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Been thinking about the concept of track premieres again...something I still get dozens of PR emails about each day...and how they're based on a music journalism economy that virtually doesn't exist anymore.
A big thread:
A big thread:
As a freelancer, I have never once been paid to premiere a song at a music website. It's literally volunteer work for me to premiere a song/album at The Alternative (the only place I've ever premiered anything because no existing music websites commission premiere pitches).
The reason premieres theoretically exist is to provide writers with an incentive to cover lesser-known artists and to give publicists an easy clip for their cycle. The writer gets all the traffic for that song/album directed to them, and the publicist gets their client a write-up
That symbiotic relationship may work in theory, and perhaps it even did in practice for a few years in the mid-2010's. However, it's now premised on a number of conditions that are no longer relevant given the wildly different landscape of music journalism.
The only reason writers would need "incentives" to cover something is because they need to serve their boss's traffic quotas. I.E. they're a staff writer with a boss to serve. Sadly, there are very few staffed music writers left, and even fewer who're able to cover small acts.
Now that the vast majority of working music journalists are freelancers, the traffic that a blurb on a single piece of music might draw is of no concern to them. And since there aren't any music pubs that use freelancers to write premiere blurbs, any allure of a premiere is moot.
That's not to say that writers aren't covering underground music. Within the last few months, virtually every music writer I know has started a newsletter, and many of them are dedicated to covering underground acts with the voice/scope they used to at established publications.
However, Substack newsletters and Patreon-funded blogs like The Alternative are funded by individual subscriptions. Web traffic--a metric for success that's rooted in the failed ad-based payment model--is completely irrelevant to these new pubs. And therefore, premieres are too.
This might sound like a devastating blow to writers/publicists who've worked in the "premiere economy" for years, but it's actually just a return to the way music journalism worked for over 40 years prior: writers covering what they like/find interesting, not what'll draw clicks.
OK yes, music magazines from the the 1960's-2000's were also operating within the ad-based funding model. So in some ways, "traffic" (I.E. sales at the newsstand) colored the editorial process and surely dictated what was covered. Hooray! That's not a thing anymore either!
We're potentially on the brink of entering a golden age of music journalism: a ~practice~ that, like the OG blog years, is entirely shaped by writers' tastes/passions, but in a world that's slowly (hopefully) warming up to the subscription payment model so bloggers can maybe eat.
This also might be a hard pill for some, shall I say less artfully inclined, publicists to swallow. Because writers won't be forced/incentivised to cover mediocre/shitty music just because it traffics well. But what's a loss for them is a win for the quality of music writing 
We're not there yet, though. Most of these writers aren't making close to a living wage from these subscription-based pubs, and I don't think the majority of music journalism readers are fully aware/engaged with this sea change. (The recent Stereogum indiegogo is inspiring tho!)
Therefore, right now there's a huge discrepancy btwn the number of payrolled publicists and payrolled writers. Unless a publicist is being paid a la carte for each story they can land, they're getting paid no matter what the press response of a given song/album is.
So if they do manage to convince a blogger like me to premiere a song at a passion project website, they're getting paid and the writer is not. This is an unsustainable material imbalance and if the floor hasn't already fallen out then it will by the end of the year.
Obviously, the entire music industry is in the process of adapting to a vastly new world. Musicians, labels, event coordinators, press, PR, etc. Everything has already changed and the sooner we all accept it, the sooner we can build something more sustainable on the other side.
Premieres are/were just a teeny tiny mechanism within the music machine at large, but they're one that needs to go: a well-meaning idea that worked for a while but has no place in our modern world.
