Showing posts with label music criticism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music criticism. Show all posts
Monday, September 6, 2010
Thursday, September 2, 2010
music critics
tug of the ET beard to Jim Smith on Facebook for helping me define my role...
I'm a music critic. My job is to report objectively on each band I see or album I review: how many songs / members / who plays what / audience reaction / sales performance and whatever else appears in the press release.
I'm a music critic. My job is to report objectively on each band I see or album I review: how many songs / members / who plays what / audience reaction / sales performance and whatever else appears in the press release.
Monday, August 23, 2010
a good music critic...
A good critic is authoritative; passionate; suprising; open minded; entertaining; interesting; well-informed; committed; original; free thinking; indepedent.
A bad critic is uncaring; uncommitted; predictable; ignorant; negative; a show off; too fashion conscious; unoriginal; clichéd; too susceptible to hype.
(Adjectives taken from an unpublished survey of record buyers' use of record reviews that I carried out in 2006.)
(Simon Frith, taken from The Cambridge Companion to Recorded Music, p. 280)
A bad critic is uncaring; uncommitted; predictable; ignorant; negative; a show off; too fashion conscious; unoriginal; clichéd; too susceptible to hype.
(Adjectives taken from an unpublished survey of record buyers' use of record reviews that I carried out in 2006.)
(Simon Frith, taken from The Cambridge Companion to Recorded Music, p. 280)
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
very fine article on why the 15-minute interview sucks
You can find it here. I hope Tom doesn't mind me reprinting much of it here - if you do, please let me know and I'll remove it immediately. I just think it's a very good point, well made.
The 15-minute phone interview is a staple of Australian music journalism. You get a quarter of an hour on the phone with a musician who’s doing press to promote a tour or a record, enough time to make slightly awkward small talk and ask a few questions about said tour or record and whatever other interesting things you can think up in order to make the experience somewhat more pleasurable for both parties.
As a promotional tool, it’s a winner – the artist can knock over most of the press they need to do in a couple of days, everyone can get their own interview to run with, you get enough quotes to fill our your half-page article, and everyone’s happy.
As a tool for actually learning anything about the artist and/or the art in question, however, it’s almost totally pointless. This does to an extent depend on the artist, but generally, how much can you learn about a person in the course of a 15-minute conversation? If you met someone in the supermarket queue and had a chat to them, you wouldn’t go off and write an article about them.
More fundamentally, the whole 15-minute phoner model represents something that I’ve come to dislike about the music press: music magazines these days are largely centred around getting to know the artists, rather than evaluating their work. Interviews occupy the bulk of editorial pages; reviews are pushed toward the back and generally given minimal word counts. They’re also where new writers are started off, before they can graduate onto the serious business of doing interviews.
Back in the day, when print media was profitable and magazines like Q and Select ran 10-page features, this wasn’t the case: they’d send journalists on tour with bands, or to spend a week with them in the studio, or whatever. But these days, it seems, no-one has the budget to do this any more, and record companies are disinclined to submit to such requests anyway. Thus, the phoner rules supreme.
But either way, the pre-eminence of the interview says something about us, I think: we want to know about the people who make our entertainment. You can see it in our obsession with celebrity – we want to uncover the person on the other side of the camera, to know everything detail of their lives, to prove to ourselves that they’re human like us, with all our foibles and failings. And we don’t trust our opinions. We want to know the full story. We want validation. Next time you go to the gallery, count how many people read the little plaque explaining a painting before they even look at the work.
We all do this to some extent – I know that certainly when I was younger, whenever I came to like someone’s music or writing, I wanted to go off and read up about them, to know everything. But really, art should stand on its own. It should speak for itself. You shouldn’t need to know everything about the artist. A good song, or a good painting, or a good book, speaks to you on its own. You can be struck by the visceral power of Francis Bacon’s images without knowing the first thing about him. A song like Famous Blue Raincoat is emotionally affecting and evocative, even if you don’t really know what it’s about.
This isn’t to say that all interviews are worthless. Musicians are often interesting people, with a lot to say on all sorts of subjects. As a result, some of my favourite interviews – both mine and others’ – have been about everything but the artist in question’s music. In some cases, knowing an artist’s backstory can also make their work more compelling – listening to Manic Street Preachers’ The Holy Bible in view of Richey Edwards’ disappearance, say, or reading Yukio Mishima’s Sea of Fertility tetralogy in the knowledge that he committed suicide the day he finished The Decay of the Angel. But both those works also stand on their own two feet even if you have no idea of the context.
In fairness, the advent of the music blog has begun to alter the critical landscape. The absolutely fucking awesome 20 Jazz Funk Greats, for instance, gives you pretty much zero information about the artists whose music it distributes. I’ve been enjoying listening to the music of these mysterious faceless artists and knowing nothing about them. It’s refreshing. The limitless space of the internet allows people to devote thousands of words to criticism and evaluation, allowing for really interesting discussions of music. But for now, the print media’s totem pole still places the artist well above the art.
(continues...)
Here's the comment I left.
Spot on, Tom. The 15-minute interview as described above is the main reason I've almost entirely stopped doing interviews since I've moved to Brisbane, and certainly is a contributory factor to the lack of dialogue in Australia's street press. They're a complete waste of everyone's time... except, one presumes, the record company's. Sigh. (So why don't magazine/website editors realise this, and refuse to commission articles based on same?)
P.S. As already hinted at in this article, if you do find yourself in the unfortunate position of having to conduct one of these, don't ever bother asking the musician in question about the tour/album/comeback etc. You can get way more information on these from just a cursory three-minute Google.
Good on you for writing this. I'd like to take issue with your contention that Q has ever run anything worth reading, however!
The 15-minute phone interview is a staple of Australian music journalism. You get a quarter of an hour on the phone with a musician who’s doing press to promote a tour or a record, enough time to make slightly awkward small talk and ask a few questions about said tour or record and whatever other interesting things you can think up in order to make the experience somewhat more pleasurable for both parties.
As a promotional tool, it’s a winner – the artist can knock over most of the press they need to do in a couple of days, everyone can get their own interview to run with, you get enough quotes to fill our your half-page article, and everyone’s happy.
As a tool for actually learning anything about the artist and/or the art in question, however, it’s almost totally pointless. This does to an extent depend on the artist, but generally, how much can you learn about a person in the course of a 15-minute conversation? If you met someone in the supermarket queue and had a chat to them, you wouldn’t go off and write an article about them.
More fundamentally, the whole 15-minute phoner model represents something that I’ve come to dislike about the music press: music magazines these days are largely centred around getting to know the artists, rather than evaluating their work. Interviews occupy the bulk of editorial pages; reviews are pushed toward the back and generally given minimal word counts. They’re also where new writers are started off, before they can graduate onto the serious business of doing interviews.
Back in the day, when print media was profitable and magazines like Q and Select ran 10-page features, this wasn’t the case: they’d send journalists on tour with bands, or to spend a week with them in the studio, or whatever. But these days, it seems, no-one has the budget to do this any more, and record companies are disinclined to submit to such requests anyway. Thus, the phoner rules supreme.
But either way, the pre-eminence of the interview says something about us, I think: we want to know about the people who make our entertainment. You can see it in our obsession with celebrity – we want to uncover the person on the other side of the camera, to know everything detail of their lives, to prove to ourselves that they’re human like us, with all our foibles and failings. And we don’t trust our opinions. We want to know the full story. We want validation. Next time you go to the gallery, count how many people read the little plaque explaining a painting before they even look at the work.
We all do this to some extent – I know that certainly when I was younger, whenever I came to like someone’s music or writing, I wanted to go off and read up about them, to know everything. But really, art should stand on its own. It should speak for itself. You shouldn’t need to know everything about the artist. A good song, or a good painting, or a good book, speaks to you on its own. You can be struck by the visceral power of Francis Bacon’s images without knowing the first thing about him. A song like Famous Blue Raincoat is emotionally affecting and evocative, even if you don’t really know what it’s about.
This isn’t to say that all interviews are worthless. Musicians are often interesting people, with a lot to say on all sorts of subjects. As a result, some of my favourite interviews – both mine and others’ – have been about everything but the artist in question’s music. In some cases, knowing an artist’s backstory can also make their work more compelling – listening to Manic Street Preachers’ The Holy Bible in view of Richey Edwards’ disappearance, say, or reading Yukio Mishima’s Sea of Fertility tetralogy in the knowledge that he committed suicide the day he finished The Decay of the Angel. But both those works also stand on their own two feet even if you have no idea of the context.
In fairness, the advent of the music blog has begun to alter the critical landscape. The absolutely fucking awesome 20 Jazz Funk Greats, for instance, gives you pretty much zero information about the artists whose music it distributes. I’ve been enjoying listening to the music of these mysterious faceless artists and knowing nothing about them. It’s refreshing. The limitless space of the internet allows people to devote thousands of words to criticism and evaluation, allowing for really interesting discussions of music. But for now, the print media’s totem pole still places the artist well above the art.
(continues...)
Here's the comment I left.
Spot on, Tom. The 15-minute interview as described above is the main reason I've almost entirely stopped doing interviews since I've moved to Brisbane, and certainly is a contributory factor to the lack of dialogue in Australia's street press. They're a complete waste of everyone's time... except, one presumes, the record company's. Sigh. (So why don't magazine/website editors realise this, and refuse to commission articles based on same?)
P.S. As already hinted at in this article, if you do find yourself in the unfortunate position of having to conduct one of these, don't ever bother asking the musician in question about the tour/album/comeback etc. You can get way more information on these from just a cursory three-minute Google.
Good on you for writing this. I'd like to take issue with your contention that Q has ever run anything worth reading, however!
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
the death (stifles yawn) of music criticism (stifles yawn) yet again
Wired trotting out the same old arguments again. What next? The imminent demise of sports journalism because we can view all the games we want? The end of film criticism because YouTube exists?
Taken from ANOTHER pro-iPAD article (man, these geeks are lovin' it, aren't they?)
Read More http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/05/feeling-overwhelmed-welcome-the-age-of-curation/#ixzz0oHmkC8zK
Taken from ANOTHER pro-iPAD article (man, these geeks are lovin' it, aren't they?)
2) Music curation vs. music criticism
In the old days all music fans actually had to pay for albums, which meant they had to be careful with their choices. They turned to people called “music critics,” which publications hired to help guide purchasing decisions, because there was no way to find out how something sounded on your own unless you stumbled across it on the radio or stood in line at record stores that allowed free previews on headphones.
Today, you can discover in seconds how nearly any band in the world sounds, assuming it wants to be heard, on YouTube, MySpace, Spotify, The Pirate Bay and other services. At that point, the role of the music critic shrinks considerably and becomes more about curation than criticism.
The fact that your favorite MP3 blog mentions something at all is more important than what they say about it, because you can then download or stream the song and decide for yourself.
Read More http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/05/feeling-overwhelmed-welcome-the-age-of-curation/#ixzz0oHmkC8zK
Monday, May 3, 2010
my response to a misguided response about SEO
His original response is here. I've reprinted it for the benefit of those who don't have subscriptions to Crikey.
Response to True: keeping up with the music masses
After reading Everett True’s piece in Crikey on Tuesday, I was struck by a great sense of irony — a proud music journalist bemoaning the demise of his career on the very medium he blamed for its downfall. But the greater irony lies in True’s criticism of what he calls Web 2.0 music journalism and its inability for original thought. And how does True demonstrate his point? By using someone else’s tired idea that music writing on the internet is popularised, recycled content. But the opposite is true... True confusingly belittles and borrows from Chris Weingarten. His hatred for web 2.0 music journalism, embodied by the website The Hype Machine, which True incorrectly labelled as search engine optimisation, is well known. But this is not the source of a homogenised music landscape, far from it. The Hype Machine is similar to Google. It searches from a group of selected sites and aggregates them. At your fingertips are a plethora of music sites that offer opinions in narrow fields of interest. But this is a good thing. Music writing on the web is home to niche experts. It’s here that genres have been reborn, careers launched, and trails blazed. All from an uploaded mp3, and few keystrokes from an unknown blogger. From obscure blogs about African cassette tapes that inspire bands such as Vampire Weekend, who go on to play to crowds of thousands — the amateur music journalist is wielding more influence than ever and the results are not always bad. The Hype Machine should be seen as a resource, a music hub that offers sounds that won’t be heard on the radio. The majority of what’s published often goes unnoticed by the mainstream. It’s the stuff the older music journalists haven’t heard of yet and some of them are angry someone on Blogspot is scooping them. True classifies this blogger as someone beneath him and it’s easy to see why he holds this sense of snobbery so tightly. His role is changing. Very few paid music journalist are on the forefront of music. The role of the paid music writer is now to look to the web for what is being written and to do so you must have some respect for the bloggers who work for nothing writing about music they love. Thanks to myriad music blogs, I can access South African dance music, traditional music from Malawi or hear the hits of Peruvian clubs. The home of niche music writing is on the web and its influence is still expanding. The web is on the forefront of musical exchange, whether it’s opinions or actual music, and it has left a lot of people struggling to catch up. I couldn’t think of a medium less in risk of homogeny. My response follows. Confusingly, he didn't even touch upon the second half of my original article, which built upon Weingarten's arguments to make another argument.. That’s lovely you can do all that. But you’re missing my point. 1) The vast majority of folk using The Hype Machine to access music or Google Search to access websites couldn’t give a rats’ arse about finding alternatives… and 2) all these alternatives exist in their tiny little ghettos. (We call them ‘blogs’ nowadays, but don’t be confused in the change in terminology, or the fact that you can now access one from anywhere in the world.) Most people use Google because they can’t be bothered to type in the full name of a website. And Google has even recently changed the way it operates searches for individual users so the most familiar sites always come up top - increasing choice? I think not. Most people on the Internet judge music by the rating given at the end of a review, and then go to their favourite meta-site where a whole bunch of those ratings have been aggregated. Is that increasing choice, or simply reducing everything to a lowest common denominator? You’re right about Chris Weingarten, though: I do find his manner distasteful and I do think he’s quite typical of the entire breed of Comic Book Guys who populate (and have always populated) music criticism. But I did like some of what he had to say, and he seems quite smart underneath all of that. Have you examined, for example, the fact that critics in the annual Village Voice ‘Pazz And Jop’ poll voted for pretty much the exact same records as critics in the annual Pitchfork poll this time round? Sure, they’re all Americans… but it’s still pretty spooky, don’t you think? And how do you reckon that happened? That’s right: the wonderful Internet, bringing everyone closer together. Personally, I love the way I can go seek out thousands of new blogs and writers on the Internet: especially as it means I don’t have to even go near the crap that passes for music criticism in the Australian street press in Melbourne these days. Personally, I love the fact I can find pretty much any music I can think of within seconds - and be turned onto hundreds of thousands more, simply idling away for a couple more seconds. I suspect that you’re just as guilty here as what you’re accusing me of: are you at all familiar with what I do? I don’t operate within print environments, or very rarely. I blog. I blog. And I blog about music I love. And that’s pretty much all I do. I guess to such a go-getting judgmental critic as yourself that might seem supremely unimportant, not when there are thousands of others like me out there that you can just dip in and out of whenever it takes your fancy. But it matters a fuck of a lot to me. P.S. Oh and I really don’t think citing the fact Vampire Weekend appropriate from other countries’ cultures is a particularly good example of the power of the music blogger. Not something to be proud of, at all. |
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
music journalism print vs web
Reprinted from Sean's totally excellent Tumblr blog without permission. (Um, Sean - please tell me if you mind and I'll take it down!)
Q&A RE: Music Journalism: Print vs the Web.
My answers to questions from Simon Warner from School of Music at Leeds University http://www.leeds.ac.uk/music/staff/srw/
1. What is the name of your website and what is your role?
DrownedinSound.com I’m the sites founder, editor, head of business development and VP of coffee-making. I also run and A&R Drowned in Sound Recordings.
2. What is the readership of your website?
The site teeters between 520k unique users on a busy month and 405k unique users in the quieter/shorter/more-bank-holiday-riddled months. We get an average of 27,600 visitors a day and have about 1500 die-hards who post on our boards on a daily basis.
3. Do you write online music journalism? If so, what and for whom?
I write every so often but most of my role is now in a more visionary and structural capacity. I contribute a lot more to the conversation on our forums than I do to saying why a record is only 6 out of 10. I tweet a lot/too much too and I also write a column for Sunday Times’ Culture section, as well as a monthly blog for Spotify. I don’t write many reviews as I’ve never really been a writer and I’m indifferent to most music, and prefer to focus on the stuff I passionately love and believe in. I do blog a fair bit tho http://seaninsound.tumblr.com andhttp://seaninsound.blogspot.com
4. Do you read online music journalism? If so, what?
I read heaps of stuff in print but I’m much more a nibbler when it comes to web content, trying to keep abreast of topics, trends and recommendations, rather than reading a great deal. This is partly due to written word fatigue from trying to keep up with a never-ending torrent of emails - I get around 1000 press releases a day about bands you’ll never hear about from one-man PR companies who have no idea who we are and make no attempt to build a personal relationship.
When I do read lengthier music things online it’s usually on the Guardian, WSJ, New Yorker, or industry-ish blogs like fingertipsmusic or hypebot. I sometimes read Hipster Runoff, MBVMusic, Stereogum etc but most blogs are just like radio djs, giving pithy intros, acting as filters, often reinforcing the buzz status quo. I kinda consume blogs, rather than read them, if that makes sense?
5. Do you write for a print music magazine? If so, what and for whom?
Yeah, Sunday Times’ Culture mag. Have also written bits for Bang magazine, a piece for NME and will be contributing to The Reverand’s Ark magazine.
6. Do you read print music journalism? If so, what?
I read loads. I probably buy about 10 broadsheets a month (Guardian, Times and FT Weekend) and at least 10 magazines. I love Wired, Huck, Esquire and Fast Company, which have a fair bit of music. Been really impressed by the relaunch of NME.
7. What impact has online music journalism had on print music journalism? Please comment on issues from sales to style and content. Have there been any benefits to the print sector?
Print has tried (and failed somewhat) to compete with the comprehensive nature of the web but seems, especially with Newsweek and relaunched NME, to be returning to the in depth analysis and lengthy, photo-fabulous features. I think the web has intensified people’s desire for both passionate and considered opinions from individuals and print has really realised this - Russell Brand’s football column is a great example of this.
The web has also shifted the tone of some publications, replacing formality with a more human and irreverent voice but few have really managed to reach the dizzying heights of Charlie Brooker or Chuck Klosterman. Obviously the idea of print breaking a story is well and truly over and any ‘exclusive’ is instantly replicated and reacted to in the web echo chamber. I’m stunned more newspapers haven’t gone weekly, leaving their core audience reading daily online but then I’m also surprised NME has turned into a free or pricier monthly publication - or even taken over daily sections with their ‘authority’ in places like Metro and Evening Standard. I think licensing and aggregation of specialist content will be a big thing in the year’s to come as publishers save money but want to maintain specialism. I still want to take DiS into print but it won’t happen in a hurry.
8. What advantage does online music journalism have over print music journalism? Is it merely that it is free? Are there any subscription sites in this sector that you are aware of? Are there other issues/attractions that might be driving readers away from magazines in print?
The web’s ability to throw in a video or something with a play button is, for most people, a billion times better than a verbose description involving seemingly irrelevant metaphors. There’s also the instant nature of the web and the ability to find and mine increasingly further down the niche of a genre, which for the truly dedicated music fan, who once relied on the limited selection in the media, is incredible. The fact it’s free and a few taps or clicks away is a factor and I can’t think of any website or music blog people would pay for as there are so many free alternatives (although obviously people would pay to access music via Spotify or Oink and there is scope for music specialists to charge for curation, to overcome choice paralysis but that’s a way off).
9. What disadvantages does online music journalism have over the print version?
My major bugbear with the web is the inability to really prioritise content in the same way you can with a cover artist or multiple page spread, although the number 1 slot in year-end lists is one of the few websites can do this. The web is now increasingly consumed via feeds and shared links, rather than people checking out even half of what is presented on a frontpage. People once checked out and debated the 1 new band a week (50 a year!) in the NME or the manifesto-like outpouring of their favourite journalist, now they check out the few bands a day that they’ve heard mentioned 3 or more times. The web is trying to adapt to this behaviour but print still has a massive advantage in terms of a visual ability to stick-their-neck’n’balls-on-the-line for an act they truly believe in, it’s just a shame there’s such a pack mentality and every mag is covering the same blog-approved, agreeable trite. The whole data-led nature of popular=best or falling in line behind the acts which have had the biggest record deals is something magazine editors really need to shy away from and become informed tastemakers again, rather than buzz-chasing, pr-informed pussies, constantly caught in the churnover of new-new-new and dismissing acts because they didn’t form 3 weeks ago and instantly get covered on Gorilla vs Bear. There’s a huge swathe of acts releasing third+ albums with no scope for media coverage, yet every magazine dedicates space to the flavour of the moment, often without seeing the band live or hearing a body of work - some acts are getting tonnes of coverage after sticking a demo online and then they have nowhere to get coverage when their album comes out 2years later. Quality not quantity, etc.
Plus print can suck you in based on imagery, whereas most of the web has a few characters of description to perk your curiosity. And then there’s the fact people are likely to read longer pieces in print, rather than just look at the scores (our reviews get 6 to 10 times more traffic than our interviews of the same acts).
10. To what extent does the industry – the labels, press and publicity officers, advertisers – respect or fail to respect online music journalism? Does the industry’s attitude matter?
Respect? Ha! If you’re Pitchfork or Guardian, you get all love in the form of genuinely special exclusives for acts people care about. The labels, especially indies or interesting acts on majors are constantly assisting this monopoly - Broken Bells for instance included the Pitchfork interview in their mailout, whereas we’ve done equally as much on the band, etc but we’re well aware we aren’t the dominate voice of indie-rock but then nor is Q which people quote on their advertising!? The rest of the time, artists break news or reveal videos on their own websites, meaning sites like ours are expected to aggregate it and constantly playing catch-up. We rarely have information or unique ‘assets’ to excite our readers or attract new users (which is especially frustrating when we give the smaller acts more love and rarely get the ‘pay off’ from labels biggest acts). Some labels still think a band playing a gig is a news story, rather than a glorified listing, yet a lot of sites will just republish every press release for the sake of google traffic.
There’s also STILL a sense that the web isn’t that important, with print getting promos sometimes months earlier than the web and much more than 15min interview slots (even if the publication has less than 5000 readers they still often get better treatment than sites like ours). We’re often asked not to run things until after magazines have gone to print or radio has aired them, working to the labels plans, rather than anything which might be in our interest. It’s rare we come top of people’s priorities which is fair enough based on our relative scale but long-term, damaging to the eco-system as a whole, shunning the hand that feeds into other areas of the machine… I hate being part of the machine but it’d be very short-sighted to do as we please.
Since writing for the Sunday Times (which is only a column every 3 weeks) I’ve noticed a huge difference and disparity in the calibre of things I can get access to and the sorts of things I get early enough to have a considered opinion on by the time they’re released or weeks after they leak. I mean, sometimes we get promos the day a record is released, yet printed press obviously don’t have internet connections or flog their promos to cd exchange, which is how a lot of stuff leaks. It’s very rare I get a personal email (rather than a blanket emailout) from most PR people/labels, least of all from anyone I’ve ever met who knows my taste. I get tonnes of emails about acts we would never cover. There are exceptions, obviously but of the 300+ pr companies/labels who email me each week, with an average of 3 staff at each company, I’ve met probably 30-40 of them IRL in the 10years I’ve been doing DiS. Each PR is usually working 5+ campaigns at any one time, yet it is rare to have much human, let alone personal interaction, especially considering artists/labels are paying these people £500+ per month. I just wish more labels came to us with interesting and unique ideas which are creative and reciprocally beneficial, rather than focussing on getting as much coverage as possible, irrespective of whether the sites or publications they choose have a relevant, passionate or large audience.
However, I repeat, there are some really great PR people but they account for about 5% of them.
11. To what extent do artists respect or fail to respect online music journalism? Do bands see equal value in web coverage as print coverage?
It varies but I think bands get it much more than labels a lot of the time, I guess partly because we’re more ‘fans’ than ‘cynical’ ‘clueless’ ‘journalists’ who turn up and ask faq’s which wikipedia could answer.
In fact, I got an email from one of The National this morning about checking out and considering some editorial for the support band at their shows next week, yet I’m not sure I can even get a ticket to the show.
12. Does online music journalism have a) more influence than print music journalism; b) less influence than print music journalism; c) an equal influence?
Equal. They compliment eachother. It really depends on the style and scale of the music. Obviously for a lot of acts who would once have sold 10k albums from curiosity purchases, they now sell considerably less but are heard by a helluva lot more people. Print still has more impact on mass media in this country but a lot of print is now powered by the opinions of the web.
13. Will the internet ever be able to create funded jobs and a recognisable career structure for music journalists? Can the web ever produce a viable economic model?
We’re a long way away from that. DiS struggles to pay 4 part-time salaries and the ad-funded model isn’t perfect (sponsorship, is a different matter). I think it would take all the major sites going behind a paywall to know if a paywall could work but then I think sites need to be able to create and curate content of real value and like I said, we rarely get the access to acts or support from labels to provide things of real value. Being associated as added value to a brand/product/services which values the ownership, even if its in a philanthropic kinda way or gives them integrity, like banks sponsoring art galleries, etc. This was sort of the idea with DiS’ short-lived deal with Bskyb/Sky.com/SkySongs.
14. Could you ever foresee a) the death of print music journalism or b) the use of paywalls in the online music journalism sector?
Print will be revered like vinyl at some point but I think e-readers/iPads will really help change things. Paywalls are possible but the required huge investment in quality content and services makes it an impossible catch-22. If people aren’t paying for music, they’re not going to pay for words about music in a hurry.
15. Do you have any other thoughts that have not been raised by the questions posed?
I think I’ve covered everything.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
critic or journalist?
A reader writes...
Hey, Jerry
This is too long for Twitter, but a month later your little rantlet is still bugging me.
Think about it: what is your job? Truth be told, very few people genuinely give a crap whether you like a song or not. I mean, your best friends might, but almost everyone reading anything you like only cares about whether they are going to like it or not. Your job is to describe it well enough for them to consider whether they might like it. If you say you like it and they like most of what you like, then that makes it easier - just giving a description with no measure of endorsement doesn't really help. The question we ask our friends of anything they've experienced is normally "is it any good?" That's all: describe; recommend.
To do either, you have to be using the most appropriate words that you can find - not the cleverest or longest words, but the words that best fit. Is "music critic" a good fit for what you do? Yes, so long as you're just criticising music. It doesn't work very well if you're interviewing bands, unless you're impersonating Simon Cowell as you ask the questions. If you're a freelancer who also picks up a few spare pennies to write advertorials and press releases, it's not an appropriate description at all.
So what to call you, then? Music writer? Probably the safest term, but unless you're a book author then "writer" sounds insufferably pretentious. Wordsmith? Scribe? Hack? Pen-botherer?
Journalist.
The word to me conjures "diarist", which is probably the way I see what you do. You record your experiences. It's a pretty broad term that can cover things like interviews or even the reportage side of things like those endless features on "is this the end for copyright?" - or "is this the end for freelancers?"
There's a bit in Third Rock from the Sun where trashy Viki is in labour and says to Dr Mary Albright, "You're a doctor, ain't you?" and begs her to deliver the baby. The canned laughter confirms it - no sane, intelligent person would confuse an anthropology professor with a doctor of medicine. I think you're reasonably safe that nobody will dispatch you to a war zone any time soon.
Besides, what do we call all the other scribblers? What do we do with Charlie Brooker, for a start? (I suppose that largely depends on your opinion of Charlie Brooker), but he's not solely a critic. Perhaps he's a columnist, except for when he's writing creatively? Wikipedia calls him a journalist, because it's a simple easy-to-grasp term that everybody understands.
You could call yourself an opinionist, but then you'd just sound like a wanker.
Hope all is well in kangaroo-land
Jo x
Hey, Jerry
This is too long for Twitter, but a month later your little rantlet is still bugging me.
Think about it: what is your job? Truth be told, very few people genuinely give a crap whether you like a song or not. I mean, your best friends might, but almost everyone reading anything you like only cares about whether they are going to like it or not. Your job is to describe it well enough for them to consider whether they might like it. If you say you like it and they like most of what you like, then that makes it easier - just giving a description with no measure of endorsement doesn't really help. The question we ask our friends of anything they've experienced is normally "is it any good?" That's all: describe; recommend.
To do either, you have to be using the most appropriate words that you can find - not the cleverest or longest words, but the words that best fit. Is "music critic" a good fit for what you do? Yes, so long as you're just criticising music. It doesn't work very well if you're interviewing bands, unless you're impersonating Simon Cowell as you ask the questions. If you're a freelancer who also picks up a few spare pennies to write advertorials and press releases, it's not an appropriate description at all.
So what to call you, then? Music writer? Probably the safest term, but unless you're a book author then "writer" sounds insufferably pretentious. Wordsmith? Scribe? Hack? Pen-botherer?
Journalist.
The word to me conjures "diarist", which is probably the way I see what you do. You record your experiences. It's a pretty broad term that can cover things like interviews or even the reportage side of things like those endless features on "is this the end for copyright?" - or "is this the end for freelancers?"
There's a bit in Third Rock from the Sun where trashy Viki is in labour and says to Dr Mary Albright, "You're a doctor, ain't you?" and begs her to deliver the baby. The canned laughter confirms it - no sane, intelligent person would confuse an anthropology professor with a doctor of medicine. I think you're reasonably safe that nobody will dispatch you to a war zone any time soon.
Besides, what do we call all the other scribblers? What do we do with Charlie Brooker, for a start? (I suppose that largely depends on your opinion of Charlie Brooker), but he's not solely a critic. Perhaps he's a columnist, except for when he's writing creatively? Wikipedia calls him a journalist, because it's a simple easy-to-grasp term that everybody understands.
You could call yourself an opinionist, but then you'd just sound like a wanker.
Hope all is well in kangaroo-land
Jo x
Friday, April 16, 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)