My name is John Cameron and I’m the cofounder and president of Selector. Our final day of operations feels like as good a time as any to break style and write using personal pronouns. I’m a different journalist than I was when we started this media outlet, and all of our supporters over the years deserve my candor.
Andrew Soren and I launched Selector in June 2017 with a straightforward mission. We believed that electronic music deserved uncompromising journalism, reporting that strives for objectivity and adheres to a high quality standard. In time, we would flesh out a strategy to introduce such an editorial voice to the community we held dear.
Early in the COVID pandemic, a series of small victories gave us hope that we were on the right path. We reported on cultural flashpoints like Tourmanagergate and shone a light on superstar DJs gigging in more lenient countries. We introduced a music coverage series called Sounds that used blind rating panels to eliminate bias from our selection process, a concept I still believe holds a lot of merit. At the end of the year, we successfully registered as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in an effort to eliminate the need for advertisers who could compromise our journalistic integrity.
We formally started fundraising in February of 2021. By March, our monthly revenue exceeded our monthly expenses, and by September, we recouped our startup costs. While we paid all of our writers as a matter of policy, the nonprofit was sadly still not bringing in enough money to compensate me — and I was working on it full time.
By November 2021, Andrew had departed, and I was the sole officer in charge of Selector. My savings dwindled to the point that I was forced to seek out writing and editing work elsewhere.
As far as I was concerned, this didn’t signal the end of the outlet. It simply needed to take the back burner while I focused on more pressing needs. We continued to publish articles — albeit less frequently — anticipating a time when we could devote more time and resources to a relaunch in earnest.
Three years later, the reason I’ve decided that it’s time to discontinue Selector is that if I were afforded such liberties today, I would no longer choose to build a platform like this one.
I still love electronic music dearly and maintain that it deserves true journalism. That simply does not mean the same thing to me that it did seven years ago. At that time, I bought into an underground dance music orthodoxy that, in hindsight, was anything but objective. At best, gatekeeping is silly and pretentious. At worst, it stifles what makes this ever-shifting creative frontier unique and special.
Much of the old guard clings to arbitrary ideas dictating what ought to constitute styles like techno, house, and jungle. These genres became so stratified in the first place because dance tracks are primarily tools made for DJs, meaning that the easier they are to mix together, the better they’ll sell. The tribal purism that now engulfs these descriptors works to their detriment, though. In a community that purports to embrace the future, countless artists paint themselves into infinitesimally small corners, resigning themselves to styles that I would argue have not evolved significantly for decades.
Make no mistake: I still believe in resisting the commercial influences that have long shaped electronic music’s evolution, and I personally prefer the more specialist flavors of almost all of its innumerable permutations. I can nonetheless admit that nothing new or groundbreaking is likely to emerge from them. Having studied the history of this movement at length, I assert that its most promising future innovators will almost certainly belong to a younger generation blissfully unaware of the intricate web of stigmas that bind those who came before them.
I have wondered countless times if Selector may have succeeded with one or two things playing out differently. What if we started earlier? What if we had a more streamlined website? What if I devoted more time to fundraising? There’s no way to know what combination of factors could have delivered the intended outcome.
What I do know today is that failure isn’t the worst thing that could have happened. I would loathe being stuck toiling away on a project that no longer aligns with my outlook, forced by audience capture to amplify the shortsighted perspectives my former self held.
That’s not to say I regret the time and effort I spent on Selector. I honed my editorial skills greatly by working on this media outlet; the experience I gained here has aided me immeasurably in other music and editorial endeavors. It also makes me proud that we provided promising writers with paid opportunities, and that we drew attention the works of undervalued artists.
I’m eternally grateful for the hard work and dedication of every collaborator on this project. To give credit where it’s due, it was Andrew’s idea in the first place — and for that matter, his strong editorial sense has informed my reporting since long before we worked together in any official capacity.
Our team of contributors were a major highlight for me. Cory Goldsmith was there at the very beginning, and Sky Stack also penned a few of our earliest pieces. Phil Scilippa, Saad Masood, Nick Yopko, Alex Dias, and Jeremy Howard did great work for us during the pandemic. The lattermost writer’s byline stayed active all the way through this year.
Jacob Stadtfelt, Ana Yglesias, Andy Macdonald, Andrew Wowk, and John Eperjesi all submitted content I was especially proud to publish on Selector. I also want to thank Ben Kreap, Evan Toutz, Kelvin Rodeo, Nicole Lopez, Umut Avialan, Dave Clarke, and Vincent Intrieri for their contributions.
I owe a similar debt of gratitude to all those who graciously donated to us over the years. I struggled with the reality that running a nonprofit required me to ask for money, but I was always moved by the generosity of the people who believed in our mission. There are too many to name, but Jeffrey Keenan, Christian Friedland, Mike Hymbaugh, Alexise Ramirez, and Jim McClain were among our biggest donors.
Lastly, thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading Selector. If you’ve enjoyed our reporting, I implore you to meditate on the ideas I’ve shared in my final piece and consider whether deprogramming any of your own attitudes on music could help you contribute more meaningfully to dance culture. Words hold power, and it behooves a community as introspective as ours to choose them carefully.
As for me, I don’t know what my next labor of love will look like. I’m nonetheless certain that concluding this one will free up the space I need to imagine such a presently nameless, shapeless idea.
