2026 marks the 20th anniversary of Selective Hearing. It may be hard to believe, but this site has been around that long. Leading up to the site’s official cake day, I’ll be taking some time to reminisce about what made Selective Hearing what it is today. The most obvious place to begin this series is at the beginning — with our origins.
2006 feels like an alien world compared to now. Many of the conveniences music fans take for granted simply didn’t exist back then, and discovering anything outside the English-language music bubble I lived in felt less like browsing and more like venturing into an unknown frontier.
My first introduction to Asian music was many years earlier through a path many before me have walked: anime. At the time, I didn’t realise that the shows I was consuming would eventually lead me down an entirely new rabbit hole. I didn’t understand Japanese — spoken, sung, or written — but I knew that what I was hearing sounded good, and that was enough to spark my curiosity.
Learning who these Japanese artists were wasn’t as simple as it is now. I had to scour the internet for English-speaking Japanese music forums, which often led me to other places where I could discover new artists and, eventually, download their music. Anyone who lived through those early days knows that sometimes you had to wander into a few shady corners of the internet just to get your fix.
Along the way, I started noticing that more and more music fans were creating things called blogs, where they could openly say whatever they wanted about the music they were listening to. There were no moderators, no posts disappearing because of vague rules or technicalities like on forums — just opinions, out in the open. I wanted in on that.
So I started one too, though it looked very different from what exists today. It began as a personal, journal-style blog, with occasional posts about Japanese music. Over time, those music posts became the only thing I wanted to write about. Once that happened, it became clear that part of my original blog needed to stand on its own.
That separation became Selective Hearing. Some may wonder why I chose that phrase for the site’s name, especially since it doesn’t directly indicate an affinity for Asian pop music. The term is usually used to describe someone who only hears what they want to hear and ignores everything else. To me, that felt like the most fitting way to describe the site’s content. The core mandate was simple then, and it still is now: this is what I’m listening to, and here’s what I think.
In the site’s early days, I was deeply immersed in Japanese music, especially female idol pop. That naturally became my main area of focus, simply because it was what interested me the most. In the pre-algorithm era, that meant concentrating on only a handful of groups at a time. As the years went on and more English-language resources began to appear online, the list of Japanese artists I listened to slowly expanded.
About three years later, I was introduced to the world of Korean music — specifically K-pop. Unlike Japanese pop, Korean pop felt more familiar, often resembling the music I would hear on local pop radio stations. I also found myself more open to listening to boy groups, as they carried a different aura than their Japanese counterparts. Once again, even though I didn’t understand a single word of the lyrics, the music resonated with me on a deeper level.
As my horizons broadened, the scope of Selective Hearing grew beyond straightforward music reviews. I began experimenting with editorial pieces and opening the site up to contributions from other fans. I also folded in content from my now-defunct personal blog, bringing my monthly DJ mixes over as featured articles to help keep the site active and evolving.
Once I started travelling to see artists perform, coverage of conventions and concerts became a regular part of Selective Hearing. And then there was podcasting. While never a constant, it’s something we’ve returned to from time to time — usually when a written article didn’t feel like it could fully convey what we wanted to say.
Selective Hearing has always been a small operation, with contributors volunteering their time and effort when they’re able. That naturally puts limits on what we can cover. It isn’t possible for us to review every release or attend every event, and that’s by design. We take the “selective” part of the site’s name seriously — our resources simply aren’t on the same scale as organisations with larger budgets and dedicated staff. So while our output may never be high in volume, we’ve always aimed to make up for it in quality.
Since I’ve intentionally disabled comments on the site, there isn’t a direct line of communication between readers and our staff. On rare occasions, someone reaches out through social media. Truthfully, I don’t always know what people think of the site or exactly why they keep coming back. I don’t lament the lack of a built-in community — that often comes with baggage I’m not interested in dealing with — nor do I particularly yearn for more interaction.
That said, when someone does take the time to comment on something we’ve done, it’s usually because they have a genuine interest. Since enforcing stricter moderation on our social media platforms, I’ve rarely had to deal with bad actors, which makes those interactions feel more meaningful when they do happen.
And yet, somehow, Selective Hearing has persisted — outlasting blogs and sites that were once far more popular, with larger readerships and greater reach. I’d like to think that it continues to offer something of substance amid the noise, clout-chasing, and clickbait that define so much of the current media landscape. That may be a slightly delusional assumption. As I’ve said before, I honestly don’t know why people keep coming back.
I never imagined this site would occupy twenty years of my life, let alone become so closely tied to my own identity. I always assumed I’d quit after five years, ride off into the sunset, and settle into being a regular music consumer instead.
If you ask me why I still do this, I can say with confidence that it isn’t for money. I haven’t made a dime from Selective Hearing since its inception, and it’s always been more of a financial sink than a profit generator. The real reason I keep going is simpler: the site gives me purpose. It keeps me moving forward, because there’s always something new to discover in the world of music. Like the mail, it never stops.
And for as long as that remains true, Selective Hearing will still be here.
