Daytrotter.com revives passion in music journalism
By Jen Kessler, Entertainment Staff Writer
January 22, 2008 | 1:40 p.m.
In this day and age when lofty elitism tends to rule the world of music journalism, it’s easy to forget that music is made to be loved and appreciated rather than clawed to pieces by snarling critics. Daytrotter.com hasn’t forgotten.
Daytrotter.com is a brazen pioneer in the world of music journalism, blazing a brilliant new path in the frontier of entertainment media. The Web site features interviews and stories on bands such as Of Montreal, Tilly and the Wall, Oakley Hall and William Elliott Whitmore, and every story boasts four exclusive tracks from each artist that are recorded in the Daytrotter studio. These recordings, alongside expertly penned stories that read like quick-witted modern literature, make Daytrotter an absolutely unprecedented publication.
According to the Web site, “We are going to contribute to the musical landscape, not just toss it around like a used book or a stolen pick-up line. We’re going to give you something that you truly have never heard.”
Daytrotter, born in February 2006, is the brainchild of music journalism veteran Sean Moeller, with whom Speakeasy had the pleasure of speaking. After several years of “journeying around the indie rock magazine circuit” and stuffing experience from numerous publications such as Rockpile and Filter under his belt, Moeller grew weary of answering to rigid editors and slogging through the frustration of it all with only minimal pay as a motivator.
“Once you start [writing for magazines] it’s kinda fun," Moeller said. "It’s a cool scene, but you learn pretty quickly that no one pays you anything. That’s just how it works.”
Moeller decided he wanted a changed of scenery.
“Why do I want to write another story for Rockpile for 15 dollars? I mean, you’re not really going anywhere with it," Moeller said. "It’s nice because a lot of those gigs parlay themselves into doing things for other people, but at the end of the day, you still get a lot of ideas shot down because they hadn’t heard of that band or didn’t like that band.”
In addition to the dismal pay, the haughty attitudes of the editors with whom Moeller contended got to be too frustrating.
“A lot of magazines kind of do it like they think they’re doing you a favor by giving you exposure and clips and things like that, and for a while that’s really exciting," he said. "But a couple of those not really being able to do what you want to do kinda things…”
In February 2006, Moeller decided to gather up his expansive library of musical knowledge, his penchant for fantastic writing and every single qualm he’d had with the world of music journalism and dump it into his very own publication. Thus, Daytrotter.com was born.
“I wanted to be able to cover who I wanted to cover,” Moeller said. “I wanted to be able to write about who I wanted to write about. And I wanted to write about them without any interference.”
Not only does Moeller write painstakingly beautiful articles on every band featured on Daytrotter (“I spend half a day writing a feature story about a session. It takes me a long time because I want it to be perfect."), each band that snags a spot in Daytrotter’s tiny little corner of the World Wide Web actually swings through the Daytrotter studio in Rock Island, Ill., and records four exclusive tracks straight to quarter-inch tape that are featured alongside their stories on the site. Each track is free and completely legal -- a rare thing to boast in this day and age.
By featuring these tracks, Daytrotter catapults its content from standard music journalism, which is merely critique and commentary on art, into the realm of art itself. None of the tracks are dubbed or fixed in any sense of the word, and what the listener hears is exactly what happened inside the Daytrotter studio. Each of these exclusive MP3s leaks warm and honest intimacy all over the site, and visits to various stories on Daytrotter feel like friendly handshakes from the musicians themselves.
“[The artists we bring in] understand the concept, and they understand what we’re about," Moeller said. "They understand that this is a place for experimentation and really making songs alive and giving them to people in a different light."
In the harshly judgmental and, at times, seemingly vapid world of music journalism wherein the measure of a musician’s talent is largely based on the opinion of his or her critic, Sean Moeller and his staff at Daytrotter have carved out a comfortable niche in which artists are praised for creation. By dedicating his passion for art to music in which he fully believes, Moeller has built a lighthouse that pulls hardworking musicians to warm safety from the murky depths of desolate critique and grating criticism.
“Everyone we’ve brought into our studio, we believe in them. We believe in what they’re doing,” Moeller said. “We think they’re adding to our culture. It’s not about finding the coolest, the hippest, the newest band. That’s not what we’re about at all. I don’t care about that stuff. I care about people that are saying something meaningful. I care about people that are inspiring. I care about people who make me want to write.”
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