Possible new editorial section -- feedback wanted

Wanted to get some feedback on a sample for a new editorial section – artist/album promos:

https://resonate.is/promo/gum-takes-tooth-issues-a-call-to-arms-on-their-single-borrowed-lies/

We receive a lot of label promos like this via metadata submissions through Cargo. Have also spoken to at least one label who is interested in writing editorial content for the service. Thought this could be part of our overall curation strategy, so wanted to open it up for some discussions.

To start off, maybe “promos” sounds a bit too commercial? Would “release” be a better title?

Eager to see what ideas/concerns this surfaces.

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Alternative names for the section…

  • stories
  • releases
  • features
  • reports

Would love to hear from some artists what they think!

The thing is they are promos!

How about ‘promozone’ - where artists and labels can submit these and their EPKs?

I’d imagine it would need to be moderated to ensure that it didn’t end up becoming something other than that

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Agree that it definitely needs to be moderated. And thanks @SimmoMaz for the reminder about EPKs, as this could almost be an alt service for the artists.

Hoping that we can find a way to present this that it works on different levels…

  • promos
  • editorial
  • stories
  • EPKs
  • press releases

What’s a “one size fits all” name for this? I think I’d lean towards stories since its fairly neutral.

@richjensen any thoughts?

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I’m not clear on what function these will serve and/or where/how we’ll see/interact with them.

Are they cut/paste artist/label promos or editorialised content? Editorialised for what purpose? Are they critical, promotional, personal?

Stories, in the current context of Instagram/Facebook/etc ‘feels’, rightly or wrongly, like personal UGC. Resonate presenting a ‘story’ that is an artist/label’s ‘story’ doesn’t feel right. If it’s artist/label ‘brand’ content then it should come from brand channels.

If it’s something a bit more in-depth - i.e. Bandcamp’s ‘daily’ articles - then the example provided doesn’t do this justice. It comes across as very poor music journalism (just copy/pasting press releases) and needs more editorial work. Apologies if it isn’t just copy/pasted but that’s how it currently reads. Compare with this recent ‘interview’ - https://daily.bandcamp.com/2019/11/18/issam-hajali-habibi-funk-interview/ or this ‘survey’ - https://daily.bandcamp.com/2019/11/18/mexican-black-metal-list/

I might have gotten the wrong end of the stick here but they are my initial thoughts.

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Thanks for the very insightful, critical feedback. Very appreciated, as you’re revealing the limitations of my own take on this.

My primary motivation is to have a place to tell stories about the albums being released. For instance, my long-time friend/collaborator Monc released a new album a few weeks ago and as I know him, I was aware that a lot of the songs were influenced by his battle with cancer. Knowing that affects the listening of the album, hence, a story that could change someone else’s perspective as they listen.

That’s a more personal example, whereas the sample I shared (which was copy/paste promo material sent with the full metadata) is quite different. More like a press release.

And so maybe thats what has been revealed through your response… that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach, because these two examples (a personal anecdote and a label press release) are really utterly different things and need different containers.

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Agreed completely and the Monc anecdote you describe is a great example of where telling stories around music would be a meaningful thing.

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My intuition is that sustainable story-telling will be an important part of the Resonate community’s success. In my experience stories and the reputation and ‘cultural-ecology’ of the story-teller or context-setter are integral to the musical encounter the artist provides with their work. I’m working on an outline for a kind of standard production routine to offer sustainable, periodic narratives and playlinks from a breath of editorial sources and styles. It’s in my backlog. Hoping to share at least outlines this week…

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I’m excited by this Rich. I think it could extend beyond story telling about music and into story telling about cooperative cultures that have a connection with music… What do others on here feel about including more podcast tracks, with spoken word, prose or poetry. It would need trusted curation…?