Pitch Us

We are open to pitches from freelance writers at all career stages. We read every pitch. We respond to roughly half within three weeks. Here is how to make it more likely yours gets a yes.

What we're looking for

• Long-form features. 2,500-5,000 words. Scene reports, cultural essays, deep profiles. We pay $0.50/word for commissioned features.
• Album reviews. 700-1,200 words. We lean toward records that haven't been exhaustively covered elsewhere. We pay $150 for commissioned reviews.
• Live reports. 800-1,500 words. Festivals, residencies, and significant tour stops. We pay $200 for commissioned pieces.
• Interviews. We only commission these from writers who have published with us before. Pitch an interview only if you have an angle, not just access.
• Culture essays. 1,500-3,500 words. Books, film, visual art — only when adjacent to music. We pay $0.40/word for essays.

What we don't want

• Reviews of records that came out more than three months ago (unless there is a specific reason to write one now).
• Interviews conducted at label-arranged junkets with ten minutes allotted.
• Pieces that are primarily reactions to another publication's piece.
• Think pieces that could be any week's think piece. Specificity is the virtue we value most.

How to pitch

Send an email to [email protected] with:

• A clear subject line that includes the piece type and the subject. (Example: "Feature pitch: The decline of the mid-sized festival")
• A paragraph of 150-300 words laying out what you want to write, what the angle is, and what the piece will argue or reveal.
• Three links to prior published work. If you haven't published before, send 500 words of writing of any kind — a Substack post, a dissertation chapter, a long tweet thread you expanded. We read everything.
• A rough timeline: when could you deliver a first draft?

Our standards

We fact-check everything substantial. We ask for sources, interview recordings, and backup material on assignment. We will edit your piece — sometimes heavily — and we expect you to be a collaborator in that process. If you are not ready to be edited, this is not a good fit.

If you're new

If you've never published for pay before, you can still pitch us. We've broken multiple writers who became regulars. The bar is the pitch itself — if it is specific, well-argued, and the writing is good, we don't care about your resume.