Digital independence: Sean Adams of Drownedinsound.com on building a community-led site for music obsessives

As part of a new feature on TheMediaBriefing.com, Digital Independence, we put the spotlight on independent digital publishers that are ploughing their own path to a successful business model. It’s all about showcasing innovation outside of the mainstream of media publishing.

First up is Drownedinsound.com, the ultra-cool indie music news and reviews site that over the last 11 years has built up a genuine, organic community of die-hard followers. Founder Sean Adams explains how it works..

When did the business launch and what are its aims?

Sean Adams: It was back in October 2000. “Launch” is perhaps a little grand for the ramshackle birth of the site. I had been doing an email fanzine – which was a little bit like Popbitch for music – although a lot less snarky, writing about the world of music that sat somewhere between late night MTV2, the Melody Maker and Radio 1′s Evening Session.

It was a very fertile time with bands like At the Drive-In and …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead re-invigorating rock music and people really embracing the web but the technology hadn’t quite caught up. There weren’t the blogging platforms there are today but Napster was a huge inspiration to me and it, as well as forums for bands like Muse and Weezer bought me together with many of our initial contributors. The aim was to create an outlet for people’s passion for the music they love (and don’t love), be that writing reviews, reading reviews, sharing information or partaking in the irreverent debate on the boards.

Can you describe your site?

It’s a community of music fans, dissecting and discussing records. And by fans, in some circumstances I mean the sorts of people who quite likely alphabetise their vinyl collections or genre-order their CDs and who think nothing of traveling across the country/world to see a band they love.

In terms of editorial, we have some of the most informed music critics in the country, who have their fingers on the pulse of things. Many of our readers have become our writers and many of our former scribes have gone on to do things like edit Kerrang! magazine or start record labels or manage world-bothering bands.

Monthly traffic estimates?

We get an average of half a million unique users per month. And in the first half of 2011 we had 14.8 million page views. We’re on course for by far our biggest year of traffic, ever.

Number of staff?

There are 26 regular contributors or thereabouts. I’m the only full-time member of staff. We have a part-time features editor, an album reviews editor (his day job is being Timeout London’s fringe theatre critic) and then our brilliant singles columnist (who’s also a novelist), and a great pun-loving chap who helps out with news alongside his dayjob. We also have local columnists everywhere from Chicago to Toronto via Sheffield, Brighton and Bristol.

Are you profitable?

More or less. We have had to keep overheads low post a short-lived deal with BSkyB (which also led to us launching theQuietus and ThrashHits – although the editors of these sites now fully own them) and the downturn in advertising, which is a lot healthier at the moment. Mostly we’re investing what we do have into web development, as our site needs a bit of a lie down and a sugary cuppa more than is necessary.

What are the main ways you make revenue?

Our only revenue stream is advertising, which is looked after by W00tmedia. We’re currently, like every Wired-reading idiot, looking at apps now that truly mobile has taken off with our audience.

I’m also always having conversations with people about events, going into print, making t-shirts, television, a subscription record club, a new fan-funded record label, opening a DiS cafe/pub/venues and all that stuff but we haven’t taken the plunge, for fear of over-extending and losing focus of our core task of delivering words, recommending records and ensuring people can chat about the latest offensive thing that Morrissey has said.

How important is social media, particularly sharing of your content, for your site?

It’s often more important in terms of perception and defining what we’re about, than actual click-throughs. Our negative content – like my review of Jessie J or the ten worst album covers of the 2000s – seem to generate a lot more clicks from social media, than any recommendations. Since Facebook made a lot of changes, we’ve seen our traffic from there drop quite dramatically.

How do you keep on top of such an outspoken and active community?

I cover my eyes a lot. It’s impossible to attempt to control things and I think there’s enough self-regulation and clever put-downs to keep things in line. A lot of the time the community feels a lot like a great pub – we have a few bouncer-ish moderators who are very good at asking people to pipe down or pruning anything that’s over the line.

I just have to try ensure they’re aware there’s a human being behind the site, and not some faceless corporation. We rarely delete any posts but I’ve found I’m increasingly getting people asking for things from years ago to be removed as they move into the world of work…

How hard was it to become established in your space, with so many established competitors?

There weren’t really any established online competitors when we started and I think that has been part of the reason for our success. We were lucky and kind of remain to be fortunate that we can stay afloat despite the huge resources and deep pockets of the likes of the BBC, Guardian and all those buzz-riding new companies with their millions of VC-funding…

I guess for us, our most interesting challenge is to see if we can continue to grow and find a second wind to maybe double our traffic. Who knows, perhaps we’ll one day be an overnight success’ in the same way it took White Stripes, Snow Patrol and Animal Collective so many albums below the radar to find their place in the mainstream – not that I’m sure we’re interested in musically compromising to be right for that.

Punters can now hear/see things they would have to pay to hear 10 years ago – what role do publishers like you play in that?

I keep reading features and buying books about curation and filtering, and none of them seem to have really gotten to the heart of what it means to be consistent conduit for who you are and how to be what you stand for on whatever platform. I’m obsessed with the web and technology and I like to embrace things as an extension of what I/we do and to see what role we can play in sifting and recommendation, and if that becomes a useful part of an emerging service like Soundcloud, Spotify, Twitter or whatever, then hopefully that will feed some people back into what we do.

A full, unedited transcript of this interview can be found here.

Disclosure: I have occasionally contributed music reviews for Drownedinsound on an unpaid basis (PS).