right. And the result is it's just so hermetic. Like Sean, you said a second ago, The fat has been so trimmed. Really, the context has been so trimmed. And it doesn't allow for the organic coalescence of culture. No, definitely not. I mean, you even think about the CD, right? They used to cost$20 or$18.99 or whatever ridiculous price that was, which was too much. But at the same time, so many people used to buy an 1899 album because they liked one song. And that was unfair for consumers. But at the same time, all that money helped the label fund the 50 other artists that they have on their roster.

50:03and it was kind of just a system that enabled you know major labels and bigger indies to just invest more in supporting acts and helping them develop their craft and get studio time and stuff like that but now you know with streaming people just go direct to the one song they like and that one song generates fractions of a cent it's totally undercut the sort of funding pool to help keep culture alive, especially any culture that's outside the top of the mainstream pop pyramid. So Sean, you wrote a great piece that's in your book about how raving may be a form of folk art now, kind of like a set of practices and traditions that despite electronic music's really futurist origins are maybe more about rehashing the past than presenting something radically new and world changing.

50:54How and when did this happen? I don't know the exact moment that it happened, but the longer that I've worked in electronic music, I just noticed this sort of like growing chasm between the rhetoric of the genre and the reality of the genre. And a big part of my job is like going through new releases. Like I get sent hundreds of promos every week. And I just got to a point where I realized I was like, I'm getting more promos sent to me that just sound like a recycled track from 1988 or 1998 or just some past era. And, you know, electronic music's always done this kind of recycling, but it just got to a point where it just felt almost like a fetishization of the past.

51:42And that went down to producers getting really excited about specific vintage drum machines and synthesizers and, you know, recreating drum patterns or production methods that people used in, you know, 1987 in Chicago or 1992 in London or whatever it may be. And there's nothing wrong with that, but it just didn't square with the way electronic music presents itself, which is this bastion of futurism. And, you know, futurism, if you read the work of like Simon Reynolds, for instance, and you talk about like the birth of UK hardcore or even going back farther to Detroit techno, like there was always this sort of sci-fi futurism element to it.

52:26And it just kind of felt like electronic music at some point kind of gave up on that. Like it still sells itself in that way. And it still uses all this like sci-fi imagery and idealistic talk about new possibilities for socializing and community. But when you look at it in practice, it's kind of just stalled out in terms of development. You know, everyone knows what a rave is now. Even like a suburban parent in Peoria, Illinois, has an idea what a DJ is, has an idea what a rave is. Like, it's been sort of absorbed into the mainstream, albeit in a sort of superficial, like goofy way, you know, from people seeing it on movies and TV.

53:12It's not secret anymore. It's not underground anymore. But these practices continue, you know, like I was talking about earlier, like humans like to get together in dark rooms with loud music and dance together. So the whole folk art idea, I have to admit, I didn't come up with it personally. I explained this in the piece. It's something I heard Matt Dryhurst and David Turner talking about when David was on the Interdependence podcast. Shout out to Interdependence, great pod. Yes, definitely worth checking out. But I heard them talking about this idea, and I literally went and looked up the definition of folk art.

53:50And it's basically just kind of like, yeah, a shared set of traditions and practices that get passed down from one generation to the next. And that's increasingly what the culture feels like to me with electronic music. And that doesn't mean that it doesn't have any value. There is value in passing things down from one generation to the next. But it is a change from the idea that this is a new kind of music. This is a new kind of culture. We're changing the paradigm. Electronic music, it's part of the paradigm now. And, you know, the first techno songs came out in 1981. So if you think about it, techno is in its 40s now.

54:27You can argue that modern electronic music culture is now middle-aged. And like many middle-aged individuals, you know, you just kind of settle into routines. You know what works for you, you know what doesn't. And you do what's comfortable, what you like to do. And it feels like that's what's going on with the culture. And it's not the first genre this has happened to. You know, I think you could make the same argument for jazz. You can make the same argument for punk rock. You can make the same argument for almost anything. Like underground cultures start somewhere below in the mainstream. They grow, they bubble up, they eventually get absorbed by the wider culture.

55:08And once that happens, certain aesthetic features just kind of get locked in. Because once everyone has an idea of electronic music is X, Y, and Z, It doesn't matter if the originators want to keep it moving. They're now in the minority. So yeah, that's why I think electronic music feels a bit like a folk art. There is also something about club culture in general that feels like particularly conducive to like yuppie culture or something. Like you are not usually going to see a banker go to like a punk show at like a Brooklyn DIY venue or whatever, but you will see them going to like Brooklyn Mirage.

55:54Right. There's a feeling of like culture tourism around it. Or just like it's like for those people or like maybe there's a tension where the DJs didn't get into it to do that, but that's like who they have to serve. Right, right. I mean, it really depends what clubs you're going to. And obviously people in the know have enough knowledge to go to places where bankers are hopefully not showing up. But one of the problems or I don't know if it's a problem, but one of the features of electronic music is it's so tied up in partying and hedonism. And that appeals to a huge swath of the population, regardless of whether or not they like electronic music or know who Jeff Mills is.

56:38The idea of like getting to be in a club until 5 a.m. and being off your face on whatever substance, you know, comes your way. That appeals to a lot of people, especially like in our, you know, overworked capitalist society where people just want to blow off steam and have some release. So yeah, I think that's probably why you see sort of more of a crossover between normies, if you want to call them that, and, you know, true blue electronic music diehards. I think there's also a big gap between electronic music culture in the U.S. and electronic music culture pretty much everywhere else. Totally.

57:17Like Americans still tend to have a fundamental misunderstanding of electronic music culture, its roots, its history. I think the average American probably still thinks of it as European music made by white people and has no idea that it came out of Chicago and Detroit and New York. And as these histories in like, you know, black and queer and brown communities, America still had club culture all those years. But most clubs have been filled up with, you know, it was disco, then hip hop, top 40. You know, the idea of like the big successful house and techno club was a relatively niche phenomenon until fairly recently.

58:01And even today in the U.S., it's still like a somewhat niche phenomenon everywhere that's not New York City and maybe Las Vegas. Right. You know, my first real exposure to electronic music was the electronica boom that I mentioned earlier in the late 90s, you know, with Fatboy Slim and Chemical Brothers and Daft Punk, all of whom were European, all of whom were white. And it was marketed to me as essentially an outgrowth of, quote unquote, alternative rock. Like I heard it on the local alternative rock station and it was like, here's the angsty new music for disgruntled suburban youth. and look, the guy in the prodigy looks like a punk rocker.

58:41And that was this marketing creation of the American music industry. That wasn't the reality of where the music came from. And you could argue even when EDM came around, someone like Skrillex was this former emo kid who had this weird emo punk rock haircut and was palatable to white suburban youth. So yeah, I mean, I feel like I could do a whole podcast just about like America and its weird relationship with this music that it invented in the first place. But it's definitely a very troubled history. You can write a book about it. Yeah, it's definitely a book. Yeah, I mean, I could do a whole book about it.

59:23There is one piece that made it into the book where I did this really deep dive about Paul Oakenfold's debut album, which was called Bunker. It came out in 2002 on Madonna's label, Maverick Records. And it was kind of like the last gasp of, quote unquote, electronica and the American music industry trying to break this music. And the album, it totally tanked. It was full of all these ill-advised guest features. But I used that album as kind of a jumping point to dissect the electronica phenomenon and what a weird, ahistorical marketing creation it was. I think I'm fascinated with it because that was kind of my own electronic music origin story, but the dynamics repeated itself over and over again in the US.

1:00:13yeah I had this really wild like full circle like existential moment at Coachella of all places earlier this year because I feel like Coachella is just sort of like the nexus for the cycle of the U.S.'s relationship with electronic music and like so the Chemical Brothers who played the first Coachella like returned to it this year and they did this like unbelievably great set and they had you know some cool like video stuff happening in the background but it was like very integrated with like, again, the physicality of like the crowd and the performance. And it was pretty minimal. And it just felt outside of like trends, just like pure dance music space.

1:00:50And then it's like, I look over to the other stages, and there's all of this like maximalist, like big spectacle. It was like Calvin Harris or someone like on the main stage. It just served as like this like crazy moment for me of just like telling the entire like story of the American relationship with dance music in one space. It's funny you mentioned Coachella because I have a colleague, a writer named Gabriel Zetan. He's doing a book that's coming out next year called After Daft. It's basically talks about how Daft Punk playing at Coachella in 2007, I believe it was, when they debuted the pyramid how that was kind of like the ground zero moment for edm in the u.s like that was the moment where like tens of thousands of you know indie people saw this performance and just had their minds blown and were like whoa electronic music and you know you think about in the aftermath of that there was justice and then edm and it just just kind of kept getting bigger and more ridiculous ever since.

1:01:57It's funny because Daft Punk is obviously this like legendary act. Most people don't have that many negative things to say about them, but they kind of unleashed this monster. The French. It's the French's fault. Yeah.

1:02:26So, Sean, we know that you started at Accelerator and you're now self-publishing on Substack. Can you tell us a little bit about your journey through music media? How did the trajectory of electronic music journalism in that time make self-publishing feel like the most viable option now? Well, I have to say that I didn't have any sort of master plan about self-publishing is the way. basically after Accelerator, because I was there for seven or eight years, then I started working at Red Bull Music Academy and I was there for several years. And that project just kind of evaporated somewhat unexpectedly in 2019.

1:03:04In fact, that's actually where I first worked with Emily and got to know her there. And when RBMA ended, I was not really sure what I wanted to do next. I didn't have like a new job lined up. I had already been the editor of a publication before, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to do that again. And there just aren't that many publications left anyways. So I was just thinking, I was like, you know what? I worked at RBMA. This was like a place that was very respected in the industry. Someone's going to hire me for a job. Like, I just need to wait. Something cool will come along. But in the meantime, I need to like keep my name out there.

1:03:45You know, I should still like be doing a little writing or just do something to just keep my name in the ether. And I decided to start a newsletter. I initially thought it would just be, oh, I'll send out some new track recommendations every week and maybe a few hundred people will appreciate this. I have something of an established name in electronic music, and people in the industry will read it, and then eventually a new job will come along, and then I'll quit the newsletter and do that. Of course, I started the newsletter in September of 2019, and six months later, we were all in global lockdown, and no new job had come along yet.

1:04:25And as soon as the pandemic hit, it was like, oh, no one's going to hire me for anything anytime soon. And luckily, the newsletter had picked up momentum. And I started seeing people posting the articles that I was writing on social media because I had expanded into I started writing essays just because I was like, oh, well, I'll just share some of my thoughts about what's going on in electronic music. and it kept growing. So I turned on paid subscriptions about a year into it and people started signing up. It took a long time. I mean, I've been doing the newsletter for 40 years now. And I joke that, you know, it's gone from being like a completely unpaid labor of love to a low-paying labor of love.

1:05:09I have almost 11 ,000 subscribers like on the free list and less than 10 % of those are paid subscribers. So it's still like not a lucrative enterprise. And the fact that I live in Barcelona where the cost of living is lower than it would have been in San Francisco where I used to live or someplace like New York or even Berlin or London helps make that more palatable. But thankfully it's gotten to a point where I make enough money, I can pay my bills and then supplement with some other freelance work here and there. But the reason it works for me more than anything is just like, I can write about whatever I want.

1:05:49Anyone who's done freelance writing these days knows that like just getting a pitch approved, even a good pitch is so hard. There's just not that many publications left. Freelance budgets have really shrunk down. Most stuff is being done in-house. And the kind of work that I'm doing in the newsletter where, you know, I'll write like a 3000 word essay about the changing nature of DJ culture as a result of Instagram or something. It's just not what a lot of publications are really looking for. So many publications now just feel like extensions of the industry's marketing apparatus. Also, so many of them are dependent on brand partnerships now to keep the lights on, that their content choices tend to skew towards featuring artists that will attract brands, you know, which means like young, attractive people that photograph well, so that when a brand partnership comes along, they can feature those kinds of artists on their social media feeds or have them play at their events.

1:06:50So I'm just not really interested in playing that game. To me, that game doesn't feel like music journalism. And luckily, Substack has given me an outlet to do that. And I was lucky enough also to start, I was kind of like the first major electronic music newsletter. And I've just kept publishing regularly, like once a week or twice a week for four years now. So I think people know what First Floor is and know what kind of content I'm going to offer and appreciate that. So that's how I've made it work. Yeah, you're literally the only person I know who is writing about music and making it work in the Substack model.

1:07:33And it's interesting that you're doing it with like writing about a pretty niche topic. But then again, maybe the niche is what helps in a way. Like I said, part of it is that I just live in a city with like a lower cost of living. but I think part of the reason that my writing has been successful is that I've really leaned into making it my voice which ran counter to my instincts like I was trained as a journalist to like not use the first person like I wasn't writing about me I was writing about artists and their work I was supposed to be objective so on and so forth but once I started doing the newsletter Like it was obvious.

1:08:12It was just me. It wasn't me as a representative of this larger organization that had a decades long history. So I kind of dropped the facade and was like, hey, I'm Sean Rinaldo. I've been involved in this culture for 20 plus years. I've been a journalist. I've thrown parties. I've DJed. I've run record labels. You know, I have a good sense of how all this runs and how this operates. And here are my observations about what's going on. And I think people really connect to that because I feel like so much music journalism now, it's really hard to detect the writer's voice, especially, you know, when so much of the content is just like warmed over, regurgitated press releases or really superficial artist profiles.

1:09:00Unfortunately, it doesn't feel like a lot of traditional outlets are giving writers the space to sort of develop a voice and have an opinion and give takes that go deeper than, you know, what's going to fit in a tweet. So I think that's what helps make First Floor successful. I don't really know, but that seems to be what people are responding to. totally and like if there's fewer and fewer writers being paid to do high quality journalism fewer and fewer places to write there's just like more and more sort of junk content especially with ai circulating like a lot of people do forms of music reporting on like youtube or whatever but it's always like we joke me and my partner joke it's like 75 accurate youtube music documentaries There's a lot of just like specious information kind of around there.

1:09:51And I think in that environment, you need sort of trusted voices. And I think for the same reason, like people listen to podcasts, they kind of just like want a guide to take them through what is actually going on right now, who they can trust. Yeah. And there is a real lack of trusted voices, partially because the turnover amongst music journalists is so high. I think even a lot of talented writers will get into it and they'll do it for a year or two and be like, wait a minute, based on the amount of time I'm putting into this, I'm making less than minimum wage. I have no job security. I'm not getting to write anything interesting.

1:10:28I'm going to go get a job that pays me two or three times as much and enjoy my life a little more. Like so many people wash out. And even amongst veteran writers, like I interviewed Philip Sherburn in the newsletter last year. And he's, you know, writes for Pitchfork, probably the most celebrated electronic music writer who's active right now. And he told me that he doesn't make enough from just his work at Pitchfork to pay all of his bills. He does side work. And it's like, if the most prominent writer in the genre is not making enough at Pitchfork, which is the number one music publication on the planet, that doesn't paint a very promising picture for the health of music journalism.

1:11:16Not at all. I mean, there's also the social media factor of like, if you're getting paid, you know,$200 to write like some really long feature and in that feature, you want to take a stand on an issue or express an opinion or critique something in the culture. and it's going to get posted on social media and people are going to like tell you that you're an idiot and that you're wrong and you know maybe like dox you or fill up your inbox like the cost benefit calculations for that are not very good so I think a lot of writers that would be equipped to take on sort of thornier topics more complex discussions just shy away from it because they're like, this is not worth the hassle for me to have this conversation in public, like not for$200 and, you know, a freelance gig at a publication where I'm not actually employed and where, you know, the editors aren't going to provide me any real backup or protection if the shit hits the fan.

1:12:21Before we close, I want to talk a little bit about Red Bull, which is where you and I met. But RBMA was actually sort of like a 20 year long branded activation, which is, you know, ironic. And I guess it was interesting also because it was a branded activation that, you know, actually went deeper on underground electronic music than a lot of traditional publications did and got a lot of really legit people involved. When I first became aware of rbma i think i wrote a piece about it actually uh for the fader it like really felt like this you know wild controversial new model for funding music journalism like what is this like is this selling out uh or is this a brand the new patrons of underground music and music media um looking back what would you say is the ultimate legacy of that experiment do you see it as something that kind of changed the playing field forever?

1:13:24Or is it more of this weird blip on the timeline, like this strange thing that just worked out really well? So Red Bull Music Academy was, like Emily said, it was basically a 20-year-long brand activation where Red Bull hired a creative agency. It was based in Germany to initially just put on an academy every year. And the idea is in a city, they would invite sort of aspiring young artists from all around the world to come together for like two weeks in a city. And they would put on lectures with, you know, veteran artists and music industry figures, like really deep dive lectures. You can still find the whole archive online.

1:14:10And then they would also like set up studios and let these sort of up and coming artists work together and make music. And it was this kind of this unorthodox little music laboratory. From there, it grew and they created an online radio station. They created a written publication that was called The Daily that did really incredible deep dive articles into like the most niche topics of all different kinds of music. They hired a lot of veteran artists and music journalists and just music industry people, like the best of the best was the idea to work on the staff. And it was really unusual because Red Bull just kind of gave this creative agency, which was called Yadastar, gave them sort of just carte blanche to do what they wanted.

1:15:02I mean, yes, there were some negotiations between the brand and the agency, but by and large, the brand loomed in the background and let the agency do what it wanted. It was like this very weird thing where something that had the name Red Bull in the title would be getting written up in the New York Times talking about what a, you know, champion of avant-garde culture the project had become. They were also doing like gallery exhibitions of like cutting edge post-internet art. And like sometimes the artists themselves would even be like making fun of Red Bull. Yeah. So it was very strange compared to other brand activations.

1:15:42And when I first heard about it, I didn't know what to think either. I had grown up with this DIY mentality and independence was the thing that everyone is supposed to strive for from an ethical standpoint. But as I looked into it, I was like, wait, the quality of work is really high. It's better resourced than any publication I've ever worked at. All my colleagues are really knowledgeable, respectable figures in the industry. And yeah, I ended up working there like seven years. And I have to say like some of the best work of my career that I'm most proud of took place as part of Red Bull Music Academy.

1:16:21And it's weird to say that because it was all funded by an energy drink company. And it was all funded by an energy drink company whose CEO was like kind of a shitty right-wing old guy. And he like funded like a weird wannabe Breitbart German language media outlet. And that definitely made it a little bit more ethically complicated. But at the same time, when RBMA ended in 2019, I think it's really obvious to see the void that it's left. Like no other brand or publication has stepped in with big budgets to fund deep dive journalism or big budget events with niche artists who normally wouldn't have access.

1:17:05As for its legacy, there's two things. One, a lot of artists I think got used to working with RBMA and got used to that money. And that includes journalists as well. A lot of people just worked with RBMA and got used to doing cool projects and being well compensated for it. And when that money disappeared, it also coincided with like the pandemic streaming, hollowing out, you know, traditional revenue streams as well. People had to turn somewhere. So they've started looking to other brands. But unfortunately, a lot of these other brands don't have the same sort of blank check. You know, most brand activations are, you know, six months, three months, one year, and they target like a specific demographic and the brand has very strict parameters and wants to prove everything.

1:17:51And it's just a totally different proposition. So yeah, when I think about RBMA's legacy, it was a bit of a Trojan horse in a way. And again, I don't mean that to disparage anyone I worked with or any of the work that I did while I was there. But there were so many artists who in 2013 or 2015 or whatever year probably would have said like, I will never work with a brand, But oh, but I'll work with RBMA because they know what's up and they know it's cool. And it kind of broke open the floodgates. And it's like, OK, well, once I worked with RBMA, well, OK, I guess I can work with this liquor company or, oh, I can work with this clothing company.

1:18:28And now we've gotten to this point where you see artists actively touting their brand affiliations, you know, like, thank you, Vans, for the new clothes you sent me. You know, like, I'm so excited to partner with you. I think for anyone who grew up in sort of like the DIY era, it feels very strange where we're at now, where these like nominally or supposedly underground artists are like actively courting and effectively just marketing for brands that give them money. Because like, what else are they going to do? Yeah. And like, I don't mean to disparage them either, because it's like when touring is more expensive and less feasible than ever, you can't make money selling music.

1:19:10How are you going to support your practice, especially if you have to live in one of these cities like, you know, New York or Berlin or whatever, that are some of the most expensive cities in the world? Because that's really key to being an artist as well these days. So it's tough. Totally. Totally. Yeah. Yeah, sorry to leave things on such a bummer note. Well, I actually want to, we want to close on like a more positive note. Andrea, what was the thing we're going to ask? So last question for you, more optimistic looking towards the future. What's something that's happening in electronic music today that genuinely makes you feel excited or hopeful?

1:19:46Like something that gives you that old feeling of electricity in the air or like something's afoot that feels mysterious and intriguing and like a way forward. It's funny because there's a lot of things going on in the culture right now that aesthetically don't speak to me. But on an intellectual level, I'm really intrigued by what's going on. And I think this glut of pop music coming into the space, like I hate it personally. The idea of DJs playing a Britney Spears remix and that supposedly being subversive to me just rings really hollow. But at the same time, like when I think about my own music fandom and I think about like when I was in my like late teens and early 20s, I would present myself to the world as like, oh, I only like independent underground music.

1:20:39I don't like pop music. But the reality was I still lived in the world. I was still hearing the Backstreet Boys when I went to the grocery store. I think independent music culture used to really have these sort of like false facades about pretending that we didn't all live in a world where pop music was everywhere and was impacting everyone. And when I see these younger generations coming in, I feel like they don't have those same hangups. And there's ethical downsides to that. Like I wish that people were a little more concerned about what we used to call selling out. But at the same time, I'm a little jealous of the fact that like, let's say a 19 year old producer can, you know, fire up Ableton and be like, you know what, I'm really into this metal heads jungle that I heard that was really popular in like 1996.

1:21:33And I want to combine those bass lines with the style of vocal production I heard on this Justin Bieber song. And being able to combine those ideas and forge new things, like that's really interesting and involves a level of like artistic freedom that I think prior generations of electronic music aficionados haven't had because it wasn't socially acceptable. to reference those things or admit that you liked those things. So although I'm not excited about the idea of people just playing chart pop or karaoke jams at the rave, I'm very interested in what's going to happen when people are referencing those things to make new styles of music and hopefully push the culture forward.

1:22:25And I'm hoping that this sort of superficial moment we're living right now is ultimately just kind of a blip and that something more interesting will be coming down the line. And I think, you know, pop elements will be a part of that, but we'll have to see what happens. Well, Sean Rinaldo, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us. It's been fascinating and everyone should go follow his sub stack and subscribe because his work is worthwhile and definitely go buy his book ASAP. Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed the conversation.

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