The Crumb Pile + Brief Thoughts on Adding Value as a Music Commentator

Is this all I am to you? Words on a screen? Consumable content? If so I’m delighted you’re reading this, for one. And two, I would be achieving the basic goal for contemporary music media.

Contemporary ‘music media’ is an extension of the music-based lifestyles we buy into. Much of the time it’s forced positivity in the age of hype; a digital onslaught of quick consumable media reassuring our tastes, opinions, and associations to the point of borderline enforcement.

Hype-content, alongside its contrasting partner hate-reviews, is vapid. And this vapid content flows through our social channels at a torrential rate.

We’re consuming crumbs out of couch cushions to sustain ourselves culturally. While my love for the obscure and irrelevant has allowed Resident Sound to stand apart from other outlets, it only adds different crumbs to the pile.

How we reject our crumb pile outputs as music commentators is up to personal direction, but relies on one core element: providing value.

I know, I know. The bar is incredibly low here. You could say that’s the basis to almost all writing. But how to provide value as a music commentator in the most effective way possible still alludes me. I turn to critics, thinkers, and just about anyone who is smarter than me. Who brings value to my life? How do they do it?

Of all music commentators, a favorite of mine (and many, I hope) is music thinker and taste-maker Oliver ‘Oli’ Kemp, better known as Deep Cuts on YouTube. Kemp has slowly built a catalog of artist discography guides, genre introductions, reviews and discussion topics among other work. His passion and intellect surrounding his choices are both thrilling and insightful while remaining accessible for nearly any viewer.

DeepCuts is “a channel dedicated to music, for lovers of music” and is essential viewing for any would-be music commentator. Whatever lesson is to be learned here I’ve yet to fully embrace it to my own liking, but I hope to get there soon.

But like DeepCuts, the output at Resident Sound has dropped significantly, in part due to the jobs that pay the bills (or pay anything). It is more or less a 1-being team at the end of the day. But with this time I hope to discover what brings value to my life as a consumer and what I can in turn offer to you, the reader.