Is music journalism in as bad a place as people say it is? I've certainly said it... really quite a lot. Maybe to the extent that I've been a bit unfair on the overall quality of music writing today, and having a total ban on music writers on the show was also possibly taking things a bit too far.

Today though, the ban is lifted. Shawn Reynaldo is a former editor of XLR8R, and contributor to many of the august music publications we all love to hate, but now operates mostly out of his First Floor platform on Substack. He's just released a book entitled First Floor Vol 1, and we spend most of this week's episode digging into some of the issues covered in it.

These include... streaming platforms, musical gatekeepers, media snobbery, the commercialisation of dance music, local scenes, and a lot more meaty stuff besides.

I love this sort of conversation, and you're definitely going to enjoy listening to it.

If you're into what we're doing here on the pod then you can support the show on Patreon! There are two tiers - "Solidarity" for $4 a month, which features regular bonus podcasts and extra content. And "Musicality" which for a mere $10 a month gets you all the music we release on Hotflush and affiliate labels AND other music too, some of which never comes out anywhere else.

Plus there's also a private area for Patreon supporters in the Hotflush Discord Server... but anyone can join the conversation there in the public channels, so please do!

Listen to all the music discussed on the show via the Not A Diving Podcast Spotify playlist

For more links and other info visit the official Scuba website

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