Side-Line publishes daily coverage of industrial, EBM, darkwave, synthpop, post-punk and related genres. Part of that process uses AI tools. Here is an explanation of how we exactly use AI.
What AI does on Side-Line
Most of our daily news items – single/album announcements, tour dates, label signings, reissues – start from a press release or a direct email from an artist, label or PR contact which are curated by our Chief Editor. AI drafts a first version of that article: pulling the concrete facts from the source material, checking them against Discogs, Wikipedia, Bandcamp and official artist/label pages, and formatting the result to our house style.
AI is also used for parts of the production process that don’t involve editorial judgment: building the WordPress import, sourcing and resizing a featured image, filling in SEO fields, and posting a published article to our social accounts.
What AI does not do
- AI does not invent facts. Dates, credits, formats, tracklists, quotes and biographical details are only published if they can be verified against a primary or reliable secondary source; when something can’t be verified, it is not included and is flagged to the editor.
- AI does not write our reviews or opinion pieces. Album and EP reviews, interviews and longer features carry a human editor’s own listening, judgment and voice – that’s the part of the job we’re definitely not interested in automating.
- AI does not decide what gets covered without a human standard behind it. Every article follows an editorial standard – written and maintained by our Chief Editor – covering tone, scope, sourcing and what counts as a genuine news hook.
- AI does not publish unsupervised. Every article, image and SEO field is reviewable by a human editor before or immediately after it goes live, and corrections are made the same way as any other Side-Line article.
AI in the music we cover
Where a press release, label or artist page discloses that AI was involved in a release’s vocals, production or artwork, we note that plainly in our coverage of it, the same way we’d note any other production detail. We don’t guess at AI involvement that hasn’t been disclosed to us.
This may change
AI tools and how newsrooms use them are both moving quickly. We’ll update this page if how we use AI changes. If you have a question about how a specific Side-Line article was produced, or a correction to suggest, contact us.
