Nicholas Jones never envisaged a career in journalism; nor did he plan to make a living in the online music industry. But now he’s the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Tone Deaf, one of Australia’s fastest growing and most successful online music publications.

Borne out of dissatisfaction with the conventional street-press publications, Tone Deaf has become Australia’s number one music industry resource, providing thousands of Australians with up-to-date news about the global music scene.

Jones recently sat with Jack Vear to discuss all things Tone Deaf and to highlight his concerns for the future of the Australian music industry.

Tone Deaf was one of the first online music sites in Australia to prioritise interactive music entertainment. Did you sense an opportunity to capitalise on the developing market?

The thing that always bothered me about the street-presses like Beat and Inpress was that they always had huge resources but didn’t have websites. For us there was urgency, in the sense we thought there was space for another publication online. We thought it would be better if someone got in there before they did because street-press is crap. The way street-press works is you announce a show or tour and they’ll ring you up and get money from you. That’s how you get an interview and that’s how you get them to write about you. Whoever has the deepest pockets gets the best coverage and that does a whole disservice to the industry, because when they say something’s good, you can’t believe it. Everything they write is tarnished by that.

You now cover more live shows that any other Australian music publication. Was this always a deliberate priority? 

We started off and then kept hiring more contributors and writers and more photographers, and then by virtue of the fact that the team got bigger, we found ourselves in a situation whereby in a month we’d cover way more than anyone else. It wasn’t a deliberate plan, it just happened that way.

There are hundreds of musical magazines  and publications in Australia. How have you managed to gain such a stranglehold on the industry?

When there’s an issue we’re offended by or an issue where we think someone needs to rally the troops, that’s something we do more than other publications. For example, when The Tote was closing, we were very much in the centre of that. The petition to parliament that got the laws changed was hosted on Tone Deaf. We wrote about noise complaints and music venues and that was read 40 or 50 thousand times. It’s those things that really cut through and I think that’s helped. You can jump to any one of our articles and we give them background on the stories whereas I think some of the other publications just assume you’ve been following it. We try to provide as much context and background as possible.

You are considered one of the more credible music publications throughout the industry. How has this been managed? 

A lot of the people we write about we know personally. A lot of them are our friends and I think that helps. It affects us so we take it seriously. I think that comes through in the writing and I think some other publications don’t take it as seriously because it doesn’t affect them as much. When we write about something like noise complaints, that comes from a position of us knowing that the venues we run have exactly the same problems. There’s a passion and honesty that comes from it because we’re living through a lot of the stuff that we’re writing about.

You rely on voluntary placements for reviewers, writers and photographers. How vital have these placements been in regards to ensuring the continued success of the publication?

Critical. Without them there’s no Tone Deaf. Without the volunteer writers and photographers, we wouldn’t be out there covering those gigs. We wouldn’t have all these photos and that’s critical as photo galleries are major drivers of traffic to the website. Same with interns, they’re vitally important because they bring a lot to the table and they’re normally smarter and more passionate than I am.

How do you feel about criticism of alternative music publications such as NME for an apparent decline in quality music journalism?

In its defence, I think it’s a symptom of the Internet. Before the Internet when people would buy a magazine, they were never quite sure what people were reading. On the Internet, you know exactly what people are reading. Not just who’s reading it but also what pages they’re reading and how long they’re spending on the page. That means writers gravitate to the stuff that gets the page views, and of course, something that is scandalous or outrageous is the stuff that people are attracted to. It’s really sad actually. You can write something really important and only have a couple of hundred people read it, and you can write something that is total trash, but thousands of people will read it.

Like NME, Tone Deaf prioritises social commentary on the music scene and is also heavily review focused. How do you ensure Tone Deaf remains of such a high comparative standard?

Everything that gets published goes through a rigorous process. If it’s not well written we send it back. If it’s a negative review it goes through a second process and gets looked over by a second editor who makes sure it’s fair. At the end of the day, when you’re talking about an album, it’s something that a musician may have spent years on. If you’re going to say its shit, you’re going to want to be justified in explaining why it’s shit, so we spend a lot of time and energy, and I would say more time and energy than other publications, in making sure we get that right.

Tone Deaf differs from many in the music industry who bemoan issues such as illegal music downloads. Is there any current issue in the industry that really concerns you?

Australia’s live music industry is a really important cultural asset and I don’t think it gets its fair shake in funding. On a federal level, the funding made available for contemporary music is about $10 million. Opera gets $40 million and orchestra gets $80 million. I’m not saying opera and orchestral music aren’t important, but are they four or eight times more important than the entire contemporary music sector?

How do you plan on both consolidating and ensuring your future audience?

We’ll try to ensure that by focusing on the things we already do well, but do even better. We’re reorganising the resources so the reviews are of higher quality, while at the same time, we want to be fun and informative but also right, so we’re investing more time and energy and investing money to make sure that happens.

What advice would you give aspiring music journalists?

You’ll have to work for free for a period of time. Get started, get involved, create a portfolio and be the guy that says yes. If you’re the guy that says yes and you put yourself out there, that puts you in a whole league above everybody else. I think there’s a lot of people that do the bare minimum and won’t step outside their comfort zone. If you’re willing to do that, you’ll go a long way.

Jack Vear is a  Master of Global Communications student at La Trobe University. Follow him on twitter @jack_vear