Steven Hyden stopped by intending to talk about The Strokes. That felt like the logical thing to talk about. The long-time music journalist has a book about the New York band due out on September 8, 2026: Is This It: The Never-Ending Rise and Fall of the Strokes (and Rock ‘n’ Roll). Like his books about Radiohead and Pearl Jam and Bruce Springsteen, Is This It is tremendous. It’s as much a meditation on rock music as it is about the band.
But, like I said, that was the topic we intended to talk about. That’s not what happened. Somehow we started talking about the state of the music media. That off-the-cuff conversation was so interesting that I wanted to share it. The actual Strokes conversation will be out in a week or two. In any case, you should pre-order Hyden’s new book and check out his excellent newsletter, Evil Speakers.
How’s the prep for the book launch going so far?
It’s going fine. I’m just starting to do interviews right now. There’s not as many places to talk to anymore. It’s interesting. I put out a book a few years ago, and I feel like things have changed considerably just in that time.
Yeah, definitely.
Which I knew, but being on this side of it is interesting. There are fewer places to promote your stuff.
Also, before we start, I just wanted to say congrats on how well your newsletter has been doing.
Thank you. It’s been amazing. Totally exceeded my expectations. I’ve always been a staff writer at so many places, and this has paid me way better than any staff writer job I ever had. Hopefully, that continues.
I’ve been in this business long enough to know that there is no perfect media job. Everything is always changing, so there’s a part of me that is trying not to feel too secure. I feel like with any of these tech platforms, someone messes with it and it starts to be less effective. Then you have to go somewhere else. But I don’t know. As long as you know that and keep moving, then you can manage it.
You started your career in newspapers, right?
Yeah. Daily newspapers and alt weeklies. So, I’ve seen a lot of different waves in my time. Right now really reminds me of 20 years ago when print looked like it was dead and the transition to websites was happening. That was the period of time where media sites decided that they were going to make money by making their content free. They’d just maximize page views in hopes to convince advertisers to buy the space around the content.
I really wonder if that is going to be the aberration in media history. It feels like right now that model is slowly being eradicated. We’re reverting back to the way things used to be, which was that if you want a newspaper or a magazine, you subscribe to it and it’s delivered directly to your mailbox or doorstep.
Totally.
To me, Substack is actually a very traditional media delivery device. It’s this other thing that I came up in that feels weird now.
It’s also interesting that when you look at sites that are still trying to rely on ad dollars, like Business Insider, their ads are in so many places that it almost makes reading impossible.
That’s the kind of desperation that you feel kicking in at a lot of these places where they’re just grasping at anything. The other thing too with a lot of these companies is that there’s so much overhead that you have to support. We’re in an environment now where the less overhead the better. I think about this with myself. If I had one or two other people working on my newsletter, it would go from being a really good living to being a side hustle.
I still think that there’s space for magazines with multi-person staffs, but it can get expensive fast when you’re paying for rent and HR. It’s also hard to justify those expenses when the public is so tolerant of low production value. You can just put someone in front of a mic and people will watch. You don’t need the whole late night talk show. I find it both interesting and scary to watch unfold.
Are you still writing for UPROXX too?
I am.
Does Warner Music Group still own them?
Not anymore. They sold it in 2023 or 2024. It was bought back by the original owners and some investors, including will.i.am. They are trying to do some new things, but I do respect them. They’ve always done right by me.
I feel like many of these media companies of the last few decades have ended up being owned by unexpected parties. I’m sure you’ve kept up with the layoffs at BrooklynVegan. I believed that was part of Veeps, a conglomerate founded by Joel and Benji Madden of Good Charlotte, which was majority-owned by LiveNation.
There’s been a lot of rancor about the guys in Good Charlotte. And they deserve it! I would never defend them. But the problems are also so much larger than them. The entire tech-based ecosystem is extremely hostile toward ad-supported, text-based websites. Even if you had the best owner in the world, I don’t know how you could survive.
You could have a billionaire investor, like Laurene Powell Jobs and The Atlantic.
Yes. There are sites that do run through charity or donations. But even in that case, that’s only half the battle. Most of these sites are just so hard to find now. They’re buried by Google. They’re buried by social media. So, even if you have money, you don’t know if the writing will be seen. The discovery model has just been decimated.