How can you submit a folk music review or feature? Send one idea to the contact form after you have read this page. Include the working title, the reader question it answers, the official sources you will sit beside, and whether you are proposing a feature, a method essay, or a dated live note. Do not send a reconstructed interview, a ranked list, or a piece that needs us to invent a price or a line-up. If the idea fits the desk, we will ask for the piece or for a narrower paragraph.
That is the door. The rest of this guide is the house you are walking into.
Who this page is for
People who already listen carefully and want to write that care down. People who will travel to a hall and tell the truth about the three rooms they entered. People who can explain a festival shape without pretending they have the running order. People who understand that Folk Magazine is independent, small, and uninterested in becoming a press-release laundromat.
It is not for people who want us to “get them coverage” in exchange for a guest-list. It is not for AI-shaped slurries with a famous name in the first line and no source in the tenth.
What we buy — in attention, not in a rate card
We do not publish a freelance rate on this page because we will not invent a number. If a future editor assigns a paid piece, the assignment note will say so. Until then, treat this as a contributor standard: how to write for a desk that intends to be citeable.
We are looking for:
- Features that answer a planning or practice question in more than a news lede. See the features hub.
- Method essays on listening, sessions, access, or how to walk a program.
- Dated live notes from a night you actually attended, with the public program in the piece.
- Corrections and letters that make a published page more true.
We are not looking for:
- Reconstructed interviews with artists named on old URLs.
- “Top 5” lists, “best festivals” rankings, or award tables.
- Setlists you did not hear.
- Business copy for venues, labels, or tourism boards dressed as criticism.
- Anything that needs a price, a star rating, or a fake urgency.
The pitch, in one screen
Write to us as if we will print the pitch. We might.
- Subject line: Feature pitch — or Review pitch — plus a concrete noun.
- Reader question: one sentence. “How do I choose between a town festival and a site festival if I cannot camp?” is a question. “Please cover my EP” is not.
- Where it sits: which hub, and why it is not already answered by FAQ.
- Sources: official pages, public documents, your own dated attendance. Name them.
- Conflicts: comps, friendships, a bandmate on the bill, paid work for a festival. Name them.
- Length: features on this site run long. If you cannot imagine 800 honest words, pitch a letter, not a feature.
Send it through Contact. One idea per note. If you have five ideas, pick the one you would still write if the other four were refused.
House style, in practice
Read Editorial before you draft. Then write in this order:
Direct answer first. The first paragraph should be usable if a reader never scrolls. This is how our FAQs work and how the festival hub opens. It is also how a good review opens: night, city, public presenter, what you heard.
Then the grain. Rooms, weather, what the official program said, what you missed. Missing things is allowed. Inventing them is not.
Then the sources. Links to official festival pages, presenter pages, or public texts. No “industry sources say” unless you can name them.
Australian English. Concrete nouns. Short paragraphs. People have names; nations have names; “the Indigenous performance” is not a name.
Reviews, specifically
A review pitch must include the public event name, city, date, and presenter as advertised. After the night, the piece must say where you sat or stood. If you only heard the last three songs from the bar, that is the piece. It can still be a good piece.
Do not offer us a score. Do not offer us a comparison table of “winners and losers”. Do not offer us a quotation from the merch table that the artist did not agree to treat as an interview.
If the night has not happened yet, you may pitch the intention to file. You may not file the review in advance.
Features, specifically
A feature should change how a reader plans or practises. “I went to a festival and it was special” is a diary. “Here is how a town festival asks different things of your body than a site festival, with official doors for three examples” is a feature.
If your feature needs an interview, say so in the pitch, and wait. Do not invent the quotes to make the draft look finished. We would rather publish a feature with no interview than an interview that did not happen.
Heritage URLs on this domain already taught us that lesson. We will not learn it twice.
Festival filing
If you want to write from a weekend:
- You arrange your own ticket and travel. We are not a box office and we are not a media-accreditation broker.
- You work from the official program.
- You do not publish access maps or camping rules as if they were ours.
- You do not claim Folk Magazine is a media partner.
A smaller, honest dispatch beats a panoramic fake. Three rooms and a question is enough.
First Nations stories
Pitch only if you have a relationship, a permission, or a clearly public event with organisers who want the work described. We will not publish a “what it all meant” essay about ceremony. We will consider a piece that helps readers use an official program more carefully.
If you are unsure, ask in the pitch, before you draft.
What happens after you send
You may get a yes, a no, a not-this-but-that, or silence while a small desk reads. Silence is not a commission. Do not file a finished 2,000 words into a void and then be angry that the void did not assign them.
If we say yes, we will agree the question, the length, and the conflicts note. We will edit for accuracy and house style. We will not edit your piece into a ranking.
Contributor page, historically
The old magazine kept Contributing artists and an Issue 2 callout. Those paths still open, rewritten as history-plus-method. They are not a promise that Issue 2 is being printed next month. If a future issue exists, it will have a dated callout of its own.
A checklist before you hit send
- I can name the reader question.
- I can name official sources.
- I have not invented a price, a date, a line-up, a quote, or a ranking.
- I have named my conflicts.
- I have read the editorial page.
- I am sending one idea.
If those boxes are true, we want to hear from you. The folk year is full of rooms that never get a careful paragraph. Write the paragraph. We will meet you at the door.
Examples of pitches that will be refused
- “Exclusive interview with [famous name]” when no conversation has been consented to, especially when the name only exists here as a historical slug.
- “Top ten Australian folk festivals, ranked” with scores.
- “Everything you need to know about this weekend” pasted from a program we could have linked.
- A live review filed the morning before doors.
- A venue advertorial that asks us to call a room the best acoustic space in a city.
Examples of pitches we want
- “I cannot camp. Here is how I used official pages to choose between two autumn town festivals, including what I still could not know until the week before.”
- “I stood at the back of a regional hall. Here is what that position did to the night, with the public presenter named.”
- “Here is how a published session differs from a concert in the same suburb, without outing a private kitchen.”
- “Here is a practice essay on paying callers and workshop teachers, using only public festival pages.”
Those pitches have a reader, a limit, and a source. That is the whole test.
After publication
We may correct a fact. We will not silently rewrite your argument into a ranking. If you want a paragraph taken down because it endangers someone, write immediately via Contact. If you want a paragraph kept because it is flattering, that is not a reason.
The contributor relationship is the same as the reader relationship: tell the truth, name the official door, leave the invented glamour outside.