Has music become a sub-genre of internet culture?

NBC News' tech and culture reporter Kat Tenbarge has her finger firmly on the pulse of internet culture and the influencer economy. She honed her expertise at Insider through investigative forays into the complexities of digital fame. Her coverage is much more than product launches and squillion dollar deals, and touches upon MeToo, fandoms, exploring how internet mobs chill free speech, and so much more.

In this episode, we explore what the music press can learn from technology journalism.

Related links

• Read Kat's reporting on NBC here.
• Q&A about how Kat reported on the David Dobrik allegations for Insider
• Kat's piece about Angelina Jolie and Amber Heard
• Find Kat and her tweets about Evan Rachel Wood and others cases against Marilyn Manson here
• Reporting: 'Free Britney' organizers and influencers took over a bar, threw a drag brunch, and blasted Britney Spears in a weekend devoted to the pop star
• Follow Kat on Threads here
• Reporting: How Tory Lanez trial bloggers are shaping the conversation around Megan Thee Stallion
• Also mentioned on this podcast was the defunding Check My Ads and Stop Funding Hate
• Podcast recommendation: Offline by Crooked Media

Episode Highlights:

"The Influencer Economy": Sean and Kat unravel the fabric of online influence, pondering its implications on cultural consumption and the MeToo movement's resonance within this sphere.

"Music and Memes": They delve into the curious interplay of internet culture and the music industry, where virality can be both a career catalyst and a capricious whirlwind.

"Ethics in the Age of Exposure": The conversation takes a contemplative turn, probing the moral compass guiding journalists amidst the relentless glare of the digital age.

"The Future of Influence": Kat shares her prognostications on the influencer culture's trajectory, contemplating its impact on the internet's burgeoning denizens.

This podcast was produced, researched, and hosted by Sean Adams (@seaninsound), the founder of Drowned in Sound website (est. 2000). For more deep dives into cultural currents and explorations of the musical zeitgeist, tune in and subscribe to DiS' Substack.

Quotes from this episode:

• “I’m telling the story of our downfall as it's happening” on reporting on the downfall of the media

• “Honestly, one of the most, like, mind bending things to watch someone like say to the public what they do and then have those people turn around and be like, he could never do this.” On Marilyn Manson

• “I think that reporting that takes a point of view is actually going to be what is successful”

• “This is a period that's going to redefine the next few centuries.

• "The way that technology has evolved in the past 15 years. is going to change the rest of history. It already has”

• “I worked at News websites that were dominated by the clicks and the traffic. And I recognized that in order to get people to click on something, there had to be conflict. This is how all storytelling, whether it's fiction or non fiction, works. You have to have conflict. There has to be a narrative. Um, if you're telling a story about a new product being launched, no one's going to click on that unless There's some element of this product launched and it's offensive “