Digital Music Distribution - some useful links

Digital Music Distribution Round-Up Part Two

A Recap Of Buzzsonic’s Older, Most Useful Posts

Exploring The Digital Music Distribution ‘Jungle’

Some Simple Branding Hacks To Supercharge Your Social Media URLs

a critic is...

A Critic is a Man who Knows the Way but Cannot Drive the Car

three links

Ah, my familiar old friend, the 'death of the critic' website series...

Why Does Popmatters Matter?

Does Criticism Even Matter Anymore?

Pop Matters @ 10

The Top 100 blogs.

Apparently.

those crazy Americans!

You gotta hand it to the (American) Federal Trade Commission for this latest brainwave. When I began reading the following entry, I had to make a quick double-check to make sure I hadn't stumbled across The Onion instead.

It's not often a Federal Trade Commission ruling upsets the musical blogosphere, but new FTC guidelines have left more than a few bloggers in a tizzy.

In an effort to make product information and online reviews more accurate, the FTC recently introduced its "Guides Concerning The Use Of Endorsements And Testimonials In Advertising." It requires, among other things, that bloggers disclose whether they received compensation in return for hyping products.

Continue reading here.

(Thank to Andrew McMillen for alerting me to this.)

Music Scrobbling as a Panopticism of Taste

Thanks to Lloyd again.

Music Scrobbling as a Panopticism of Taste

some good music writing.

Hope Meg doesn't mind me reprinting this in full. Tell you what, first go check out her excellent blog, then read on...

OCT

7

OBSCURE/POINTLESS

Filed Under Review²

Once, long ago, I told Andrew McMillen I’d keep an eye on his output and eventually review a portion of it in to the dust.

For those of you who don’t know Andrew he is a solid reviewer, with a reasonably-sized body of work behind him. He’s also, from what I can tell, one of the most industrious networkers I know, and I therefore assume that he’s the type to pitch his ass off in the hope of establishing himself as a serious freelancer. For these reasons, I never really thought we’d find ourselves in a place where I’d have enough vituperative hate-spew to offer about something he’d written for it to be a worthwhile blog post. You know?

Strangely, it happened. Stranger still, I’m not going to employ my usual 1-2 punch of tearing him down and laughing it off. I’m going to extend Andrew McMillen the courtesy of a genuine review – if not in format, then at least in consideration. That would be the very same courtesy that he did not extend to the Butcher Birds. Now, when I say he did not extend such a courtesy, I do not refer to the nature of his judgments. How could I? He has not presented them. No, what I refer to is the actual quality of this review(copied below for reference). If this had been a review of Andrew’s personal relationship with a single member of the crowd, then perhaps it would have been tolerable. If it had been an Amazon.com buyer’s guide to Andrew McMillen’s Thoughts On Etiquette, it probably would have gotten three thumbs up.

But this, my friends, was ‘ostensibly’ a gig review. Written for a publication with a reasonable amount of credibility, a decent editorial standard and a stable of writers who – from what I’ve heard – consider themselves to be Actual Journalists.

So on that basis there, I assume you can see how poorly this review went for Andrew. Have a look:

Butcher Birds

As Butcher Birds play, there’s a dude – ostensibly a friend of the band – accosting every individual in the room in an attempt to influence their decision to purchase the quartet’s debut album, Set My Bones. So far, I’ve seen no sales among the dozens leaning against the wall. He reaches me and shakes the album in front of my face, obscuring the band from view and diverting my attention.

“What?” I enquire above the noise, though by now his intentions are clear.
“Buy an album?” he offers optimistically.
“Not now. Maybe later.”
“What?!”

After I repeat myself several times – “what?!” – he dismisses my response and moves on. By now, he’s successfully distracted me from what’s happening on stage. I watch the roaming merch desk as he continues to annoy paying customers throughout the set. I’ve never seen anything like it before. If the band enlisted him – that is, if he’s not doing it off his own back, as a dedicated fan – it’s among the worst marketing tactics I’ve seen at a show. People paid to be here, so they’re fans: we’re at least marginally interested in hearing the band’s music, and potentially buying their album. We know where the merch desk is: we’ll buy their shit if we like it.

Butcher Birds released their first EP Eat Their Young in 2006, but postponed their album launch for three years. Tonight, they play most of it, and it’s a largely enjoyable display of retrospective alternative rock. Three females hold guitars and sing, while Donovan Miller keeps the beat. The metal-influenced whipcrack ending of ‘Millions’ and the hypnotic, distorted tone of older track ‘Tiger Paw’ make up for occasional plodders like ‘Sweet Sweet Cones’. Screamfeeder bassist Kellie Lloyd lends vocals to ‘Stone Fox’, and a cover of The Amps’ ‘Tipp City’ punctuates their set. There’s plenty to enjoy about their sound, but their overt marketing fails to convert this potential buyer.

by Andrew McMillen

Hands up if you have ANY fucking insight in to the Butcher Birds’ show?

Other than the fact there was a bar patron, one adult in a crowd of hundreds, who had consumed too much liquor and was acting like a fuckwit. Did you get that part? You should have. There were 212 words dedicated to establishing it. 212 words out of 325. Really?

Perhaps you are aware that there are four members of this band.

Perhaps you can divide them by gender: three girls and Donovan.

It would seem that these are the only things readers of the review are able to comment on. Primarily because there is no other content. Though, admittedly, there is a very weak, very ambiguous set list tacked on to the bottom of what should have remained Andrew’s LiveJournal update, his focus here is clearly on the ‘dude’ who ‘accosted’ ‘every individual in the room’. Unfortunately, the three girls/one boy gender ratio and dismissal was not an intended focus, but it pissed a lot of people off simply because it was an uninformed comment made in the broader context of wasting everyone’s time.

While many found cause to be offended at the misogyny inherent to a comment like, “Three females hold guitars and sing, while Donovan Miller keeps the beat,” I think it is far worse than gender politics. And for someone like Andrew, far more disappointing.

I think the problem here is not that Andrew is dismissive of women and unable to conceive of What Makes A Review. I think the problem here is that, for whatever reason, he failed to gather the information he needed. Instead of admitting that and attempting to rectify it, he wrote a short story about his feelings.

Horrific.

Ignorance in a ‘journalist’ is more distasteful than prejudice. And the demonstration of ignorance is the only way to truly fail in that role. It’s your job to gather and present information, you see.

Here’s what I think happened. I’m not going to bother confirming any of these assumptions though because it feels like that would be inappropriate, considering McMillen’s approach:

Andrew couldn’t tell which girl was which. He could only tell that the boy was called Donovan, because there was one boy name on the MySpace and one boy in the band. But there were THREE GIRLS and THREE GIRL NAMES, and so the solution was a sweeping textual gesture. I do it at parties all the time. “Them,” I say, “These, here, these bitches are my friends.” Lucky it is not my job to know my friend’s names, or I’d look like an asshole too. “LOL”.

As for the unruly punter, well. That little issue would have been solved with a dose of information-gathering too. If Andrew had asked the punter, or the band (who were hanging around the merch desk throughout the night, or outside smoking after the show), or hell – even me – whom he’d managed to contact about his +1 without a hassle.. If he’d asked any one of these people whether or not the fervent ‘dude’ fan was enlisted by the Butcher Birds or just a spastic renegade, he would not have had to waste all those words on exploring the possibilities of the man’s life, his position in the Butcher Birds’ affections or his potential marketing affinity.

But then, I fear, Andrew McMillen would have been left with no choice but to tell his editor he didn’t have a review in him. If he had not been able to dedicate two thirds of his review to immortalizing a man he apparently spent the night ogling, if he had not been able to offer imprecise, pedestrian commentary, then what in God’s name could he have written?

Personally, I would be nine times more interested in a review that said, “Shit out of luck, sorry everyone!” than in what I was actually given, which was something so irrelevant that it may as well not have existed in the first place.

I give this *** (3 stars) as a private diary entry, and * (1 star) as a review written by someone who considers himself a professional.

Oh, and by the way Andrew, there were three other bands that played. No comment on them? Performers not as relevant to the evening as the man in the crowd, I guess. Stupid question, sorry.

Comments

1. Bob Black on October 7th, 2009 1:27 am
   Please Meg, could you repair Andrew’s wrongs (oh, so many wrongs), and write a proper -fucking- review of the most excellent Birds?
   

   How can this be left to stand? How.
   
2. maggie supremo on October 7th, 2009 1:33 am
   Mr Black, I would love to. Truly. But I feel that my position as their label’s PR Technician almost certainly precludes me from such a calling. Ethically.
   
3. maggie supremo on October 7th, 2009 1:33 am
   (Why don’t YOU?)
   
4. That Pete Guy on October 7th, 2009 8:08 am
   On his blog Andrew writes:
   

   “I write because I admire the ability to transcribe cohesive, engaging stories above all else.”
   

   Fail. Fail. Fail.
   
5. maggie supremo on October 7th, 2009 9:15 am
   Pete Guy taps in with the man’s own words. Masterstroke.
   
6. Your Mum on October 7th, 2009 9:37 am
   YOUR MUM IS BACK IN TOWN, KUDOS MEG, SAVIOUR OF JOURNALISM AND ALL THINGS RAINBOWS AND PUPPIES
   
7. maggie supremo on October 7th, 2009 10:01 am
   Welcome back, Your Mum. Saviour of Journalism. I wonder if I can get that as my post-nominal title rather than BJourn.
   
8. ed on October 7th, 2009 11:15 am
   I think the initial context is good and how it wraps it up at the end but it probably just needed a few more sentences about the band. But I hate this notion of a “review” just being a list of things that happened in the order that they happened.
   

   If you over analyse it, the phrase “Three females hold guitars and sing, while Donovan Miller keeps the beat” is bad. I mean it’s not great to begin with anyway but is it any different from any review of a female-fronted band, which usually follows a form something along the lines of “Katy Steele and the boys…”. See Sleeperbloke –http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeper_(band)#.22Sleeperbloke.22. (Although to be honest I do hate these sort of phrases and am probably just playing devil’s advocate but see it more as laziness rather than some sort of misogyny)
   

   I’d give it two stars out of five. Promising but could/can do better.
   

   Oh and I think M+N specifies what bands it wants reviewed as opposed to a whole gig.
   
9. Jerry on October 7th, 2009 11:51 am
   Weirdly, I found myself in discussion about this review yesterday (weird, because do you know how many people I meet on a day-to-day basis in Brisbane – it must average out in the minus).
   

   I like the fact Andrew attempted this way of reviewing a band. That he failed so massively – and he did, there’s certainly no getting round that – is damning, but not as damning as all that. At least he tried.
   

   It’s those who don’t stick their heads above the balustrudes to get shot down that I really despise.
   

   Two points, then.
   

   1. Why did Mess And Noise allow this review through unchecked? Do they not employ editors? Do they really not give a crap about the standard of the writing they print? Fuckwits.
   

   Let me get this straight.
   

   Andrew was perfectly within his rights to attempt this review. But, before it got printed, someone should have gently taken him aside and said, “Er… Andrew? This really doesn’t work.” And asked him for a rewrite. That’s what editors are for, for Bang’s sake!
   

   Is the fact it got printed more Andrew’s fault or Mess And Noise’s?
   

   2. Andrew is still discovering his strengths and weaknesses as a writer. This is usually a process of trial and error. I’d venture that he’s (often) excellent on the research front, but not so hot as a live reviewer (few are). That’s probably a side-effect of having been a student. They don’t, THEY CAN’T, teach people how to write at universities because on the whole universities are staffed by a bunch of arrogant, smug fuckwits.
   

   P.S. Incidentally, I don’t think it matters a toss whether you name band-members or not.
   

   P.P.S. Hey Meg, would it be OK if I posted this all up on my PhD blog?
   
10. Jerry on October 7th, 2009 11:52 am
    Fuck it. One of my apostrophes is out of place.
    
11. Tal on October 7th, 2009 12:30 pm
    Hey, Jer. If you check your and occasionally my, and apparently ocassionally Andrew’s place of contribution, jmag, they occasionally let these sorts of things through too, remarks on crowd jerks and venue quibbles dominating a review.
    

    However these tend to be reviews on larger acts of whom anyone who cares should already have a decent idea of what to expect. Unless a band member breaks a limb, spontaneously combusts or quits the band mid-song, there’s not a real need to remark extra deeply on the show’s contents. Or so I imagine the writer feels. Possibly like M+N, they only want words on the headliner. Bums.
    

    What was I saying?
    

    As a reader, I couldn’t give a toss whether a reviewer had a good night or a bad experience with a drunk ass. (Shit, it’s the Valley. When have you gone to the Valley and NOT had a run in with a drunk ass?) Nobody reports on a sporting event and fills almost it to the brim with complaints that the beer is weak and warm. No-one reviews theatre by complaining about the decor of the lobby.
    

    Granted, if Andrew’s experience with the guerilla merch gorilla was so distracting as to taint his evening, I understand. But I don’t care to read about it.
    

    Haha. ‘Taint’.
    
12. Shaun on October 7th, 2009 12:47 pm
    Re: your last par Meg, Mess+Noise has always published live reviews that focus on one group per bill. Like Jerry points out, good live reviewing is rare/hard, especially the type that can juggle the whole bill without turning into a ‘one par per band’ article, set lists and all.
    

    But that’s kinda beside the point – I think Andrew’s review would have benefited from confirming who this over-zealous merch guy was, at the very least. Also, M+N’s editors will normally pull writers up over bad copy (this has happened to Andrew before, according to his blog), so maybe they saw value in this review?
    

    Anyway, being torn to shreds on blogs/messageboards is invaluable, seriously. I sometimes wish there were commentators ready to skewer my own writing.
    
13. Jerry on October 7th, 2009 12:54 pm
    As a far more experienced editor than (I suspect) any at either Mess And Noise or JMag, I have nothing against references to ‘crowd noise’ in live reviews – long as they’re done in an entertaining and/or informative manner.
    

    My main point here is that there should have been someone with enough savvy at Mess And Noise to pick up on the fact Andrew’s review didn’t merit publication – and throw it back to him for a rewrite. And there wasn’t.
    

    And that’s just sad.
    
14. Jerry on October 7th, 2009 12:54 pm
    Damn it. Another typo.
    
15. maggie supremo on October 7th, 2009 1:13 pm
    Go for it, Jerry. Use it wherever. And I can fix typos if you’d like.
    

    I will respond to “all y’all” (I don’t know, it felt right) soon. Right now I don’t have the time.. But there is a memory I’ve been trying to recall re: this ’style’ of reviewing, and so far I’ve failed. Perhaps someone here can help.
    

    So once upon a time, there were two fucking cool reviewers who I’m pretty sure made a magazine together, right. And they’d review albums like this: Album A was made in Stockholm. Let’s go to Stockholm/research Stockholm and write a small piece about Stockholm in place of any commentary on the album itself.
    

    This was hilarious.
    

    Does ANY one have ANY idea what the fuck I am talking about or misremembering?
    

    Anyway, I’ll get back to you guys when I return from Council chambers.
    

    P.S. I didn’t tear Andrew to shreds, did I? Wasn’t my intention at all.
    
16. Tweets that mention OBSCURE/POINTLESS : UBERWENSCH.COM -- Topsy.com on October 7th, 2009 1:17 pm
    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Mess+Noise and Andrew McMillen. Andrew McMillen said: One of my fave Brisbane writers @megsixx tears me and my Butcher Birds review to shreds http://bit.ly/2PF22a [...]
    
17. Matt Hickey on October 7th, 2009 1:25 pm
    Andrew McMillen – join the club of having been torn down by Meg on her blog.
    

    We meet fortnightly.
    
18. Jarvis Cocksucker on October 7th, 2009 1:37 pm
    No, this is just Andrew trying to pull an Everett True, failing miserably and being incredibly sexist in the process. Like the females in the band don’t deserve names? Or even the courtesy of saying that they “play” guitars rather than “holding them”? Gee Whiz.
    
19. Liam aka gumbuoy on October 7th, 2009 2:19 pm
    Your position as their PR Technician (I have to put that on my resume one day) also taints this piece.
    

    As I wrote on Andrew’s entry, the fact that the most memorable thing to happen in the night was the merch oversell says to me that the music wasnt that interesting – if the Birds had played a masterful set that kept Andrew enthralled at every moment, dont you think he wouldve mentioned that over the merch guy?
    

    Also, re the support bands – check the other M+N reviews, they’re all one-band-only…cant blame the man for following the style of the site…
    
20. Stephen Goodwin on October 7th, 2009 2:21 pm
    It’s an interesting — newsworthy, even — occurrence, though. And, for sure, it overshadows BB’s launch of Set My Bones, but isn’t that the point?
    

    It would surely be disingenuous of Andrew to minimise his experience of the night if that was, in fact, the single most overwhelming feeling he came away with. Perhaps he’s subtly implying that BB weren’t exactly setting his world on fire? “Largely enjoyable” doesn’t rank highly as superlatives go, after all.
    

    Shouldn’t a review just say it? Just as though you were telling a slightly expanded crowd of your mates.
    

    “Band was okay, but there was this guy, right…”
    

    Like Ed, I get tired of seeing — and writing — by-the-numbers reviews that follow the bog-standard template. That’s why I really enjoyed this and thought this was ballsy and brilliant.
    

    Where Andrew falls down is on the fact-checking.
    

    Because what really makes me uncomfortable is that the unresolved confusion over whether BB were involved in aggressive marketing tactics could have had an impact on BB’s long-term reputation. And that’s got to be more important than the fact that there’s not that much music waffle in there.
    
21. Darragh Murray on October 7th, 2009 2:31 pm
    “Hands up if you have ANY fucking insight in to the Butcher Birds’ show?”
    

    Actually, I do. It is a show where I’m likely to be accosted by drunk over-zealous arseholes who may, or may not, have been appropriated by the band to push merchandise.
    

    Everett is correct. The fault lies with the editors, not Andrew.
    
22. frenk on October 7th, 2009 2:49 pm
    hey Jerry, regarding your comment “(weird, because do you know how many people I meet on a day-to-day basis in Brisbane – it must average out in the minus)”, unless you’re un-meeting people in Brisbane (I allow for the possibility, as stranger – much stranger – shit has gone down on her streets) it’s unpossible for the number of people you meet to average out “in the minus”, as each day you’ll either meet someone (whole positive integer, x) or not (zero), resulting in an average at worst zero (if you never meet anyone at all). Hope this helps! Regards, frenk
    
23. Jarvis Cocksucker on October 7th, 2009 2:50 pm
    It’s not unresolved. They made it very clear that it was a punter stealing their merch and being a jerk. Their merch people were lovely.
    
24. andymundy on October 7th, 2009 2:54 pm
    Great band, great record, review wasn’t worth submitting.
    

    Oh, and I write occasionally for Mess and Noise and do not consider myself an Actual Journalist. I don’t even know what that term means.
    
25. maggie supremo on October 7th, 2009 3:53 pm
    Ed!
    

    “But I hate this notion of a “review” just being a list of things that happened in the order that they happened.”
    

    Me too.
    

    “Although to be honest I do hate these sort of phrases and am probably just playing devil’s advocate but see it more as laziness rather than some sort of misogyny”
    

    Me too.
    
26. maggie supremo on October 7th, 2009 4:04 pm
    “I like the fact Andrew attempted this way of reviewing a band. That he failed so massively – and he did, there’s certainly no getting round that – is damning, but not as damning as all that. At least he tried.”
    

    At least he tried? Who the fuck are YOU?
    

    What was it you said about the music press in Australia treating music like sport, and giving each other the thumb’s up for ‘having a go’?
    

    As for Andrew’s research VS live review skillz, I don’t think this was a product of Andrew’s inability to do better. I’ve seen wonderful (non-formulaic) reviews from Andrew – his recent Forster one being an example. I’m guessing he was not particularly inspired by the BB show, which is fine and not at all a problem for me.
    

    The only reason I decided to prod this review is because of the assertions or estimations Andrew made about whether or not this person was in the employ of the Butcher Turds. That was bizarre. And I saw that in attempting to respond to/correct the factual errors, Jo or whoever it was commenting on M+N was just being condescended/dismissed.
    
27. maggie supremo on October 7th, 2009 4:05 pm
    (As for who’s fault it is that it was published, I’d say it was a systemic failure. Ding dong, everyone involved is responsible.)
    
28. maggie supremo on October 7th, 2009 4:07 pm
    Shaun, I am always here for you in that capacity.
    

    I guess I have never, ever, in my life, read a live review on M+N and that is now clear. What was it I was saying about ignorance?
    
29. maggie supremo on October 7th, 2009 4:14 pm
    Sorry, Tal. I ignored you. Primarily because you were talking to Jerry.
    

    But I think.. I mean. It is a delicate balance. And it brings you back to all those dull, existential questions they put in front of you day 1, year 1 of your Arts degree.
    

    Who are you writing for? What do they want? Are you writing for the audience, do they want to know whether to buy the album, do they want to know whether the band can play a coherent show, whether they can play their instruments, whether they can play while straddling members of their same gender? Are you writing for yourself, do you want to push the boundaries of your ‘comfort zone’? I tend to wish that DC Root were here at this exact moment to expound on the comfort zone, but alas.
    

    Anyway, essentially what I am not even beginning to say is: represent your experience, sure, but represent the general experience too, and be certain – absolutely fucking certain – that you are conveying the most significant thing about the show.
    

    If the most significant thing about the show for Andrew was the person wandering around being a fucktard, fine. That could have been an interesting review. IF he’d actually pursued it instead of offering limp-wristed questions that never resolve themselves and sign off with: gee, that is shitty marketing if it is true !
    

    In conclusion, blah blah blah.
    
30. maggie supremo on October 7th, 2009 4:15 pm
    “My main point here is that there should have been someone with enough savvy at Mess And Noise to pick up on the fact Andrew’s review didn’t merit publication – and throw it back to him for a rewrite. And there wasn’t.
    

    And that’s just sad.”
    

    Yep.
    
31. maggie supremo on October 7th, 2009 4:16 pm
    Maybe if someone invited me to these soirees I would spend less time on the Internet and would experience an increased quality of life, thereby being less likely to post shit like this.
    

    You cunts.
    
32. maggie supremo on October 7th, 2009 4:18 pm
    “Because what really makes me uncomfortable is that the unresolved confusion over whether BB were involved in aggressive marketing tactics could have had an impact on BB’s long-term reputation. And that’s got to be more important than the fact that there’s not that much music waffle in there.”
    

    Yup. This is why I bothered to comment on the article in the first place. I threw it all in for kicks, but ultimately that was the motivation: The unresolved and potentially damaging confusion cast on the Butcher Birds because Andrew couldn’t be arsed asking anyone what the deal was.
    
33. maggie supremo on October 7th, 2009 4:27 pm
    Christ I just moderated like seven more comments, sorry for keeping everyone waiting — accidental censorship.
    

    My position as PR guru doesn’t REALLY taint this at all because I am not offering any opinion on the band. Also, it seems there is a broad-spectrum agreement with most of what I’m saying, so.. I don’t think it’s too tainted.
    

    In saying that, though, I have made it well-known that I’m involved with the Butcher Bitches in a semi-official capacity, prior to this post and here in the comments, so as not to deceive anyone.
    
34. maggie supremo on October 7th, 2009 4:28 pm
    frenk, yours is my favourite comment.
    
35. Shaun on October 7th, 2009 4:41 pm
    Perhaps Jerry is *killing* people when he meets them, hence driving his meeting-people stats into the minuses? OMG
    
36. maggie supremo on October 7th, 2009 4:48 pm
    YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST.
    
37. Jerry on October 7th, 2009 6:53 pm
    re: “I like the fact Andrew attempted this way of reviewing a band. That he failed so massively – and he did, there’s certainly no getting round that – is damning, but not as damning as all that. At least he tried.”
    

    At least he tried? Who the fuck are YOU?
    

    What was it you said about the music press in Australia treating music like sport, and giving each other the thumb’s up for ‘having a go’?
    

    ….
    

    Who the fuck am I? I’m Everett motherfucking True and don’t you fucking forget it.
    

    Andrew found the gig boring. So he wrote about something else, not the music, and in a very boring style. Perhaps he was getting postmodern on our sorry asses?
    

    Or perhaps he secretly loves Butcher Birds and couldn’t find the words to express that love… in which case, man, that review was terrible on every front.
    

    Whichever way. The fault is not his for trying something different. The fault lies with his editors for letting such unmitigated boring crap through.
    
38. maggie supremo on October 7th, 2009 7:02 pm
    Ahahaha, I am so pleased for that response. I wanted it on my blog somewhere. I realised too late that the emphasis should have been on the ‘are’, rather than the ‘you’, but I’m glad it elicited the same.
    

    Where is Andrew, I would like to know if he was getting his PoMo on. That is the most unforgivable crime of all.
    

    I still disagree on your last point, Everett, though it is not very important whether I do or not. It’s his fault AND the editors’. Writers are not mindless apes, despite some evidence (not here – not Andrew) to the contrary. They are just as responsible for poor output as any adult in a professional role.
    
39. Jerry on October 7th, 2009 7:55 pm
    yes, agreed. but the ones in charge should ultimately be held responsible
    
40. Tal on October 7th, 2009 7:56 pm
    ‘Your position as their PR Technician (I have to put that on my resume one day) also taints this piece.’
    

    See here’s the thing. As a local band, that occassionally plays a lot of local shows, you can be pretty sure that just about anyone has some sort of pre-concieved taint/boner Re: BB.
    I have one, Andrew has one, everyone else here has one, even if they’d walked in off the street with no idea what they were in for, the fact that it’s Guitar Music will taint/boner just a little too.
    

    So, er…. objectivism. Doesn’t exist. Or something.
    

    And Meg: yeah. And stuff.
    

    Having re-read my initial comment I have also realised that I completely ignore target audience while writing. Or, am occasionally openly hostile towards target audience. I am very aware of what my editors expect, however.
    

    And from now on, will be particularly aware of what you, Meg, expect.
    
41. maggie supremo on October 7th, 2009 8:49 pm
    Tal: Yeah.
    

    And when everyone involved in the Australian “media” is particularly aware of what I, Meg, expect, that is when the real Taint begins.
    
42. Stephen Goodwin on October 7th, 2009 8:51 pm
    At least you have an audience to ignore, Tal. Some of us have, at best, a degenerate rabble of doubtful taste and even more dubious intelligence.
    
43. Stephen Goodwin on October 7th, 2009 8:52 pm
    Or Meg White.
    

    Which is worse?
    

    You be the judge.
    
44. maggie supremo on October 7th, 2009 8:58 pm
    Dun dun dunnnnn.
    
45. Tal on October 7th, 2009 9:15 pm
    I now deem the Taint/Boner rule/law/ratio be made an official school of thought and should be taught in schools, universities and Masonic Lodges.
    
46. Jerry on October 7th, 2009 9:31 pm
    I’m clearly missing something here. I know who Ed and Meg are. I don’t know who anyone else is, because they’re obeying the One Unbreakable Rule of the Internet, Thou Shalt Always Hide Behind A Pseudonym Because Thou Art Ashamed Of Thou’s Own Name And Thou Know’est It Is Uncool To Behave In Any Other Way… um… or something.
    

    There again. Even if these folk revealed themselves in all their glory I strongly suspect I would not know who the fuck they were. So. As you were then.
    
47. Tal on October 7th, 2009 10:16 pm
    Hey man. You bought a DVD off me at Borders. Does that help?
    (A: no it doesn’t)
    

1. 
   

Pitchfork

This guy just re-Tweeted this comment of mine - and, damn, but if it doesn't sum the whole thing up in one pithy sentence, with no star ratings required.

"Whether or not you like the Pitchfork house writing style, one fact is inarguable. They have shit taste in guitar-led music." @everetttrue

Why Giving Star Ratings to Pop Records Is Stupid

Courtesy of Angus Batey's blog. Nicely argued. (But, really, it can all be summed up by the opening point here.)

A Twitter discussion the other day with @rockcritics, @nedraggett and @tomewing had me banging on again about one of the most vexed aspects of the music writing world - ratings. Although I take the point, made in a gentle admonishment from @bsdf, that I do tend to bang on a bit on Twitter, some things just can't be said in <140. So here's some more fulmination from years spent fretting over the difference between 7/10 and 8/10, wondering if it's possible to give no stars (and therefore whether a five-star system is actually a six-tier system), and querying, quite seriously, why anyone who thinks that three stars really means "good, but not for everyone" could possibly award any other rating to any record ever made.

 I can see why ratings systems exist: they're a useful shorthand, conferring decisions in an instantly graspable manner, and seem to be popular with readers. That they're also popular with the corporations who put records out is less obvious to the reader, but probably more relevant to understanding why ratings systems are now ubiquitous when not that long ago nobody would have dared think of "marking" music.



I have two main problems with ratings, marks, stars, whatever. And neither of those is that editors can and do change writers' ratings quite often, usually downwards but occasionally in the opposite direction, by accident and/or by design. I've never been particularly precious about my work, though there has been the odd occasion where something's been altered in a way that I've really not liked. Just like the line belongs to the umpire in cricket, I can see why the fifth star, or sometimes the fourth, or the tenth point out of ten belongs to the title. If they're saying something's exceptional, and putting their brand behind that judgement, they have to be sure about it too. Mojo exercise the perfectly reasonable rule that an album that's only available to a reviewer in a playback in a record company office can't get a five-star review in the magazine, because that fifth star has to be earned by acclaim from the Mojo staff: they have to be able to put it on, listen, work out whether the reviewer's got carried away or lost their mind in awarding it the full complement, and then decide. That strikes me as eminently sensible: why devalue their brand just to satisfy security precautions overblown by artist's or manager's sense of self-importance?



Of my two reasons for ratings-hating, the first is that while they may poll well in market research, review ratings don't ultimately serve the reader very well. The main reason they exist is to convey an impression of the excellence of the product in a concise visual form, so that they make more impact as part of ad campaigns. Walk past an ad on the tube, or drive past one in a car - if the music industry can still afford to place them; though that's a discussion for another day - and you're not going to take in even a crisp eight-word appraisal of a new record, but you'll certainly notice the number of stars and the name of the title that dished them out. It's a win-win for labels and magazine publishers: the former get a neat, pat summation of the record that avoids any of those pesky caveats writers who've listened to an album a few times will tediously insist on pointing out, while the publisher gets the name of their mag plastered all over the place at someone else's expense. Ratings become an artificial shorthand, and while every magazine will point out the subtle differences between what its three-star rating means and what the equivalents in their competitors represent, the reader, by and large, doesn't care. Here's what a five-star ratings system means to readers: five stars is brilliant, four stars is fantastic, three stars is OK, two stars is crap and one star is shit.

 The second problem is that ratings give readers an excuse not to read reviews. I freely admit that this may account for part of their popularity, but it also helps underline a small part of the reason why the publishing industry is in so much trouble. In the same way the record business has contrived to drive the perceived value of its products down to zero, by allowing music to be something you get free with a newspaper or a soft drink, so the publishing industry has spent years telling its customers that the words it publishes in its magazines and newspapers really aren't worth wasting your time and mental energy on reading. Why bother with the 150 words above, when the red blobs at the bottom convey the information you've come for in a much more convenient package?

post-modernism. again.

Anyone living in Brisbane could do well to venture down to Borders in Chermside in the next couple of days and pick up a hardback copy of Breakdowns - Art Spiegelman's incredible "Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!" - going for the absurdly cheap price of 10 bucks or thereabouts.

It remains one of the two most coherent explanations of post-modernism I've read (alongside John Berger's Ways Of Seeing).

the new literacy

I'll have a look at this when I'm writing less.

web 2.0

having access to the Internet does not make anyone more talented.
having access to the Internet does not make anyone less talented.
it makes people lazier, sure.
it can make people feel more knowledgeable - rightly or wrongly.

everyone a critic? sure.

as you were then.

the problem with definitions

Here's how I see it.

The Internet has changed nothing. Before it came along, everyone had the means to be a critic, to be a musician, to be an artist (especially if you start including dialogue as criticism or music or art). The Internet hasn't changed any of that - just offered alternative opportunities.

Sure, everyone's a critic now. Weren't they always?
Sure, everyone's an artist now. Weren't they always?
Sure, everyone's a musician now. Weren't they always?

I can sit in front of a table and draw a few lines on a piece of paper. Is that art? Does that make me an artist? Sure, I can sit at a computer keyboard and type a few lines about some record I heard (or whatever). Is that criticism? Does that make me a critic? I can sing lustfully to my baby as I'm tying my laces, or bang a few saucepans. Is that music? Does that make me a musician?

I don't really care what your answer is here, as long as it's consistent.

tightrope walking (reprise)

Thought I'd repost a handful of my answers to some of the comments elicited by Drowned In Sound's Music Journalism R.I.P? week.

tightrope walking

Correct. The monopoly of information has been broken. It had always been broken, to a lesser or greater extent. What does that prove?

Three examples.

1) There are builders outside, replacing my roof right now. I have the same access as them to all the tools required to finish the job - the scaffolding, the tin, etc. Could I? What do you bloody think?

2) All a tightrope walker requires to complete their craft is a rope strung between two poles. That's all I need as well, in theory.

3) School textbooks. We all have equal access to those, correct? So why do some learn faster and some slower? The Internet hasn't levelled off hierarchies (of power, of information), not at all. It's simply destroyed some and created others. HOW DOES THE NEW JACK KID DISCOVER WHAT MUSIC SHE WANTS TO LISTEN TO? WHEN? WHERE? Oh, by trawling through thousands upon thousands of sites themselves...thereby becoming (to all intents and purposes) "an expert". DOES EVERYONE DO THIS? Really?

Alternately, they turn to trusted platforms (P4k, DiS etc) who point them in appropriate directions.... which is what has always happened! There has always been hundreds of thousands of music fans, expert in their own fields. The Internet didn't suddenly change that fact: it just confused the field by flooding it with too much information.

Everett_True | 16 Jul '09, 00:30 | Reply

the person reading this article

Do they have exactly the same access to information as I do? Really? How so? Are they me?

Everett_True | 16 Jul '09, 00:33 | Reply

and

With regard to this point (again), marcusian123, "The information asymmetry is shattered, I can check out American bands the same as the next person."

There's a reason for that. You're motivated. You have a vested interest in doing so. Most users surfing the Internet do not. (Goes back to the classroom: why do some learn fast, and some slow.) Sure, it means that folk like you no longer need to lean so heavily on folk like me. And that's fine. Doesn't mean the same applies everywhere.

Everett_True | 16 Jul '09, 00:37 | Reply

there's nothing wrong with the music industry

Chris Anderson music industry article.

Really? How do you explain U2 and Pussycat Dolls then?

irrelevent but...

Checking the stats for this blog, I note that the second most popular city for visitors is a place I've never heard of, Fukuoka. Now, honestly: have you?

pop matters

Reprinted from Pop Matters, thanks to Lloyd again. Interesting, considering the current (minor) storm surrounding recent entries on my music blog.

Why we need bad reviews

Nope, I don’t mean badly-written reviews, though there’s plenty of them online, and offline too (don’t kid yourself). What I mean is that we need negative ones. Sometimes.

The thought occurred to me after seeing this tweet from Accujazz in late May: “What do you think? Do bad reviews of jazz CDs help or hurt the art form? Why do you think jazz critics and bloggers are so hesitant to trash”

Around the same time, ace writer Anne Midgette was thinking the same thing in a Washington Post column. “Loving music, to a critic, cannot simply mean bestowing praise. In fact, I think one of the biggest problems in the classical music field is that there’s too much praise. There’s an idea that our field is so small and beleaguered that we have to band together and all like everything all the time.”

Wise words indeed and a similar sentiment to what Accujazz was thinking. Is jazz also a field that’s become “small and beleaguered” that it needs to be saved from itself? I don’t remember hearing any writer or musician say anything like that but you have to wonder sometimes when you read pubs/mags/columns sometimes. Part of the impetus was Tom Hull’s Consumer Guide for the Village Voice. Like Robert Christgau’s Consumer Guide (which it’s modeled after), Hull lists a bunch of notable albums that he likes and then throws a few little pies at some stinkers at the end. Christgau himself used to mix in positive and negative reviews in his guide until he got tired of trashing albums and wasting his time on stinkers so around 1990, he changed the format of his Guide to concentrate on the records he liked. As he always did, he reserved a list of REALLY crappy records for Thanksgiving time and his annual ‘Turkey Shoot’ column. Though it was always a popular feature, he admitted that he always hated doing it.

I can definitely sympathize with this sentiment. When I pitch reviews to editors, I tend to chose music & artists that I’m inclined to like or find something interesting in. I keep thinking “why should I waste my time continually listening to and writing about garbage?” I know it’s fun sometimes to get a good zinger in but it’s not for me.

But Midgette does have a good point. Even if you’re not fond of giving a thumbs down to an album, song or performance, you owe it to readers to speak truthfully about music and give an honest opinion about it, even if it’s negative.

Even then, I think there’s a context for it. Let’s say that a famous artist puts a new record out and your publication has to weigh in on it. A really negative review might imperil future cover stories or interviews but should that stop a pub/mag from being honest? Some would might say ‘yes’ if only because they wanna maintain a cozy relationship with the artist. Others, like MOJO (disclaimer: I write for them sometimes), will actually run an interview with an artist side-by-side with a bad review. That’s kinda gutsy though artists know that a pub like that will come back for more coverage with them regardless so it serves them well in the end, even if it doesn’t in the short term.

How about less well-known entities and bad reviews? For anyone who gets records sent to them by labels or trowels through MySpace enough, one sad obvious fact is clear- there’s a lotta crappy music out there. There’s a lot of good music still out there but that’s another story. Anyway, as you go through these hopeful acts, you’ll be looking for good ones to spread the word about. But what about the bad ones? Should you spit on them and make fun of them? Any honest writer would tell you that they’re probably tempted to do that but what’s the point? Why would you elevate a really bad unknown act and tell the world how bad they are? It looks like you’re being mean and picking on them for no good reason. As a writer, what are you trying to achieve when you do that except to show what a goddamn jerk you are? That’s why most writers usually pass on this type of criticism.

Jason Gross

the google story

Been ploughing my way through David A Vise's book, The Google Story, the last couple of days. It's mostly hyperbolic drivel - certainly up to 2004 (which is where I'm currently at) - along the lines of, "Google guys good: anyone who disagrees with them, or stands in their way (however big, however small), bad"; with a chapter given over to the One Interesting Guy they could find who used to work at Google (the chef). This is weird, because you'd think - what with all the lawsuits and controversies surrounding Google in recent years, not least major privacy and control issues - you'd think someone somewhere would have a bad word to say.

I'm not particularly pro- and anti- Google, the same way I couldn't give a fuck about most corporations whose abiding interest in generating money. I appreciate many of their services (for example, this very blog tool I am now using), shied away from using Google Mail cos of all the ads. (Do they still have those?) Like anyone. But the smug, congatulatory tone of this book is rapidly turning me against them.

It's taken till page 239, at the end of the chapter discussing Google's digitalisation of the world's libraries, for any criticism of note to emerge. I particularly like these two quotes.

"Massive databases of digitalized books are 'expensive exercises in futility', [Michael Gorman, then president-elect of the American Library Association] wrote, 'based on the staggering notion that, for the first time in history, one form of communication [electronic] will supplant and obliterate all previous forms'."

Meanwhile, Jean-Noel Jeanneney, head of Bibliotheque Nationale, "wrote in Le Monde that the Google venture posed 'a risk of crushing domination by America in defining the idea that future generations have of the world... I don't want the French Revolution retold just by books chosen by the United States'."

Those damn French! Why do they insist on believing there's more than one way to view the world?

And not one word from the millions of creators whose livings were threatened by Google's latest venture... beyond to note that it would be good advertising for them.

hmm. interesting point

The following is lifted from the Sigur Ros message board in answer to my blog post here, and contains a couple of interesting insights: particularly the point about 'ownership'. I have no idea of the identity of the poster.

maaaa quote 3-7-2009 at 08:49

I've spent some time with Everett True in the past, including one day at his playing records in the indie 1980s. When he told me that he preferred The Razorcuts to The Byrds because he hated the canon of rock, I knew we could never really get along. For him, music is about ownership and building an identity (as it is for all of us, but most if us don't build such a public persona) - and so liking The Razorcuts, people he actually knew and could champion, helped make him central to the scene. The limits to ET's approach are summed up by his relationship to Nirvana, getting close to Kurt and the group in indie days, and retaining access during the period of mega success. This must have been a dream come true. But in terms of music, Smells Like teen Spirit, while a great record, has nothing to do with indie, with Beat Happening, K Records anymore. It's a straight great rock record, like More Than A feeling by Boston. Can you imagine ET admitting that More Than A Feeling was a great rock record? I'm sure he'd rather die. Which brings us to SR. Nothing he says here can take away the thought of the group playing ("new shit") Von to a hut full of family and friends in Heima. To me that is juat an inarguably honest, pure and musical performance. If it all ended tomorrow for SR, these people would all be making beautiful music somewhere or other, even if just for themselves. They're not a rock critic backed or created band particularly. They're a bunch of hillbillies who gave us a miracle and kept giving more. You get more sense out of 14 year olds posting comments on YouTube about Untitled 8 than Everett gives us here. He is good on 60s pop and girl groups though, and personally I owe him a debt for showing me how great the Supremes are.

the differences between a taste-maker critic and a critic

Polar Bear is Dying raises a very fair point in response to a previous post that cuts straight to the heart of my research. What is the difference between a taste-maker critic and a critic? Don't all critics influence taste in some way or other?

Um, you could certainly make an argument for that. But wait. Many critics don't look to influence taste. They see their role to inform, to provide a form of consumer guide: or to discuss and inspect without necessarily prejudicing the reader (this form of approach particularly favoured at more 'respectable' newspapers); or (lower down the food chain) to do whatever it takes to blag that free CD or pair of concert tickets. There are whole sections of the critical community that view 'personality' in a writer with distrust - "immature" is a word I've seen used several times in conjunction with the recent death of one of the NME's foremost taste-maker critics of the 80s and 90s, Steven Wells (and not particularly as a prejorative). Many (perhaps most) critics view their duty as to 'tell the story', describe the music - nothing more, nothing less.

I'm not saying that the latter can't be taste-makers. Of course, they can: especially when they have a certain consistency in their views which their audience learns to interact with. For example, David Fricke of Rolling Stone is a man who's never bothered pushing the 'personality' side of his writing, but clearly he's a taste-maker critic - many people, both within the industry and without, set great store by his recommendations.

Then again, there are many critics who would define themselves as taste-makers without any clear reason why. I'm particularly thinking of the sorry breed of writers that showed up at the UK music press mid-90s, having read nothing and experienced nothing except the UK music press itself (and perhaps a few years at university, which frankly amounts to bugger all). Were they taste-makers, simply because the intent was there? Or were they lacking the personality - so crucial to a persona like Steven Wells, or Nick Kent, or Everett True - without which, unless you're as trusty and consistent a source as Fricke, or Simon Reynolds (to give an even better example), you cannot fill that role?

(I'm not meaning to imply Reynolds' or Fricke's writing has no personality - clearly it does - just that that personality isn't central to their whole approach.)

Is it possible to be a taste-maker critic if no one is paying attention to your views? Now, that's another question entirely. To pull in a question I posed a few weeks back, is the critic defined by their audience? Because it sure as hell doesn't just lie in the intent. How can I be a taste-maker if I'm not influencing anyone?

So is there a ready checklist by which you can define a taste-maker critic? Of course not: like all definitions, it is mutable and flexible and determined by the medium it exists within. And yet I need to be able to state - as unambiguously as possible - what a taste-maker critic is, because without doing so, how can I define the changing role of the taste-maker critic in web 2.0 environments?

In the past few days, I've been engaging in a (one-sided) argument with the fine readers of Drowned In Sound over a particularly cantankerous blog post overview of dull-ass Icelandic band Sigur Ros. Most are down with the idea I should be free to write what I like, even if they disagree with the sentiments and feel the post is gratuitous and rather pointless. Interestingly, almost without exception, the entire (message board posting) readership of DiS seem - quite touchingly - affronted that I should be seeking to engage them in dialogue over my views, one staff writer even going as far to suggest, "I wish a little of the old True would come back instead of just trolling for hits".

It's almost like a entire generation of music fans have never engaged with a taste-maker critic - because this is what I've always done!

Oh, and here's a tentative checklist for a taste-maker definition... If I could be bothered, I'd draw some arrows linking and circling the following to indicate the relationships. Maybe one of my readers could oblige?

Taste

Opinion

Personality

Writing skills

Trust