For your average sixteen-year-old, the idea of getting a head start on their future career path sounds more like the suggestion of a fun-hating adult than a well-meaning piece of advice offered by someone with experience. Jacob Randall Tender is no average person however, and by the time when he was fighting for permission to drive without supervision he was already sinking his (baby) teeth into the music industry with early blogging efforts.
Fast forward to the present day. Tender, now a recent college graduate, has developed a reputation within the music industry that many of his peers are still striving to attain. Through his work with Under The Gun Review he has not only earned the respect of others in journalism, but has managed to elevate his voice (and that of his coworkers) to a level of influence that he never could have imagined sitting alone in his room all those years ago. Add to this his work developing young artists, as well as his publicity work through Bottle Cap Media, and you have the ingredients for one of the industry’s most promising young minds.
After you read our exclusive interview, make sure to let Jacob know what you thought of his answers by contacting him on Twitter. After that, take a moment to follow UTG and we guarantee you’ll never miss another headline.
H: For those unaware, please state your name, the site you work for, and your role at said site:
JT:My name is Jacob Tender and I’m an Editor and part owner of Under The Gun Review dot net.
H: You have an interesting back story in blogging. How did you get your start in writing, and what motivated you to seek work in the music industry?
JT: I suppose my first foray into the blogosphere was a WordPress.com account I started to vent frustration about whatever bugged me in the musical world I had begun to immerse myself in. I wrote a few opinion pieces, a review or two, then I started posting news. After about a year, I packed up shop and moved to UTG with another writer I had picked up along the way.
Being from the Midwest with no Internet connection, save for my Blackberry, I put a lot of my time into music and writing strings of words about it. It felt like a natural fit and I’ve been doing it since.
H: You’ve written for multiple sites in the past. What lead you to join Under The Gun Review?
JT:I joined Under The Gun Review because it fit. I had been a reader of the site for some time. This made me familiar with some of the writers and the general tone of the webzine. I loved their voice and when asked to come aboard, I jumped in wholeheartedly because I felt that UTG was set apart from the rest. Less monotone, more snarky. The sass brought me in, the humor and friendliness of the team made me stay.
H: Unlike a lot of music blogs, Under The Gun started covering one kind of music and later expanded to a wide variety of genres. What lead you to this change, and was it the same motivation that later lead you to include comedy and film in your efforts as well?
JT: When I started with Under The Gun, the subject matter was very much in line with what was popular in the Warped Tour scene. While we still cover those types of musical acts quite heavily, there has been a vast increase in subject matter outside of those genres popular on the aforementioned tour.
I think that this can be attributed to maturing tastes amongst the staff and new staff members brought into the fold. New blood brings new taste. New taste brings varied content. This is something I personally strive for when bringing on new writers. I love when I see a band written about for the first time on the site. It’s a new market for them and it’s an opportunity for us to reach a new audience.
Our branching into film and comedy was even more natural. We obviously all love music, but we have a fire in our hearts for film and jokes as well. We wanted to expand our movie recommendations from our staff emails to a more public setting. Thus, we expanded. I think this varied coverage provides something a lot of our music blog competitors don’t.
H: What do you feel Under The Gun Review offers readers that they cannot find on other sites?
JT: Aside from the entertainment beyond music that can be found daily on the site, UTG offers a more personable, conversational, and occasionally controversial writing style.
Rather than writing a sentence in summary of an embedded song stream, we prefer a long-form format. We like to give readers something to read that might inspire them to talk about the subject. Whether that be in the comment section of the article or with their friends at school or a bar, we’re just happy to have a platform to share our take on things with people who care too.
H: A lot of people look to you and your site for new music. Where do you discover new artists?
JT: As our readers look to us, we look to other publications. I personally have a daunting RSS aggregation that feeds tons of great new music into my MacBook every day from blogs big and small.
I’m also big on recommendations and I’ve built relationships with people based on the music suggested to me. I love checking out new artists.
SoundCloud and Shuffler.fm are also fantastic resources for finding emerging artists on the cusp of their discovery.
H: When it comes to receiving music for review and feature consideration, which services do you prefer and why?
JT: That’s a great question. Firstly and most prominently, if it’s not watermarked in some way, you’re doing it wrong. In an age where an album can go from privately distributed to shared on a massive scale in a matter of hours, accountability is key. If one person is to blame for destroying a release campaign, they should take responsibility for it. Not using services like Haulix to do that for you is silly. I love Haulix for that reason and I assure anyone reading this that I wasn’t asked or bribed to say that. I’m crushed when an album leaks ahead of its release date, even more so when it’s a full month ahead of landing on shelves for sale. The technology is there, use it.
H: If you could change one thing about the music industry, what would it be?
JT: I wish for larger payouts for artists.
Things are tough right now. We’re in a really strange phase in music sales and distribution. Leaks are more frequent and downloads are at all time highs. At the same time, vinyl sales are up like nobody imagined and BandCamp is making it easier for artists to sell their music digitally on their own terms. Spotify and Rdio are doing their part in decreasing downloads and even though it’s something, their payouts to artists are minuscule.
If I could even hope for any sort of change, it’s that when things even out they do so in favor of the people who write the music we enjoy in the first place. This way my favorite artists can live more comfortably when getting home from tour (if they are able) to write more music instead of returning to part time, low wage jobs. Selling shirts is cool, selling music is cooler.
H: You tweet a lot about having big plans for the future. Before we let you go, can you tell us a bit about what UTG has planned for the remainder of 2013?
JT: UTG is always cooking. This year, our readers can expect plenty of new features, interviews, and articles from staff new and old. We’re upping our presence offline at festivals and concerts too, so if you see me or one of our staff, stop by and chat with us. We have the most friendly staff on the Internet, and possibly the most sarcastic.
