Rock Monsters Romania

It’s been quite a few years since my last editorial, so I would first like to say hello and thanks to all the people who are reading this on the last day of this year.

2023 was the year when Rock Monsters Romania turned 7 years old. It was a milestone that I did not know this small project could achieve. It was also the year when we surpassed 3,000 followers on Instagram, and a few days ago, our webpage reached 50,000 readers. It’s like all the people from a small city read us in the past years, and that is incredible.

For me, 2023 was the year I was hoping for when I started Rock Monsters back in 2016. Even though it started with Dirty Shirt in late February, the summer and autumn were full of concerts, events, and festivals. You were probably expecting a number, so I will give you two: 20 concerts and 3 festivals.

I had the opportunity to talk to some of my music heroes, such as Doru Trascău, Dan Byron, or Cornel Ilie, as well as people I admire like Lucian Boariu from RockFM. I also met a lot of the artists I’ve discovered in the post-pandemic years. This gave me a better perspective on how Romanian music developed in the 2020s.

It was also a year when we went a bit outside our scouting scope, as football watchers would say. Our photographers, Raluca and Cristi, also covered some mainstream events like Steve Vai at Sala Palatului or Tarja at Arenele Romane. While Ionela and I covered some of the mainstream festivals.

Talking about festivals… we were media partners for the first time at a festival, Rock La Mureş, but that’s not all. We repeated the experience at WTF Rock Festival and BandBook Showcase. For me, it was that one “I did it,” but it’s just the beginning. I still remember the feeling when I saw the publication logo on the posters and also on the big stage screen. “Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?”

But all the good things also suggested that some changes are needed. Rock Monsters outgrew the small team that we have, and it definitely became too big to be controlled as fast as a big music publication. This led to huge delays in social media and email answers, cancelled interviews, and articles, for which I have to apologize. (If you are still expecting a reply from us, it will come soon!)

Due to the overwhelming tasks, we introduced A.I. to help us, and it helped a bit, but not a lot. We introduced A.I. only on “New Release” and “Concert Alert” articles. The majority of them are written entirely by A.I., and I am not ashamed to say this as long as it’s working. Unfortunately, that is not enough to produce quality content in time.

So that brings us to the next question: What will happen in 2024? We don’t know, I don’t know, nobody knows at the moment. Only one thing is sure: Rock Monsters won’t stop in 2023. But many things will change; there will be fewer articles, and all the releases and concerts will be featured in a newsletter that will be AI-generated. We will still be media partners at concerts and festivals and will continue to write concert reviews and have interviews, I promise! And we still have a plan for a Rock Monsters Festival…

2024 will also be huge for some of our friends in the industry who cover underground events. So, if you are interested in this type of content, we recommend you take a look or listen to Rock The Underground by Irina Marinescu at RockFM, Avanpost at Radio Guerrilla, CriticEyez, The Interwission, and Industria Muzicală.

And, at the end, thanks. Thanks to all the people I’ve worked with this year, to all the people who inspired me, to the people I met this year, and, in the end, to the young journalists that changed my perspective this summer.

That’s all, folks! You rocked in 2023, and hopefully, we’ll rock on together in the upcoming year. Happy New Year! 🎉