State of Digital Publishing speaks with Genius' Executive Editor Insanul Ahmed, about the state of music journalism and Genius - how to succeed as a professional, identifying trends (the power of 3), tips for growing an audience and what's ahead for music, the profession, and Genius.

Note:  At the time of this recording there were several mentions of the Needle Drop and how he is associated with the ALT-Right however, this video debunks this claim. Every interviewee is entitled to their opinion and State of Digital Publishing reconfirms its position of taking any political preference or bias to an individual.

 

Podcast Transcription

Vahe Arabian: Welcome to the State of Digital Publishing Podcast. State of Digital Publishing is an online publication covering media technology trends, perspectives, and news for online publishing and media professionals. We hope that as developers better develop audiences by encouraging others and sharing knowledge, experience, and practical advice in order to act as a bridge between startups and established companies. I brought with me today Insanul Ahmed from Genius. He's the Executive Editor and he's responsible for the social media strategy and is Editor at Large. Welcome, how are you?

Insanul Ahmed: I'm good, I'm good. Thank you for having me on.

Vahe Arabian: Awesome! How's your week been?

Insanul Ahmed: Oh, it's been good, it's been exciting. I have a new album that's coming so a lot of work to be done for us.

Vahe Arabian: Awesome! He doesn't publish as much albums as often so as soon as he drops something everyone's covering it so yeah.

Insanul Ahmed: Oh yeah.

Vahe Arabian: Awesome! Just for everyone that doesn't know much about you, can you provide a bit of background about yourself and also about Genius?

Insanul Ahmed: Oh yeah, for sure. My name is Insanul. I'm a long time journalist and writer. I got into journalism when I was in high school. I started writing for my school paper and that kind of sparked my interest in it. And I've been writing about it ever since then, writing about music ever since then. When I was in college I had interned at Vibe and that kind of started me on a professional path. When I got out of college I worked at Complex for about five-six years, really helped grow that brand. In about 2016, I kinda felt like I had been there long enough. I wanted a new change of pace, so I joined Genius where I've been working for about the past two years about. I think a lot of people are familiar with Genius as a lyrics website which is what we started out as, known for annotations. You know, which people can explain lyrics.

Insanul Ahmed: Started out basically as a tech start up and in the last couple years, especially since I've gotten here, we've really transitioned into more of a media company than a straight up tech company or sort of maybe a hybrid where not only do we have our website where we have all these lyrics, we have a community who annotates all these lyrics and who adds explanations and meanings about songs. But now we also have a wing, that I'm involved with, which is the web editorial site. We have a larger social media presence and we have a much much larger video presence where we interact with artists, get them to explain their music. We have several YouTube shows like ‘Verified’ and ‘Deconstructed’, where artists will come in and explain what went into their music. I'm more in charge of the editorial where we're covering new releases; we're covering breaking news on social. We're also promoting all these products that we're making and also engaging with our audience.

Insanul Ahmed: Genius has really expanded in the last few years from just being another lyric web...