Talk About Pop Music

Through some strange alchemy, I managed to wrest control of the Editorial desk over at The Music Fix a few years back. 

After a few tours of duty in the trenches, and spotting the need for some kind of Jim Jones figure to oversee the motley band of volunteer contributors who wrote for the site, I seized my chance in a mostly bloodless coup. Truth told, the site was - and remains - nothing without everyone who has helped over the years, and it only survives because our small team (significantly smaller that other similar sites) continue to give up their time to deliver a regular diet of album and gig reviews, features and news reports from the no-man's land of pop, rock and nearly everything else in between. My job, for the most part, is just maintaining some kind of momentum, picking up the occasional slack and doing my best to represent the brand to most of the PRs, labels and artists that we work with.

Given that enviable role, why the need for another outlet?

Well, I've always been interested in the process and politics of writing about music, and while some of the hand-wringing about its future has waned, its value and currency remains a hot topic. A few years ago, it was all about how blogging was going to make more traditional forms of curation and analysis redundant, or how always-on streaming negated the need for criticism. That hasn't really happened, primarily I think because blogs tend to be personal efforts and the long-term commitment to keeping a blog running is too much for many people. It's the same reason why most fanzines never got past the third issue. And while the various streaming services certainly allow the listener to browse and explore new music, as with sport say, there's still a lot of pleasure to be had from talking about stuff with friends or reading some well-argued analysis.

People are not going to stop debating and writing about music. The long-term circulation drop of music magazines has yet to level out and many once-active websites are now gathering virtual dust, but it's fairly clear the pursuit is unlikely to completely disappear. It will find new guises and ways of working - even if making a career as a music journalist becomes an increasingly difficult ambition.

So Words and Guitars is about music writing, the challenges it faces, the people doing interesting work and some insight into the process - from the decidedly less glamorous end of the market. I'll probably have a moan about woeful album streams and creaking inboxes full of 'news' that's of interest to no-one along the way.

I have a role and responsibilities over at TMF. W&G is distinct, and while some of what I'll be writing about stems from my experiences there, it's not meant to reflect the thoughts or opinions of the good folk there or the wider Digital Fix network.