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Shawn Reynaldo covers electronic music culture and industry with a journalist's rigor. If ZenoneMusic is the craft side of the music you make, First Floor is the culture side: what's happening in the scene, where it's heading, and what it means for independent producers. Free on Thursdays.
Gareth Emery has been producing trance at the highest level for decades. His Substack goes behind the sessions and the sets: what it actually feels like to close a major festival, what creative discipline looks like from inside a professional career, exclusive releases before they're public. If you produce trance, this is the one to read.
Ted Gioia has hundreds of thousands of subscribers on Substack, making this the most widely-read music newsletter on the platform. He writes about music history, culture, and the state of the industry with a depth that trade publications rarely match. Broad scope, but his analysis of how music works is worth reading for anyone who makes it.
Marcus Lux has been mixing and mastering electronic and club music professionally for over 20 years. His writing focuses on what actually makes a track translate: EQ decisions, compression, the practical engineering that sits underneath the creative choices. Where ZenoneMusic covers the why, Marcus covers the how.
Alessandro Ciuffetti covers the full production lifecycle: mixing, mastering, distribution, music rights, and monetization. The technical and the business in one place. If you're trying to understand not just how the music sounds but how the industry around it works, this is worth your time.