How to find musicians and music writing on Substack

A quick-and-dirty guide from a formerly confused music writer and researcher

Photo by Wes Hicks on Unsplash

About a year ago now, I did some digging into how to find musicians and music writers on substack and put together a list of useful links that I shared with some amigos and confederates.

Of course, with my brilliant capacity to file things where I can never find them, I can’t locate that list now. I’m sure to stumble across it when it’s laughably outdated, around the time when civilization crumbles or AI has made Substack seem like a quaint and geeky endeavor by those cute little things called humans.

There tend to be frequent updates and improvements on Substack, so it’s a good time to refresh the list anyway.

I need this information myself to do background research for my posts, but I’m guessing many of you would like to be able to search for musicians or favorite music genres or other music-related topics of interest.

It’s not as straightforward and transparent as it looks. As we know, every platform has its own idiosyncratic and often quirky way of organizing and doing things.

Below are the various avenues I’ve found for finding musicians and music writers on Substack.

Note that the search function and Explore page are useful in general, not just for music.

Listings by functional categories (musician, writer, DJ, educator, etc.)

Shanté has very generously set up The Music Directory where you can find alphabetical listings for the following functional categories (click the link to go to a post containing that listing):

Writers/Journalists

Musicians

DJs/Selectors

Playlist Curators

Reviewers/Critics

Producers

Composers

Historians/Scholars/Researchers

Podcasters & Radio Hosts

Collectors

Educators — **New as of 3/30/25

Shanté has made an effort to include newer and smaller newsletters that are attempting to increase their visibility and impact on Substack.

These listings are important given the recent growth in the number of substacks and the increasing domination of the leaderboards and lists (below) by well-known writers and musicians.

Bestseller, ‘Rising,’ and Popular Lists

Top Bestseller Music Leaderboard

Substack recently put out an updated explanation of its leaderboards.

The Top Bestseller Leaderboard “highlights the highest-earning publications in their category, ranked by Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR). It recognizes the consistent effort, quality, and subscriber loyalty required to build a sustainable, high-revenue business on Substack.”

It ranks the top 100 publications, gives a brief description for each (taken directly from the substacks), and indicates number of paid subscribers and cost per month for a paid subscription.

As you’ll see, there are a lot of musicians in the top 100 now — compared to when I reviewed this list a year ago when there were far more writers. It’s a good place to find artists.

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Rising in Music Leaderboard

You will need the substack app to access this. This article explains where to find both the Top Bestseller and Rising leaderboards for each category, e.g., Music.

“Rising – This view hilights the fastest-growing publications within a category, based on paid subscription growth. This tab helps newer and emerging writers and creators get discovered by surfacing what’s trending across Substack.”

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The Top 25 Music Newsletters

As described, this is “a full list of the top 25 music newsletters and podcasts on Substack. Includes original stories and essays from top artists, reviews and breakdowns of the newest music and communities build around various genres of music.”

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Browse popular music posts

It’s not clear why these 36 or so posts are showcased. I’m guessing they have racked up the most views in the last few days.

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Browse popular music Notes

You’ll find both a carousel and a listing here of recent popular music notes. The rationale for what goes in either the carousel or listing is not clear to me other than they’re getting some attention.

Using the search function

Here’s what I would recommend in the way of doing a Substack music search (or any kind of search).

Search by language and keyword in the following categories:

• Top - top people and notes for your keyword

• Posts - top posts for your keyword

• Publications - top publications for your keyword

• People - top author names that contain your keyword

• Notes - top notes for your keyword

“Music” or “musician” is too broad. Try a specific genre, like “country music,” or something like “rock band,” which tends to bring up a list of publications by rock bands if you click the Publications category.

If you want to find a musician with a presence on substack, use the People category.

To find writing about an artist, album, or song, use Top, Posts, or Notes.

Note that the search function not only searches at the top-tier level of publication titles, post titles, and author names, but will also find results within publications. These will appear lower down the list of results.

You can also do a keyword search within a particular publication, if you’re looking only for relevant content by that particular author.

Important — You must put phrases in quotation marks, or it will search for each word individually. For example, I put in Smashing Pumpkins and got a lot about ‘smashing’ and about ‘pumpkins.’ You need to enter it as “smashing pumpkins” (capital letters not necessary).

The Explore Page

You can go to the Explore page to get a list of recommendations based on your reading.

As far as I can tell, selecting the Music category will take you popular music posts (as opposed to recommendations tailored to you).

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That’s all I’ve been able to find. If you know of other ways to find music people, posts, or topics on Substack, please let me know in the comments.

Also let me know if I’ve made an error. Substack functionality is not always transparent, at least to me. So if someone has had a different experience, or come to a better understanding of how to navigate, I’m keen to hear from you.