About a year ago, I became a columnist for Attack Magazine. It has been fun writing opinion columns and providing analysis to a very wide audience that stretches beyond the confines of the genres I participate in. When Attack approached me about doing this, their primary concern was that the column lead discussion as opposed to so many dance music sites which simply rehash the same old crap. My most recent column about the effects of festivals on dance music culture caught someone’s eye over at Dancing Astronaut, a publication I had never heard of but which a number of people I know must peruse since they brought it to my attention. I’m honestly not sure what the purpose of their analysis of my column was, and after reading it my primary reaction is befuddlement about the internet echo chamber.
Blog aggregators and content regurgitators have been around since the time ISM began at least, but it seems like it’s gotten worse. This Dancing Astronaut supposedly has some clout in the EDM world (and 165,000 twitter followers), but if all their content is as lazily tossed together as this “piece” was, I guess that’s about what one might expect from EDM but it is at a decidedly low standard. It’s not as if house and techno sites are immune to this, but it’s more typical to see Press Releases be spat back at you almost verbatim from even the most prestigious sites.
Where is the quality original content? Vice’s Thump site, which is dedicated to dance music, kicked off a new “column” yesterday and judging from the first one this also isn’t up to snuff. How bad is dance music journalism in 2015? It’s a total mess at best, and a complete farce at worst. There are a few good spots around, most of which you can find in our “Links” sidebar, but based mostly around a small crew of writers that isn’t expanding quickly enough to cover more quality material and ideas for the increasing number of outlets publishing content.
In case you missed them, here are links to all my previous Attack columns in the order they were published…
Boiler Room: A Missed Opportunity?
Is House A Feeling? Influences In Dance Music
Part Time Punks: Are Amateurs Ruining Dance Music?
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