Now Ye're Talking - To a Music Website Owner

darraghdoyle

Aidan, what would your advice be to all the young writers out there, trying to build a portfolio and name for themselves in the (music) journalism world who are writing for commercial publications for free? In your experience - or that of the Goldenplec team - is this something that should be encouraged?

GoldenPlec: Aidan

darraghdoyle wrote: »

Aidan, what would your advice be to all the young writers out there, trying to build a portfolio and name for themselves in the (music) journalism world who are writing for commercial publications for free? In your experience - or that of the Goldenplec team - is this something that should be encouraged?

My advise would be to know your worth and if working for free do it on your terms.

At GoldenPlec we don't assign any work to any of our writers, we let them pick the content they work on and then we set them deadlines (as they would get in a real media job) so that if they are going to work something, they at least get a sense for deadlines and real world scenario.

If you're not getting feedback on your writing, walk away, if you don't feel you're progressing or being given opportunities, walk away. Will they share their stats with you? why not? you might need it in an interview to discuss the impact of some of your written pieces.

If you're doing something for free it should be treated as a portfolio piece. Add value to your experience and body of work.

For us, we can provide writers with access to bands to interview, live shows to review, albums to review before they are out. That's the potential value of writing at GoldenPlec, as well as an existing audience.

I sort of break my own rule, because I'm never going to be a journalist for any publication (no desire to be) but I run hours of work on keeping the site running every day, with no pay, purely to keep this platform as big and as well read as possible for any potential journalists and photographers who grace our digital pages (and now real feel pages)

GoldenPlec: Aidan

Sharktopus wrote: »

Hi Aidan,

How would you sum up the current Irish Music scene? Who are your favourite local acts currently and if you were to name a band or artist (past or present) who should be bigger, who would they be?

Amazing work on Goldenplec - great to see it go from strength to strength over the years

The current Irish Music Scene is buzzing, last year was the most amount of submissions we've ever received for album / EP reviews. It's a great time to be checking out these Irish artists that are producing quality music that is of an international quality.

I have far too many bands I love listening to and naming them just ends up with me leaving some out but I will say that I really thought Cast of Cheers had the potential to be a huge, maybe it was my massive grá for their tunes.

When I think about the last 12 years, there has been so much, I miss Automata, they were great, Director, The Flares. So many.

What I think recently is that the rest of the world is starting to investigate all our lesser heard bands based on the success of some recent bands like Kodaline, The Riptide Movement, We Cut Corners, Hudson Taylor, Delorentos, Ham Sandwich. The further they dig the more they find.

seachto7

What do you think sets you apart from the competition, or the "others"?

Do you approach articles and reviews looking to structure content that people will visit over the "others"?

How hard is it to review an album? In that, it's all subjective, which someone could say negates music journalism.

How long goes into listening to an album, that is say 50 minutes, and then putting together a review?

Would you listen to it several times to take in the music separate to the lyrics etc.

GoldenPlec: Aidan

seachto7 wrote: »

What do you think sets you apart from the competition, or the "others"?

I think our comprehensiveness, there is very few sites out there that touch as much as we do. We're very Irish content orientated and put a focus on Irish artists where possible.

seachto7 wrote: »

Do you approach articles and reviews looking to structure content that people will visit over the "others"?

We have no active attempts at making articles click-bait, traffic is great but it's we are trying to not engage in anything other than produce great content and let that content itself be good enough that people want to share it out and come back to the site repeatedly. Nobodies job is on the line either way, we just cover the costs of running the site and then re-invest in the site.

seachto7 wrote: »

How hard is it to review an album? In that, it's all subjective, which someone could say negates music journalism.

It's hard, but the only thing we ask is for honest opinion and that if that opinion is negative that it constructively offers that criticism rather than blindly be negative.

seachto7 wrote: »

How long goes into listening to an album, that is say 50 minutes, and then putting together a review?

Depending on some of the writers it can be anything from several hours to days, not all in one sitting, we ask them to take their time with reviews and get a real feel for the body of work.

seachto7 wrote: »

Would you listen to it several times to take in the music separate to the lyrics etc.

Absolutely, rushing a review leaves a half assed review. I've had so many writers completely change their opinion on an album from first to last listen before publishing a review.

seachto7

Thanks for the answers! I should have added one more. If you have a day job, how much of it gets in the way of running the site?

GoldenPlec: Aidan

seachto7 wrote: »

Thanks for the answers! I should have added one more. If you have a day job, how much of it gets in the way of running the site?

100%

In my two previous jobs I had a lot of leeway and free time which I used on the site. In my current job, I'm busy and brain taxed 100% of my work hours. So unfortunately running the site comes down to good planning, evening work late into the night and getting embargoed content (and respecting the embargo's for trust) to get content up. That's pure dedication, if I woke up tomorrow fed up of it, the sites' productivity for events and news would dry up a good deal.

Dozen Wicked Words

As we all know, boards struggles to make a profit, do you make a profit from your site?

Do band management offer you enticements for positive press?

Thanks

Joe Doe

Worth mentioning, any site such as this one or even the boards (holding group thereof) should/does operate with the ultimate primary objective to monetise itself (usually in the longer term). This is the 1st elementary rule of business. Yes the Director(s) can put in 100hr work weeks on little or no salaries, but the Director(s), and shareholders are also the real benefactors of any sales, mergers, takeovers, acquisitions or IPOs. Facebook may not have much cash or make much/any profit, but can turn itself in to fair few $billion any-time it wants.

If a business operates as a charity or non-profit community group it can always reclassify itself as such. Occasionally business may be run as a hobby, but sooner or later the mighty dollar becomes the main focus (along of course with actual survival) - which are often directly related.

GoldenPlec: Aidan

Dozen Wicked Words wrote: »

As we all know, boards struggles to make a profit, do you make a profit from your site?

We have only actually had advertising for 3 years of our 12. In the past 3 years, we have spent more on being online, producing content and services needed to run the site than we have taken in. Unfortunately advertising isn't as lucrative as people think unless you're doing insane traffic.

Dozen Wicked Words wrote: »

Do band management offer you enticements for positive press?

They never have, and we wouldn't take anything that could influence the honesty of a review. We have done sponsored content for upcoming events, which is coverage more than anything, but when it comes to reviewing, our opinion is not for sale.

GoldenPlec: Aidan

Joe Doe wrote: »

Worth mentioning, any site such as this one or even the boards (holding group thereof) should/does operate with the ultimate primary objective to monetise itself (usually in the longer term). This is the 1st elementary rule of business. Yes the Director(s) can put in 100hr work weeks on little or no salaries, but the Director(s), and shareholders are also the real benefactors of any sales, mergers, takeovers, acquisitions or IPOs. Facebook may not have much cash or make much/any profit, but can turn itself in to fair few $billion any-time it wants.

If a business operates as a charity or non-profit community group it can always reclassify itself as such. Occasionally business may be run as a hobby, but sooner or later the mighty dollar becomes the main focus (along of course with actual survival) - which are often directly related.

Agreed, in an ideal world I would work this full-time or pay someone to run it for me. We haven't gotten to that point just yet but we are looking at ways of monetising the site to not piss off our users. It's a hard thing to achieve, if it was easy, plenty of people would be running websites as a job.

Gaspode

Hi Aidan, these questions will no doubt give away my age but here goes!
Firstly do you ever feel that the music today is lacking a sense of rebellion, that there is nothing like the anti-establishment vibe that it traditionally has had in the past? Do we need something like the punk movement to get people using music to voice their displeasure at the mess their elders (my age group!) have made of this country/planet?

Also, does it frustrate you that there is so much great great music to be heard live every night of the week, but the main radio stations here almost completely ignore it in favour of the re-hashed, middle of the road pap that most of them seem to go with?

Joe Doe

Good point & question, agree there is too many producers shovelling out the same cr@p.
E.g. Every pop-centric current hit has a west-country, hand-clapping, cajon drum loop dropped on to it straight from the Protools™ folder of cheese-doom.
E.g. 'Hometown'

GoldenPlec: Aidan

Gaspode wrote: »

Hi Aidan, these questions will no doubt give away my age but here goes!
Firstly do you ever feel that the music today is lacking a sense of rebellion, that there is nothing like the anti-establishment vibe that it traditionally has had in the past? Do we need something like the punk movement to get people using music to voice their displeasure at the mess their elders (my age group!) have made of this country/planet?

It's still out there, there's still bands making that music, I think just in the internet world it's downed out. There's so much more music these days, access is greater than ever before and you're more likely to have a Taylor Swift or Ed Sheeran tweeted into your timeline or Facebook home than any smaller artist or challenging music.

Gaspode wrote: »

Also, does it frustrate you that there is so much great great music to be heard live every night of the week, but the main radio stations here almost completely ignore it in favour of the re-hashed, middle of the road pap that most of them seem to go with?

It's a frustration but the problem is numbers. Big business is entirely a numbers game and when you're pandering to a bottom line as any radio station or business has to do to survive, you have to play the common denominator music.

The main radio stations are that big because they play it safe, make themselves as appealing to a wide market as possible and use this following to sell advertising. That's what keeps people in jobs unfortunately. Smaller radio stations who do support this music need bigger support. If there's a swell on the ground for a particular style of music, it gives them the ability to expand.

Dav

I'm gonna wrap it up there folks.

Aidan, thank you very much for joining us and sharing so much about how Golden Plec (and the Irish music scene!) works.