HumanHuman brought together the music industry’s tastemakers and showcased their most promising new discoveries. A letter from the founder.
Eleven years ago I started a music blog called HumanHuman. It wasn't a regular blog though. Using data from Last.fm it tracked how the artists I wrote about were gaining popularity over time, so I could prove later on I was among the first to have discovered them. People seemed to like this idea and wanted to track their discoveries in the same way. So, I decided to open up the blog and make it an online community, evolving into the platform we know today.
Forward five years and HumanHuman has grown to a much larger scale. Discoveries are added by the hundreds on a daily basis, the comment sections are exploding and “agrees” generate featured artists in a way we can hardly keep up. We do the best we can though. A strong editorial team adds to the conversation with in-depth interviews, (lengthy!) longreads and monthly recaps. Our social media pages and music playlists are meticulously updated. The community is thriving and quality dominates. It’s our golden age.
It felt that we had to give back to the community. Their knack for discovering the next big thing meant they knew what makes a song not just a song, but a brilliant song. Artists could of course benefit from this expertise. Allowing them to get feedback on their music, whether it’s during the creation process or after a song has been finalized, would make them well prepared to go out in public with their work. Initially tested by a handful of artists and then made available to everyone, our submissions tool Campaigns did just that. It’s been trusted nearly 25,000 times by artists all over the world.
With growth comes extra costs and resources unfortunately became scarce quickly. New places to discover and discuss music emerge, platforms to accept submissions are launched by the dozens. It’s hard to catch up and stay relevant. After a little more than a decade of bringing an amazing community of discoverers together, helping artists launch their career and offering a broad audience a steady stream of promising new music, the time has come to let HumanHuman go. It’s been a truly amazing eleven years. Thank you. ✌️
— Senne
Shout out to all the amazing people who made HumanHuman possible. A special thank you to Sanne, Lyor, Hannah, Djamel, Jarri, Deep, Bastien, Phil, Alex, Missy, Ben, Thomas, Jolyon, Miguel, Matthew, Mike, Charles, Krister, Christal, Sam, Jon, Camille, Adam, Edvige, Marc, Stephen, Simon, Martin, Julien, Yacine and Robert.
— June 30th, 2021