Music reviews are a red herring
Watching some of my music friends show the result of their pursuit of getting write-ups about their music has left me ultimately convinced that “submitting to get your song/album reviewed” is a red herring. I don’t see it as a viable or worthwhile path to any sort of growth of fanbase.
With AI eating search, folks increasingly less likely to even find that review. Reviewers are desperate for traffic, and thus need to rely on a tried-and-true method in 2025: volume. Churn out review after review, use AI to do it and evaluate thousands of submissions without even listening to most of them and then generate the dozens of reviews based on what an AI summary says might be the most hypeworthy songs, and you’ve got a music blog. Even if you do take that approach, your blog will likely struggle to get even meager traffic, at which point I find myself asking, is any of this worth it?
There are obvious exceptions — the Hearing Things blog and my friends writing at Groove Art Universe, as well as mainstays like Pitchfork and Fantano come to mind — and I would love to read what they each have to say about my music. I think they are viable paths to fans. I hope they continue to exist.
But I didn’t passively submit to them via some service. I’m friendly with the folks at GAU. I hope to slow build enough of an audience myself to get the attention of Hearing Things. I don’t think some random slop post will accelerate that much.
What’s the other obvious alternative? It’s hiring a PR agency.
I could do that, but it’s a lot of $. I don’t want to spend the money right now, and tbh I know few of us can realistically afford it.
So I welcome slow, thoughtful, passionate, word-of-mouth to find my others.
