Katie Bain b2b Kat Bein: An Interview Between Two Legendary (and Similarly Named) Dance Music Journalists
Both writers will be moderating panels at Winter Music Conference 2025
Katie Bain: Greening the Scene: Sustainable Solutions for the Dance Music Industry
📅 Thursday, March 27 | 12:30-1:30 PM
📍 WMC – The Rhythm Room
Kat Bein: Music, AI, and Gaming: How Tech is Shaping the Future of Sound
📅 Thursday, March 27 | 4:30-5:30 PM
📍 WMC – The Groove Room
🎟 Tickets on sale now at WINTERMUSICCONFERENCE.COM
Katie Bain and Kat Bein are two of our foremost contemporary electronic music journalists, both known for their deep and long-standing passion for dance music. But they also have something else in common: strikingly similar names. In a digital media landscape where you might email someone for years without seeing their face – and within a tight-knit music scene where press inquiries will often land in one of these writer’s inboxes (or both) – it’s easy to see why near-identical names could pose an issue.
Katie and Kat’s shared history is a tale of mix-ups: confused publicists and artists, misrouted emails, hotel mishaps – a perpetual case of mistaken identity that has shaped their longtime friendship and professional collaborations. Yet, despite the confusion, both have built individual reputations as some of the most accomplished, sought-after journalists in the dance music space, each with their own resumes of impressive accomplishments.
Los Angeles-based Katie Bain is the director of Billboard Dance and Billboard’s Senior Music Correspondent, following a stint as the Senior Music Writer at LA Weekly. In her decade-plus history covering electronic music, she’s reported on all facets of the global dance scene, including cover stories on Swedish House Mafia and Justice, as well as an in-depth report on Saudi Arabia’s emerging music industry. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, VICE, SPIN, RBMA and many others.
South Florida-based Kat Bein is a regular contributor to Billboard, SPIN, and the Miami New Times. She’s interviewed a roster of music legends, from Damon Albarn to Moby and Porter Robinson, just to name a few. Renowned for her encyclopaedic knowledge and in-depth reporting on the French dance scene, she wrote a stand-out piece on Daft Punk’s retirement in 2021. She also founded multimedia journalism platform Super Kat World, where you can find vlogs, newsletters, playlists, livestream interviews and more – including a recent vlog chronicling Justice’s 2024 North America tour, featuring interviews with the iconic French duo.
WMC is privileged to host both of these brilliant writers as moderators at the upcoming 35th-anniversary conference. Kate Bain will be shepherding the environmentally-focused panel “Greening the Scene: Sustainable Solutions for the Dance Music Industry,” while Kat Bein will be handling “Music, AI, and Gaming: How Tech is Shaping the Future of Sound.”
Below is a conversation between Katie and Kat, where they share stories of industry mix-ups, their journeys into dance music, and offer a glimpse of what to expect from their upcoming panels.
Part 1 – When did you realize you had another version of you?
Kat Bein: I was just thinking about this, and I don’t remember exactly the first crossover. I remember you were doing LA Weekly, and I was doing Miami New Times, which were owned by the same media company. I’m sure one of your pieces was posted to the Miami New Times website, and someone probably sent it to me and was like, hey, check this out.
Katie Bain: Right. I remember your stuff was syndicated in LA Weekly.
Kat Bein: I was writing outrageous stuff.
Katie Bain: I remember those pieces! And I was just like, who is this, she has such a cool voice. She has such a great tone. And it didn’t really strike me as strange until strange things started to happen. For example, we were working a festival and when I checked into the hotel, they were like, ‘Oh, you’re already here,’ and they gave me a key to your room.
Kat Bein: Right!
Katie Bain: And when I walked into your room you weren’t there, but all your stuff was. And I was just like, I know what has happened here.
Kat Bein: And then when I got back my key wasn’t working.
Katie Bain: Right. Another example is when I got the offer from inthemix saying we’d love to fly you to Brazil to write a story on the Green Valley nightclub, and I said absolutely. But they never responded, and then I saw you had written the story instead, and I realized…
Kat Bein: So rude of them!
Katie Bain: …they had to come through me to get to her (laughs).
Kat Bein: For the record, Katie’s story would have been amazing.
Katie Bain: I’m just glad someone went! Your piece was great. I would say that I think we’ve had to field a lot of confusion among, of course, publicists and artists, and other people that work in dance not realizing who they are in touch with.
Kat Bein: Exactly. I get a lot of ‘Hey Katie!’ emails. Like, I’m not sure which of us you’re trying to reach.
Katie Bain: In a way though, it doesn’t really matter because both of us could kind of do the thing that you want.
Kat Bein: It’s true! You know, as soon as I was born, I was tied to you spiritually.
Katie Bain: Totally. Being slightly older, I very much remember the day you were born. I felt a lift of energy.
Kat Bein: The prophecy began to fill itself…DJs hate to see us coming.
Katie Bain: They love us, but they fear us. Because we confuse them.
Part 2 – What was your a-ha moment in dance music?
Katie Bain: Dance music for me is a function of living in California, moving to LA [from Wisconsin]. And I was always on a path to Wookville. I remember going to Bonnaroo in ‘06 or ‘07 and stumbling into a Sound Tribe Sector 9 show at 4am, and it was fantastic. One of those moments of like, whatever this is, I’m going to do it as much as I can, forever. There were other defining moments, like when I got to LA and saw Justice on the Cross Tour in 2008. But even more than that, just all the festivals…going to Lightning In A Bottle, Burning Man, Symbiosis, especially at that time in 2009 – 2011, were all very bass heavy – very squelchy, low end, weird stuff.
Kat Bein: I’m headbanging right now just thinking about it.
Katie Bain: I was in Big Sur for a few months in 2009, and everybody that worked at the place where I was staying was extremely into bass music. And so I got to go to some really incredible parties, like all night on a cliff and in the fog. And I remember there was one where the sound cut out, and everyone just started banging on the wall and the floor, creating a beat with our fists. It was really awesome. I don’t know what kind of music I would be into if I had moved to New York or Miami. But in California, bass was my way in.
Kat Bein: 100%. I think where you’re from, it does leave an indelible mark on you. I feel that way growing up in South Florida, with the Miami bass drum pattern – anything with that kind of frenetic drum style, I’m gonna love it. I’m just gonna.
Katie Bain: It’s in you. You grew up with it.
Kat Bein: The good people of WMC will be happy to hear that my first dance music experience was going to Ultra in 2005, when it was a single day festival. Moby was playing, and I was a huge Moby fan, and it was this amazing experience – he played with a full band, a live set with backup singers. And Tiesto was a headliner playing the Main Stage, which is now the Live Stage. It was such an experience. After that, I would go to all ages raves every once in a while, but I never felt I really belonged to the culture…until I saw Daft Punk live, and said whatever this is, I pledge my allegiance to this for the rest of my life. I’ll follow you forever, French Robots.
Katie Bain: That is the famous Kat Bein thing. I think many people associate you as The Queen Of France, the Marie Antoinette of Dance Music Journalism. You found the thing and you followed it to its beating heart.
Part 3 – How did you get into dance music journalism?
Kat Bein: I was always the writing kid, and my boyfriend at the time suggested I apply to the UF Journalism School, and I did. I immediately thought the journalism classes were so interesting and I felt so called to it. Simultaneously, I was already fully invested in what people now call blog house…Justice, Boys Noize, all that stuff. This was like 2008. And I would go to this party in Gainesville called Neon Liger, and interview DJs that came into town. I interviewed Skrillex in 2009! I had to convince the student paper editor why it was worth interviewing Skrillex. He was like, no one even knows who that guy is. I told him, this guy’s a big deal! You don’t understand!!
Katie Bain: I was like you. I always enjoyed writing, and went to the journalism school at University of Wisconsin. After that, I moved to LA having never been there before, knowing only one person – all I knew was I wanted to be a journalist. I don’t know that I would do that now.
Kat Bein: Being young is awesome
Katie Bain: Truly. I probably spent all my money on the first month’s rent and security deposit, and got a job at a restaurant that I could see from my house because it was so close. I cold emailed an editor at LA Times, like, ‘Hello! I’m new in town, and recently graduated with a journalism degree and I would love to write for you.’ And she freaking wrote me back! LA Times had a publication at the time called The Metro Mix, which catered to young people and covered culture and clubs and music. That was the door in, I was very lucky.
Kat Bein: Was it that young person-angled beat that pushed you to do more DJ interviews? How did you get into the dance space?
Katie Bain: Not in the beginning. Initially, I was covering bars and clubs in LA, but more from an interior design perspective, you know, like the drink concept.
Kat Bein: The things that matter most!
Katie Bain: Right. I also covered other Hollywood news, like the Twilight Saga, or Michael Jackson’s death. Then that site closed and I traveled for a year, and when I got back that’s when I went to Big Sur and started becoming very interested in electronic music. I started pitching LA Weekly, who were very receptive to my pitches. In 2010, dance music was very much happening in LA and they needed some help covering it in a dedicated way.. I can’t say I went in with a huge breadth of knowledge about the scene and the history. But I was also living in history, in real time.
Kat Bein: I love that you mention that, I think that’s absolutely true. I’m forever grateful that I got to experience the mid-2000s, early-2010s dance music explosion in the United States. As a teenager, I was so into punk and post-punk and goth music. And I still am, but I always felt like, oh, I missed it. That was such a moment and I didn’t get to live that moment – I’m just obsessed with it in the aftermath. And then Daft Punk happened, and everyone was like, that’s amazing, right? Like it’s not just me, everyone agrees. That show was crazy.
Katie Bain: ‘That was cool, right? What we just saw? You liked that too?’
Kat Bein: It was a collective experience! And everything immediately after. Justice’s album came out, and all this music was coming out on all these blogs. And I was very aware – this is it, this is a moment in time. And it’s so cool we get to document it.
Katie Bain: We’re archivists, you know? I’m sure you’ve been there where you’ve been researching a story and you found something that was published in like ‘95 and you’re like, wow, I’m so glad that someone wrote this down. It’s a pretty seemingly trivial piece of information, but I was looking for it and someone was there and wrote it down and kind of handed it to me forward in time.
Kat Bein: I think you do such an amazing job as director at Billboard Dance, because you’re so good at nailing these stories across different concepts and working with writers who have interesting voices to capture different angles.
Katie Bain: I think you do a great job at capturing it! Your passion, style consistency and well of knowledge have been so cool to witness, be inspired by and be uniquely adjacent to.
Part 4 – Looking forward to WMC
Kat Bein: You’re coming to my town!
Katie Bain: I’m coming to you, and everyone is coming to see us.
Kat Bein: We’re moderating a couple panels at WMC, which is an institution and a global player in the dance music scene. My panel is on AI and gaming – two subjects I’m very interested in – and I’m looking forward to steering that conversation into something super insightful. There are really interesting, ethical questions there to answer so I’m hopeful that the panelists will be down to talk about some of that nitty gritty. I do think there is ethical use of such technology, but it’s about figuring out where that line is. And gaming, well [gesturing to her room backdrop], I’ve got plenty of gaming paraphernalia all over my walls.
Katie Bain: Kat is illustrating in real time why there is no one else that can moderate this panel other than her.
Kat Bein: How are you going to prepare for your sustainability panel, and how do you usually approach these sorts of things?
Katie Bain: I try not to have an in depth conversation with the panelists ahead of time. I don’t like talking to people backstage or in the green room, because once we get talking, the conversation gets interesting, and then you cannot replicate it once out in front of the crowd. I tell people that – not to seem standoffish – but I don’t want to talk to you immediately before we’re going to go on because we’ll ruin the thing that we’re going to try to do out there. As for my panel, I think there’s a lot to say about sustainability. I think it’s a precarious time. And I think the people with solutions are really important to hear from because people need, one, a mental salve to know there’s good stuff happening, and two, they need to be exposed to solutions they can adopt. Because we’re not seeing it on a policy level, individuals and companies need to do as much as they can to the extent they are able.
📣 Don’t miss these crucial conversations! Join Katie and Kat at WMC 2025 🎶✨
Music, AI, and Gaming: How Tech is Shaping the Future of Sound
📅 Thursday, March 27 | 4:30-5:30 PM
📍 WMC – The Groove Room
Greening the Scene: Sustainable Solutions for the Dance Music Industry
📅 Thursday, March 27 | 12:30-1:30 PM
📍 WMC – The Rhythm Room
🎟 Tickets on Sale now at WINTERMUSICCONFERENCE.COM
