The four commitments
| We will | We will not |
|---|---|
| Listen to the whole record, in order, at least twice | Review from a three-track promo sampler |
| Say in the piece whether we have seen the band play | Imply we have when we have not |
| Name every conflict of interest in the piece itself | Bury a disclosure at the bottom in grey |
| Publish every correction, with the date and what changed | Silently edit a piece after publication |
The specifics
Do you accept promos?
Yes — a digital promo or a record in the post. We do not accept anything else: no travel, no accommodation, no guest list beyond the one plus one that any reviewer gets, and no dinner. If a label sends something we did not ask for, we keep it and we owe them nothing, which is the arrangement they are implicitly proposing anyway.
Do you review records by friends?
Sometimes, because this is a small city with four venues and pretending otherwise would be a lie. When we do, the piece says so in the first paragraph and not in a footnote. Twice we have decided the connection was too close and given the record to someone else; once we decided it was too close for any of us and did not cover it at all.
Does advertising affect coverage?
No, and the structure is what makes that answerable rather than just assertable. There are two placements, both flat monthly rates, both sold by someone who does not commission anything. Advertising is under a tenth of our income. We have never told an advertiser a review was coming and we have run a bad review of a record from a label that was advertising at the time.
Do you use AI to write or score anything?
No.
Why is there no score out of ten?
Because a number lets you avoid saying the thing. Seven out of ten is not an opinion, it is a way of having one without being on the hook for it — and the argument about whether something is a 7 or an 8 is never the interesting argument. Every review here ends in one plain sentence instead. It is harder to write and much harder to hide behind.
What is your commenting policy?
Comments are open to paying members, which is not a revenue tactic — it is the cheapest moderation system available to seven people. We remove abuse, we remove anything aimed at a musician's appearance or personal life, and we do not remove criticism of us. If we remove your comment we will tell you why. Nobody has ever been removed for disagreeing with a review, and several people should probably have been.
Do you take embargoes?
Yes, and we keep them. We will not agree to an embargo that comes with conditions attached to the coverage itself — a date is a scheduling matter, and a required word count or an approved quote is not an embargo, it is an advertisement with a deadline.
What happens when you get something wrong?
We correct it in the piece, we mark the piece as corrected with the date, and we add a row to the corrections page. We do not quietly fix a typo and call that a correction, and we do not treat a substantive error as a typo. Fourteen times so far, one of which was serious enough that the piece came down.