Music Journalist - Writer (Freelance) in London

Freelance features and interviews for an independent music editorial platform. The focus is adventurous music and the worlds around it: scenes as living systems shaped by people, spaces, platforms, money, technology, politics, desire, belief, labour, and community. We're especially interested in work that bridges contexts (local to global, online to offline, UK/Europe to Asia and beyond) and avoids inherited, default narratives or descriptions by getting sourced, balanced takes or deeply personal opinions.

Reference points (to give a feel for the types of music we enjoy, top of mind right now, not canon): ear, weed420, caroline, My New Band Believe, Shinichi Atobe, Car Culture, Bloodz Boi, Loraine James, Caterina Barbieri, Purelink, Lustmord, Phil Elverum, John Beltran, NVST, Aya (Sinclair), Ouri, Mica Levi, Valentina Magaletti, upsammy, Kelman Duran, Evian Christ.

What we're commissioning right now:

• Interviews (deep-dives, not necessarily press-cycle related): Interviews on method, contradictions, ethics, economics, internet life, and the realities of making work today. We're keen for you to speak with: artists/producers/DJs with a defined philosophy and context; label heads, collective organisers, promoters, venue operators, sound engineers, designers; music-founded builders and caretakers such as tool-makers (e.g. instruments), coders, archivists, librarians, radio heads; researchers and thinkers who can speak plainly about complex ideas.
• Features rooted in a place, a network, or a conflict: Reported scene portraits (cities, venues, radio ecosystems, micro-genres, touring routes); pieces that map a venue ecosystem or micro-economy (e.g. funding, team members, audience, etc.); stories that bridge online and offline music communities (forums, Discords, niche platforms, recommendation pipelines shaping taste).
• Investigations / analysis (infrastructure, power): Writing that interrogates the machinery around music, including: private equity and festival consolidation (e.g. KKR) and what ownership does to culture; club ownership models (co-ops vs private owners vs brand-backed venues), door policy, labour, risk, governance; sponsorship ethics, contested funding, and what artists/audiences do with that tension; streaming and metadata power (tagging, playlists, bought plays, etc.); archiving as politics (preservation/erasure ethics); touring logistics as culture (visas, borders, fees, burnout and their effects); AI and synthetic culture (spam releases, identity-as-metadata, the "dead internet"). Data-led approaches are extremely welcome.
• Photo-led pieces (document, reveal): Photo essays and visual documents are also welcome, especially when they highlight labour, economics, exclusions, and the material conditions of a scene.
• Short-form video (based on articles + related topical content): Once we have articles in the pipeline, we need video editors who can put together short-form videos about the same content, and/or topical content in similar areas.

How to pitch: Send a short pitch (250 words), your proposed structure, and a line on what access/reporting you can bring.

Requirements: Links to previous work are helpful but not required if the pitch is strong. We're open to new writers.