DiS has joined Patreon. Please consider supporting us so that we can carry on championing music and providing an outlet for opinions over on patreon.com/drownedinsound.

You can also donate to us directly using PayPal.

Why do we need your help?

Drowned in Sound started back in October 2000 as a music blog with a forum. Over the past 15 years the site has grown up a bit, reviewed 1000s of albums, championed the little known likes of M83, Foals, Bat for Lashes, Jamie T, The Darkness, The National, Muse, Sharon Van Etten, Wild Beasts and more. We've also interviewed everyone from Bjork and LCD Soundsystem to Kevin Shields and Paul McCartney.

Alongside the platform for our writers to share their opinions and interrogate their heroes, we also have a hugely popular forum filled with recommendations and chatter. Amid the millions of conversations that have taken place over the years, bands have formed and 100s of lifelong friendships have been forged - not to mention a few weddings. Just don't go calling it "the indie Mumsnet" or someone will post a colon-open-bracket.

However, despite around half a million people visiting the site each month, we are finding it increasingly difficult to cover our running costs (it is £1500 a month just for our server bill!), let alone pay developers to fix various niggles with the website or pay for the majority of our submissions.

We are reliant on advertising to keep going. Advertising is a bit unreliable to say the least and various things - from social networks driving the prices down to a lack of budget to invest in video "content" - conspire against sites like ours. The seasonal shifts in advertising really don't help. Some months we sell all of our available inventory and our ad agency turn people away, whereas others we could use about 75% more ads. And yes, we do realise that this is boring, and we would far rather not have to think about it, let alone have wasted our time typing this paragraph, instead of another para about how awesome Lizzo is.

Sure, there are solutions. We could start to introduce those infuriating adverts that interrupt your experience of the website. We could stop having opinions and start buttering up people who seem to want to pay for sponsored posts that say how amazing they are to pave their way to glory. We could even go guns blazing with clickbait to try to triple our audience or whatever magic number we'd require to get the big brands on board. Then there's the referral money we could get from plastering gambling and dating links all over the website....

However, we'd rather shut the site down than gut its soul.

We're not [somewhat awkwardly] asking for much, but we know that if a small percentage of the millions of people who visit the site each year donated a few pounds a month it would make a huge difference. In fact, if we had £1 from every person who visited the website last year we would have made about 3million quid, rather than a small loss for the third year in a row.

So, if the site has ever turned you on to some music that you love and you'd like to pour the price of a pint into our server each month, we would be incredibly grateful. If you can offer more, that would be amazing.

Click here to become a patron of DiS.

If you would rather not use Patreon, you can donate to us directly using PayPal.

TL;DR? If you've ever come to the site to chat about everything from where to eat breakfast at Primavera to whether eggs should be kept in the fridge or to read our "content" or to listen to the mostly independent music that we champion, we hope that you will support us by becoming a patron of the site. In return, we will keep doing what we do to introduce you to the music we love and continue to provide the citizens of the internet with an environment to discuss the things you're passionate about.

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