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D R O W N E D
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S O U N D
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Hullo!

We've been somewhat busy. Since we last mailed you DiS has been...

1) Beavering away on version five of our site which goes live to coincide with DiS' 8TH BIRTHDAY next Thursday (presents welcome)

2) Talking to the legendary Peter Hook from NEW ORDER and Brummy-slash-LDN poet Mike Skinner from THE STREETS.

3) Stood in fields of lushness for END OF THE ROAD, dropped anchor in the mud at BESTIVAL and hopped around the East End to for LONDON AIRWAVES

4) Shortlisted for two BT Digital Music awards and would love it if you could take a second to VOTE for us http://www.btdma.com/index.php/dma08/voting

5) Had track-by-track run-downs of fantastic debut albums from LATE OF THE PIER and FRIENDLY FIRES

6) Out and about watching SHEARWATER, BE YOUR OWN PET (rip), BON IVER, GLASVEGAS, GOMEZ, GUTTER TWINS, Bright Eyes' CONOR OBERST, ANDREW WK, METALLICA...

7) Reviewing a heap of great new records from MOGWAI, TV ON THE RADIO, VOLCANO!, DAVID HOLMES, LOVVERS, GLASVEGAS, METRONOMY...

8) Listening to mix tapes from TRANS AM, Maximo Park's DUNCAN LLOYD, THE WALKMEN...


...AND COMING UP....
New site... lots of bits from our old friends KAISER CHIEFS... new columns from the likes of EVERETT TRUE and the city of VANCOUVER... new community functionality... mixtapes from M83 and CHAIRLIFT... track-by-track talk from LONG BLONDES... coverage of IN THE CITY (including our stage at Night & Day headlined by THESE NEW PURITANS) and CONCRETE & GLASS (including our stage at Hoxton Bar & Kitchen headlined by FRIGHTENED RABBIT) ...and lots lots more...

Ta Ta For Now,

http://drownedinsound.com

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NEW ADDRESS!!
As of September 1st Drowned in Sound is located at:
1 Junction Mews, Paddington, London, W2 1PN

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Things I is doing soon... // O LOOK HOW NDULLGEHNT MI BLOG IZ LULZ

DiS is nearly eight. October is our birthday month and we're doing various things to celebrate. Join me/us if you can.

Thursday October 2nd 2008

DiS 8th Birthday Drinks
@ Strongroom Bar, London
Before C&G gets under way DiS will be playing some of our favourite records and having drinks from 5pm-7pm. Everyone welcome, especially those hauling around presents.

DiS Stage: Concrete & Glass
@ Hoxton Square Bar And Kitchen, London

Frightened Rabbit (Myspace)
Bodies Of Water (Myspace)
O'Death (Myspace)
Doors: 7pm
Tickets: £8 (buy)

Plus I'm planning a late night after party but it is still TBC

Tuesday October 7th 2008

Speaking: In the City
I'm speaking at two panels. One talking about the new breed of future-thinkers in the music business and another, slightly more daunting one, the annual 'Hypothetical...' panel which I'm chairing. It's daunting because Tony Wilson was always the chair for this panel but I'm currently picking my panel to talk about how to break a band (probably using a lot of what David Byrne said as a benchmark) and how to release a major record in the current record business and then how they/we would do it if we had none of the current rules.

DiS Stage: In the City
@ Night & Day, Manchester
White Denim CANCELLED! Headline TBC.
Grammatics (Myspace)
Skeletons (Myspace)
Prego (Myspace)
Plus Tender Maulings DJs
Doors: 7pm
Tickets: £26 for a three-day wristband (buy)

October 15th - 16th 2008
Speaking @ Your are in control, Reykjavik
Looking forward to this conference as they've put together a great bill of people, including Anthony from the Hype Machine. It's also during Iceland Airwaves festival and I get to go drinking with buddy Jon (who's now drumming for CSS) plus I get to see Crystal Castles again and go in the Blue Lagoon for the second time this year!

And then I might be going to New York for a bit (or more likely put off travelling and spend some time in Canada in December, as I'd like to goto Transmission as it was great last year), then DiS will be returning to Cardiff to host a stage at the Barfly during SWN, and then hopefully we'll end the year with an Xmas party or start next year with one featuring our favourites, fingers crossed.

Before all of that there's the small matter of getting the new site online and muddling my way through things.

New'ish things currently on my stereo/iPod:
- Friendly Fires Friendly Fires track-by-track by the band
- Late of the Pier Fantasy Black Channel track-by-track by the band
- Chairlift MySpace (on the new iTunes ad)
- Tilly & the Wall O (surprised to see them added to Radio1 playlist)
- And Elbow, Annie and Cut Copy

An interview for Record of the Day

RotD Media Spotlight

Explanation: The Media Spotlight feature provides a platform for journalists, programmers and other music media people to tell RotD readers about themselves. The questions deal both with music and the rest of life, and both serious and more flippant responses are welcome. You do not have to answer all the questions below, but we’d encourage you to answer as many as possible.

Name: Sean Adams

Company and Role: Drowned in Sound.com – Founder and returning Editor

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First journalism/music-related job: Started my first email fanzine/proto-blog in 1998 – “The Last Resort” whilst working in a record store and promoting gigs when not sleeping.

The last music I purchased was: PiL – Metal Box

The music that’s exciting me at the moment is: Friendly Fires, Crystal Castles, Cut Copy, Panic At The Disco, and forthcoming records from Patrick Wolf, Jamie T, and Deftones.

A recent trend which I’ve been enjoying is: gothic pop

A trend I have less time for is: the ghetto-ization of any music which either isn’t new-new-NEW and/or didn’t sell half a million of their debut being viewed as washed up. So many great bands are lost in the canyon between introducing features and cover features. I mean bands like dEUS, Elbow, The Field and The Stills, for starters... One of the most frustrating things about running the label was not just believing in the bands but knowing how much love there was for instance for Metric. Can’t decide what was more painful, hearing how they fell in the middle ground or knowing how few people were willing to stick their neck out without seeing mid-week sales (based on less than 1 percent of the population buying bit of plastic?!), seeing coverage elsewhere or without knowing the marketing spend.

The best thing about doing my job is: getting to enthuse about bands I love to people who’ll listen and seeing the likes of Muse, Kaiser Chiefs, Bat for Lashes, Feist, etc, find fans and then go from nowhere to everywhere.

How have recent changes in the media world affected what I do:
The internet has now become a legitimate form of media, especially when we can now reach half a million people per month. The number of exclusives we can demand has risen proportionately with our reach.

I predict that in five year’s time: people will think of MP3s as ‘quaint’.

Is there anyone else working in the industry who you particularly admire? Trent Reznor, for entrepreneurial and artistic gumption.

One thing you don’t know about me is: I was once the face of an adoption campaign (well more of a silhouette really…)

Best piece of advice I have ever been given…. Anthony H. Wilson to me at In The City, it was something like: “stick to your guns, even though people will hate you for having guns in the first place.”

If I didn’t do this job, I’d… be doing it as a hobby.

This will appear in their weekly PDF magazine, available to subscribers of recordoftheday.com

Shaking a leg. Moving. Onwards!

The past few weeks have been a bit like using my get-out-of-jail-free card but having no clothes and ten miles to walk to reach civilization. People think things are going to end, because for a lot of good people it has been the end of the line. As much as I wanna tell everyone else 'everything's gonna be alright', I've wanted to be as respectful as possible. It's hard to keep the perception of a dream still being very much alive amid so many redundancies which have taken place in the past few weeks and months.

Rumours of things disappearing in a cloud of burning promo smoke are utterly unfounded. DiS is carrying on and no-one can stop me or it. Yeah, things are going to be a lot more lo-fi but it's nothing new, the first four years of the site were very good grounding and knowing what something is, rather than what it could be with a budget, is a don't not push button which I won't be bashing again in a hurry.

People seem confused why it happened in the first place. Wha' happen' was... we signed a deal with BSKYB, whose Sky Media arm sold, and still sell, our ads. They saw that with DiS reaching nearly half a million people a month (plus my highly experienced music business partners), that given some expansion into new demographics, we made for a reliable and sensible solution to create the content for sky.com/music. I liked the idea of reaching 2million or so people a day, with potentially several thousand, if not hundreds of thousands of them looking for musical guidance. It was a Gameboy-cheat to fast track DiS and bring the music we love to a wider audience.

As of two weeks ago the bridges to get from A to B are no longer being funded. Whatever will be, will be...

It's a mixed blessing. I'm glad I no longer need to tread water and can get stuck in again. It's been an awkard two years - the first one of negotiations, putting everything else on hold; the second filled with so much hope and uncertainty. I'm glad I can get back to what I side-stepped four years ago in favour of running the record label, which has been a fulfilling adventure. I'm happy to take a backseat in the label, as it doesn't make sense to be looking to sign anything new in the current climate.

As sad as I am that I can't see a future of the record label, it's actually quite depressing because I can't see a future for the record industry. Ultimately it's a business-model based on selling something people can get, and are increasingly growing to expect, for free. You can add value here and there, make fantastic packaging, release things on blue twelve inch vinyl or meat-packed with polaroids but it's not enough. It's also such a horrible muddle being at the heart of the axis where creativity mixes with commerce. What feels like philantropy, releasing things I love and believe in, ultimately is peoples dreams and their expectations can be hard to fulfil, especially when you have to translate the reality of the music business and when you have your own dreams. All's fine until what's being in something together becomes us and them, like socialism turning to capitalism. Music has such an important place in peoples lives and you can't place a value upon it, which is part of the problem. There is a value of association tof being involved with music and art for some people/companies. Like the patronage of the 02 festival/dome/etc. The record industry began because of philantropy (makers of war heads wanting to keep the concerts they loved recorded and wanted friends who missed it to heard them) and that's how it will continue.

The past few years have taught me a helluva lot. Sitting here eight years from the birth of DiS, it's feels weird to draw a line beneath it all but it's the best way forward. I'm starting afresh this Monday, back in the seat as the Editor. Whilst easing myself back into it this week I've already managed to start a blog-war with Ryan Adams (although it seems to be bad blood beneath the bridge now) and start setting up the plans for the next few months and years. Thoughts are being flung around again, fears of reprocussions are no longer there and funding is being considered for ambitious plans.

Gonna take me a few weeks to get back into the swing of things but first the small matter of moving half a mile to a new office. And now for a bit of housekeeping, the new address is:

Drowned in Sound
1 Junction Mews,
Paddington,
London, W2 1PN

And thatisall, for now.

Who I am - Biography

Sean Adams
Founder & Editor DrownedinSound.com / MD DrownedinSound Recordings

Back in October 2000, Sean - then an 18 year old in a bedroom 200 miles away from London - pulled together a bunch of music obsessives to form DrownedinSound.com, which was one of the first online music mags-slash-blogs-slash-social-networks.

Over the past nine years DiS has become, according to Observer Music Monthly "the discerning indie fan's first point of reference," and has built up a rabid and influential readership of over 450,000 a month.

In 2003 he set-up Drowned in Sound Recordings. The label is responsible for launching the career of Martha Wainwright, with her critically celebrated debut selling over 70,000 copies. The label also notably released debut singles 'Oh My God' by Kaiser Chiefs and ‘The Wizard’ by Bat for Lashes, as well as records by Metric, Jeniferever, The Stills, Emily Haines, Redjetson, Blood Red Shoes and Youthmovies.

In 2007 DrownedinSound.com signed a deal with BSKYB to launch five new websites. These included theQuietus.com, ThrashHits.com and theLipster.com. This joint venture ended in August 2008 and DiS is now back to being an independent company, supported by Silentway Management.

Sean has spoken at various conferences, promoted early gigs by emerging acts ranging from Bloc Party and Editors to Jamie T and late of the Pier and also finds time to contribute to BoredofDictators.com

http://www.drownedinsound.com
http://www.disrecords.com
http://seaninsound.blogspot.com