Former Pitchfork writers launch new music website, Hearing Things

Hearing Things will have album and song reviews in addition to investigative reporting or more “second day pieces” rather than a traditional news section, Dombal tells The A.V. Club. Readers can also expect more live event reviews, because “that’s where a lot of music fans are really spending their money now. Probably way too much money in some places,” he says, pointing to a piece by Cush about the ongoing Ticketmaster issues. “[There’s] not a ton of… critical writing about live shows,” he adds. “So we felt like that was a nice place to kind of step in and be like: Is this concert enjoyable, is it worth the money?”

The founders are focused on building a community around Hearing Things. One of the early subscription perks is commenting, which is an attempt to “bring it back to basics” so that the writers can “talk to people who really care about what we’re doing.” Proposed future perks include virtual listening parties and even in-person events in New York like Q&As with artists and music writers. “[It] seems like a kind of a quaint idea, but I feel like that intentionality is really missing for music,” Dombal explains. “And we want to bring that back, and meet like-minded people at the same time.”

Moving forward, the founders of Hearing Things envision publishing digital cover stories and perhaps even putting their work in print: “some sort of zine-y element that we could take some of the best stuff from the site and put out in a physical form,” Dombal shares. But for now, they’re focused on “trying to build up this audience of like minded folks that… see us as people and not necessarily just like this institution from on high. We’ll be doing the writing on the site, but we also wanna be approachable,” Dombal says, “and have people feel like they can get to know us, get to know our tastes and our style also.” You can check out the new site here.