tQ relies on Subscribers to continue providing human-made cultural criticism. This spring, you can save 35% on our top tier subscription – here’s why we’re doing it
SUBSCRIBE NOW HERE WITH 35% OFF!
There’s something appallingly physical about the language that’s used to describe the radical changes that are affecting every aspect of our culture. AI slop. Enshittification. It’s all rather revolting. From our perspective, the acts of making music and writing about it are in fine fettle, but the systems that support and nourish them are in danger of being broken on a wheel. AI is at the root of this crisis. Major media companies are refusing to rule out using AI-generated content, with many even embracing it. There are now more AI-made podcasts released each day than those created by humans. Streaming services are vulnerable to being overwhelmed by music that sounds like a funny-fingered, slightly crapper version of something you loved once, back when it was made by a living, breathing person. This is compounded by recent revelations about marketing companies that manipulate the algorithm by generating fake discourse to boost artists (or at least, those who can afford their fees).
We increasingly see our role at The Quietus as being a haven in this storm of awfulness, a place where we print words that are guaranteed to have been written by human beings, about music made by human beings. We support those artists who are not in the privileged position of being able to pay for influencers to swan around festivals posting about the ‘moment’ they’ve just had watching their set.
It’s terrifying that investigating and celebrating art made from the joys and neuroses of our fleshy forms and beautiful minds is starting to feel like a radical act, but that is the bleak state of things in 2026.
We cannot keep doing so without your help. Since the new Quietus site was launched in 2024, our traffic has doubled year on year. Yet our subscriber numbers have not followed this happy trend. We need to add 500 subscribers this spring – most importantly, to be able to remain stable, but also to then continue to expand our fight on behalf of human-made art and writing. We invest our subscription revenue in commissioning new writers, often at the start of their careers, and from across the globe. New subscribers help us to do more of what our readers love, to increase the amount we commission, not just in music but in film, art and literature – all areas that are struggling across the media.
With this in mind we’re cutting 35% off the price of our top tier Subscriber Plus package – remember, this tier now gets seven bonus playlists each month, drawn from across our features. Want to hear the music in a Baker’s Dozen? You can do so right away by signing up here.
Subscriber Plus members get:
Monthly Spotify, Apple Music & Tidal playlists rounding up the music we’ve been writing about on the site PLUS additional playlists each week that give you the essentials of an artist’s career. There’s also the monthly curated playlist in which an artist selects the music that inspired their work.
Low Culture Podcast: tQ’s founders & editors Luke & John discussing an essential album, book, telly series or film each month.
Low Culture Essay: An exclusive monthly long read on a cultural artefact by some of our favourite writers.
Organic Intelligence Newsletter. A monthly newsletter deep dive into the fantastic but neglected music of a time, scene or place.
…and we’re also offering 25% off our middle, Subscriber tier, which gets you everything except the bonus playlist collection.
In this time of trial, false prophets are exploiting the language and methods of the underground for their own ends, as Darren Hemmings wrote in his fantastic Black Sky Thinking a little while ago. We’ve spotted echoes of our “antidote to the algorithm” slogan used in the Organic Intelligence subscriber newsletters in the marketing for Texan BBQ-cum-tech conference masquerading as a music festival SXSW’s London edition. Let’s not forget that in 2024 nearly 100 artists withdrew from the festival due its association with arms manufacturers, while guests this year include Nick Clegg, the former Liberal Democrat leader who enabled austerity and Brexit, leaving the mess he created behind to earn millions, first with Meta, and now with European AI tech investment fund Hiro Capital. Get these people away from culture.
It might seem absurd that we’re positioning our 17.5- year-old publication as a bastion against all this nonsense, but that’s only because we believe so intensely in what we do. After all, tQ1000, our high-spec robot designed to save us all from the AI surge unfortunately came to a sticky end at recent trials. We feel we’d better stick to what we know best: words. You can sign up to help us do this here.
