The Music Directory is Live

A Cyber Monday gift for you!

The time has arrived, my friends. The Music Directory is live and in effect for your perusal!¹

The links below will take you to the individual Substack posts for each category.

Writers/Journalists

Musicians

DJs/Selectors

Playlist Curators

Reviewers/Critics

Producers

Composers

Historians/Scholars/Researchers

Podcasters & Radio Hosts

Collectors

Educators — **New as of 3/30/25

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Here’s the breakdown in numbers. We had a total of 135 entries for this first round. Among this community so far, there are:

• 106 writers/journalists

• 60 reviewers/critics

• 49 playlist curators

• 45 historians/scholars/researchers

• 41 musicians

• 18 DJs/selectors

• 13 producers

• 13 composers (BTW it’s not the exact same 13 as the producers!)

• 4 podcasters

• 1 noted music industry executive (and 1 in recovery)

• 1 sound artist

• and many fans, enthusiasts, aficionados and collectors².

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How It Works

All categories have corresponding Substack posts, with the listings being alphabetized by author name.

Majority of us occupy many roles when it comes to our interest in music. Therefore, if you checked a specific box on the inquiry form, you are included on the Substack post for that category. This will be apparent under each individual entry through the “see also” section. I hope you are not annoyed by being tagged more than once! It may seem redundant to be linked on multiple tabs/posts, but 1) I don’t expect everyone to check out every single category 2) this made it easier for me to transfer the directory information from Google Forms to Sheets to Substack.³

Throughout this process, I consistently cross-referenced the numerical data from Forms to make sure everyone was accounted for. I expect to continue doing this as more entries roll in for the second round of submissions. In the end, I combined the responses for the following questions: “If other, explain below” and “Is there anything else you want readers to know about you” as many of the responses could have fit in either section. I will also be removing the “other” option for future submissions to avoid extraneous outlier data. However, it was helpful to have this option the first time around as it made me aware of some details I was missing.

If you have yet to submit, but plan to do so for the next wave, consider the following: how do I want folks to regard my work? In what ways am I open to being consulted or considered for collaboration? Look out for a newsletter next week announcing the form’s reopening.

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Housekeeping

• Inclusion in the directory does not equal endorsement of the views, sentiments, or statements of the featured publications. Engage with discernment.

• Please be respectful when engaging with other members of the directory. If someone does not want to subscribe to your publication, collaborate with you, or promote your work, then accept their answer and move on. Do not harass folks. Reports of harassment, abuse, plagiarism, etc. will be taken seriously.⁴ Upon evaluation of related concerns, you may be notified that your information has been removed from the directory.

• Recommendations will typically be rotated on a monthly basis. I’m beginning with the folks who inspired me to make the list in which I announced this idea.

• The next round of recommendations will focus on newsletters with less than 250 subscribers to aid with visibility.

• At the beginning of 2025, I will be looking for curators to do takeovers for this page! I’m still workshopping that idea, but think in terms of offering article recommendations, providing music suggestions, teaching a valuable skill to the community, etc.

• Additionally, if folks want this to be a space to explore writing prompts, song challenges, listening sessions, or anything of the sort, I’m totally down for that! Let’s chat: please send an email to musicdirectory123@gmail.com. I will monitor the email weekly and reply in an appropriate timeframe (allow up to 72 hours, unless you get an automated out-of-office reply indicating otherwise). Please, no spam!

• Overall, I am not doing much editing to the text submitted through the form to remain true to each submitter’s voice. However, there were some minor cases where this was needed so that the content is evergreen, especially since many of the submissions were received months ago. You will notice such instances in [brackets].

• There were also a handful of cases where I took some liberty to add folks to sections based on their description; for instance, I did not have “podcaster” listed on the original form, but enough people listed this to make a section for it. Therefore, I added other podcasters if they mentioned this in their description, but did not list the role itself. The same goes for collectors (see footnote #2).

• I highly recommend browsing each directory page on a computer — I used headings that would be recognized via the table of contents feature, so you can navigate to different publications with ease.

• Links will be required on future submissions. With so many entries to account for, it slows down the process to find a link to a publication —especially in scenarios where your name does not match your publication title, which also might not match the URL.

• If you would no longer like to be featured in the directory, you can reach out to me via the maintenance request form.

• It’s a living document with a lot of information, so I expect there to be kinks to work out and some amendments needed (for instance, I think I caught some folks in the midst of rebranding and I still need to cross-reference the newer categories). If you need your entry updated, you can also reach me via the maintenance form and I will respond accordingly.

• Please be patient with me while I update the about page, subscriber welcome email, and auto-response on the Google form to reflect this announcement.⁵ I will also make time to follow folks from this account using the admin email.

• I am not turning on paid subscriptions for this publication at this time, but if you would like to show financial support for my art and labor of curation, you are welcome to do a paid subscription to my main newsletters (a filmless score and things i collected) or send a love donation via the payment links on my website.

• If you have built a similar music-related directory, I’d love to link to it on this site! Drop me a comment and a link below.

• Thanks to all who have subscribed and submitted so far! A special thanks to my friend

  the sovereign audite
  who gave me feedback on the functionality and accessibility of the spreadsheet.

• Last, but certainly not least: I want the first community post to be a round-up of our year-end lists of favorite songs and albums. If you already have one posted, please feel free to leave a link in the comments or submit a link through this form. If you’re like me and hold out until the last possible minute to ensure you’ve heard everything you want to contend with, share a link once your article is published. Then, we can collectively review each other’s lists at the end of the year! Deadline to submit your year-end music lists: December 25.

That’s all I have at this moment, but you know where to find me — I’ll be over here playing and reminiscing on all of my favorite songs of the year! I’ll leave you with this gem for now.

1. Check it out! Click the links! Tell a music fan!

2. I added a “collectors” option to the form for the next round (admittedly, this was quite an oversight for me considering my publication name). For this wave, I reviewed the submitted descriptions to add folks to this category. If you have already been featured but want to be added to this tab, you do not need to submit again. You can also send a note through the maintenance form to request an addition to this tab.

3. This was my first time ever making a Google Form (please clap lol).

4. I will need moderators in this regard.

5. I also noticed that someone made a content request within the spreadsheet and I will reach out to them directly for follow-up. To the requester: I am kindly asking for your patience as this is a lot of new information for me to process!