About Fourth Best

What is Fourth Best?
a new independent Irish music blog being run for fun and for free with new stuff coming out hopefully every week after launch. we'll be doing release coverage, gig news and reviews, the odd long-form piece or interview. all going well, there'll be a radio show some time this year also.

What's the focus?
for the website: any music that I love coming out on the island of Ireland or by people from it. for the radio show, probably even more general than that.

Who's running it?
I'm Colm, and I'm starting this while some other projects are in a quiet phase. I've written about music from the PR side for about six years now with Hausu, did hundreds of hours of radio in college, helped to run the River Runs Round festival etc.
there will be some other contributors - some invited piece by piece, some more regular hands on deck.

What's the goal?
help people get tunes out and provide the infrastructure. provide an alternative to streaming platforms for artists trying to get established.

When's Fourth Best launching?
when there's enough stuff on it and I'm confident in the routines. some time in March perhaps. first half of 2024 for sure.

What's the Fourth Best policy on advertising?
I won't run advertising or seek sponsors for the site directly, but we would need support for things like showcase gigs, interviews and some media projects that involve paying artists and crew. email colm@fourth.best to discuss.

How can readers support Fourth Best?
we won't take donations - buy music instead! I'm doing alright and Fourth Best is an amateur gig. maybe we'll do merch. for bigger projects we'll consider advertisers as noted above.

What's the deal with the name?
from a line on an excellent album by a friend. also I just think it'll be funny when I announce the "fourth best album of the year".

How do I send you music?
email music@fourth.best
we aren't super strict about format but we ask for the following:

• a link for us to stream or download your music.
• somewhere where readers can buy your music - not a streaming platform
• as much information you can give us about yourselves and the release
• what you want from the site: release coverage? a review? an interview?
• when's it coming out? can we premiere it? what are your preferred dates?
• something we can embed - bandcamp, youtube, soundcloud
• visuals, photos, artwork. if you have video we can use on socials, that too.
• credits. who made the art, took the photos, worked on the track with you?

if it's a press release, make sure there's some direct quotes from the artist.

the Fourth Best logo is set in Bianzhidai, a font by Xiaoyuan Gao. the font is licensed under the SIL Open Font License, version 1.1. it is available from the velvetyne type foundry.