What’s old is new. There’s nothing new under the sun. It’s beginning to and back again.
Another month, another series of obituaries for beloved music sites. This time it was a family-sized package, with BrooklynVegan, Alternative Press, Revolver and Goldmine all having their turn in the barrel. They were shut down by Veeps with no warning. In fact, most people found out via first-hand dispatches from the field by the affected writers.
Usually we get some jargon-addled press release that manages to work “evolving,” “pivoting,” and “sunsetting” into the word blender. The translation always pours out onto our shoes the same: “we never figured out how to evolve past ad revenue and can’t figure out how to scale this enough to appease our VC overlords.”
As of this writing, the website hasn’t been updated, nor has it been scrubbed. The shutdown was so abrupt no one had time or the wherewithal to post a notice. That is bad enough. That no one in the ensuing 10ish days (as of this writing) thought to do so is insulting. What a backhand to the writers who spent their lives spilling ink on the bands we all love (and helping us find new ones), and what an FU to the readers who found so many new sounds on these pages. I’m sorry you weren’t able to optimize, leverage, or scale us into enough shareholder value.
I’ve seen this movie before, just on a smaller scale.
The worst manager I ever had rose from the same ranks we did. In fact, the company sold us on it: “You’ll love him. He’s a [pre-merger Northwest employee from the same job category]. He’s one of you!” When that happens, there is an idea—accurate or not—that the person won’t forget where they came from. That they won’t pull the ladder up after themselves. This very much did not happen. In fact, he wound up being the sort of caricature a lot of anonymous LinkedIn accounts have made their bones parroting.
Veeps counts Live Nation as a majority stakeholder and was founded by the Madden brothers, aka Good Charlotte. This finance-bro nesting doll then bought all 4 publications over the last couple of years. I certainly won’t make the mistake of calling them “in touch,” “indie,” or whatever code word we want to use to associate with “has ethics.” But in the same way none of us could get past the fact that one of our former peers turned on us for his 30 pieces of silver, I can’t get past the fact they were (are?) musicians at one point. Whether they cashed in or cut their losses doesn’t much matter. In the end, the house still burned down. A lot of people are taking their shot and shooting on GC. That’s…fine…but it misses the point.
Missing in all that gauzy jargon is the fact that a whole bunch of writers (again) just lost their jobs in an already unstable environment. When journalism is reduced to “content,” it becomes easier to see it as a commodity and devalue it, something to be optimized and scaled. It’s a repeating cycle we’ve seen time and again over the last several years as the old media tried to navigate the shifting sands of consumer taste. Most of them never get past the first hurdle, treating music journalism like something to churn out nonstop, as if words and criticism are widgets on an assembly line.
It’s easy to say this is all on VC ghouls and corporate overlords, but we’re not completely off the hook either.
In 2026, culture moves fast, and investors never quench the thirst for blood and revenue. There’s a less-than-zero chance one of you reading this got two sentences in and said to yourself, “that’s old news.” And in the main, you’d be correct. And maybe that’s the problem. We proclaim these sites to be valuable, a treasure trove of resources and a bulwark against the beginning of society’s decline, but never quite get around to the idea of actually supporting them. Worse, they’re forgotten before the writers have even left the parking lot for the last time. Ads are annoying af, and it’s not on us to be a substitute revenue stream, but also…it kinda is?
I have no taste for subsidizing Veeps or Live Nation, but I also know that we have to work to create the world we want to live in. That means supporting artists and writers, music, politics, or other causes. A world without these is worse than one with paywalls, no matter how many performative stemwinders we see about subscription fatigue and bundling.
If we’re lucky, we’ll get a few personal updates from those who’ve landed on their feet. Many others will say “F this,” hang up their keyboards for good, and move toward something a little less volatile, like demolition.
Worse, there are again legions of people who’ll see these headlines and give up on the idea of ever spilling some ink on the bands they’re into, or want you to know about. I can’t say a specific band inspired me to write, other than the one I was in, which was winding down. I will say a lot of people writing about bands they loved definitely inspired me to put down my drumsticks and pick up a pen. What happens when that narrative is sullied? If you know how the story ends, do you ever start?
And that’s what all music journalism is really: a love letter to things that make this planet just a bit better. It’s what ties all this ambition and moxie together. We like records. We like the idea of going to shows (this is why every big pharma ad ends with the protagonist winding up at a light jazz concert. It’s a positive outcome!). We abhor the vision of a world bereft of arts & color. We hate futility.
This latest news is an obituary for a portfolio of sites, not for an industry, no matter how many hot takes try to convince you. In an essay a couple of years ago, I noted:
Music journalism is not dead, no matter how many times we call it. It may be on the ropes, but as each of these falls, indie journalism & blogs will only grow in importance. New media isn’t so new so much as it is a return to what worked before in Web 1.0. What’s old is new again. Yes, I know I’ve been talking about this ad nauseam, but each week, another example reinforces the idea. I’d prefer it not become the overarching theme of 2024, but I’m also not sure it’s avoidable.
I am very much still talking my own book, but if anything, this latest round of executions proves the point. I’d also prefer that this not become the overarching theme of 2026. I’m still not sure it’s avoidable, but I definitely know there’s a path to relief. Small steps make for giant leaps. New blogs pop up daily; some sites are nowhere near sanitized enough for VC vultures’ taste. The style of writing that will never appeal to a Fortune 500 ad buyer? That’s exactly where you want to be.
Back to the websites: At some point, someone’ll make a call, and these sites will go dark, with all those reviews, podcasts, etc., disappearing into the ether. They say the internet is forever. That’s only as true as someone’s willingness to keep the lights on. These are troves of culture and postcards from the zeitgeist. They tell us what we should be into and, alternately, remind us of what we were into. Nostalgia’s usually a sure bet (see also: Milestone lookbacks at classic records, Rolling Stones tours, et al), and I’m not sure why it never quite ticks over online. Whatever. Once that switch is flipped, that’s it. There’s no equivalent of a box of magazines waiting in someone’s attic to be discovered. The Internet Archive/Wayback Machine exists, but they’re not foolproof. Let’s hope this winds up being a task that gets lost in the shuffle.
In the meantime, BV is still there, frozen in cyber amber, like Wile E. Coyote in that space between his running out past the cliff’s edge and before he looks down, or a star whose light we keep seeing long after it imploded. No one told the website the show’s over. Click over to BV now (again, as of this writing), and you’ll learn that Young Fresh Fellows are touring (East coasters, you’re in luck!). There’s also a link to 20 Emo records from 2001. Even in purgatory, the writers are trying to turn you on to good records. I hope they backed up their work.
I’d love to hear what you think.
Enjoy your weekend!
Drive South,
KA—
P.S. Meeting your heroes can be fraught.
P.P.S. Here’s an absolutely cursed playlist.
Paid subscribers: This week’s For the Record playlist is here. For new readers, this is a curated mix of tracks suggested by community members on Monday’s discussion threads. Sometimes I throw a couple of other ones in there as well. Not yet a subscriber? Please consider upgrading. Your next favorite playlist is waiting!
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