I thought I would bring these articles to your attention for discussion:

Music Journalism R.I.P? - An Introduction / In Depth // Drowned In Sound

John Harris asks whether the best writing about pop music hails from a different era | Music | The Guardian

Some very interesting points made here I think - slightly worrying too. It seems the availability of free music on the internet has a more far reaching affect than was perhaps first thought.

Thoughts?

Leave a Comment | Kudos

[Heron]

An artist's point of view here:

"It wasn’t meant to end up like this" by Mogwai's Stuart Braithwaite / In Depth // Drowned In Sound

And a reviewer's guide here:

The Neil Kulkarni guide to being a record-reviewer / In Depth // Drowned In Sound

[Floris Stoter]

I did read the Guardian article a week or two weeks ago. It´s not so much that music journalism is dying or that there aren´t any outstanding journalists anymore; it´s just that you have to find interesting people to make an interesting story. Boring people don´t make headlines.

9 out of 10 of the mainstream rock scene bands are just repeating each other, saying ´they sound like crap, we are the best´, ´they are not original, we are´. And in the end all those guys who claim to be different, are in fact the same.

There´s just no personality. Morrissey is a personality, Phil Spector is, James Brown was, Jim Morrison was. During interviews they could take you to places you didn´t expect, and from that point on, you as a journalist can take another step as well. Unless you work for the Sun you can´t make something out of nothing.

Most of the good, serious musicians of nowadays are those from the true indie scene, they call everything outside madonna indie now, but I´m thinking about Tom McRae, Magnetic Fields, things like that. And they don´t make or break because of interviews, but because of gigs and albums. Even without internet, any good musician should be able to keep his head above the water in the end as long as he is dedicated and play a lot of gigs. Internet is just an extra medium, not a make or break deal, and not a substitute to newspapers. There are millions of bands now, but there were also a million bands in the fifties and the sixties; basically everyone back then was a musician because there was nothing else to do. You just have to pick up the right bands. Same with magazines and internet: some people prefer magazines, others internet. Only thing is there is more choice now.

And that´s also a bit of the problem with the Guardian article: that guy just prefers a certain writing style, a certain approach or just less choice, so life would be easier to supervise. And how many names does he come up with? Sure there must have been hundreds or thousands over the years. And he end up with two names, Lester Bangs and Nick Kent. That he liked those writers doesn´t mean all the writers were personalities, or brilliant or whatever you think about them.

Check the interview compilation book Dylan on Dylan and you find out how many journalist really were good in what they did. 8 out of 10 kept asking the same questions to Dylan, asked question he answered many times before or just obviously weren´t in the same place.

Music journalism has always been diverse, many good writers, many bad writers. And music journalism was everything and nothing in one, and still is. If you´ve got personality and the musician you´re interviewing has got personality, you end up with a great interview. And writing style is just a matter of preferences (see also the Oband argument). And media is just a matter of choices.

I rest my case.

[altsounds]

The problem is there is no A&R anymore. That's what that job is, filtering the shit so only the truest talent comes through. These days the internet has spawned the loss of control of A&R so we are all put in touch with A LOT more shit than 50 even ten years ago.

Watch the tab on the side "The Label" this is gonna address a lot of what we're talking about here. Sounds like you might be a man to get involved editing over there too. We'll see what happens though.

[Heron]

The full list of articles is here:

Drowned In Sound

They may be a 'rival', but I am honest enough to admit I am really enjoying this series of articles and the subsequent comments they are inspiring below them.

[Heron]

I think the obvious problem is that the internet based music journalism is free. So whilst music journalism may not be dying, music magazines certainly are. The problem then becomes that with less journalists being paid to do what they do full time, the quality will drop - not because they are only motivated by money, but because they have less time to produce their work, and often what they do produce is after working 9-5 in a soul-sapping office job (or whatever).

There is no reason why it should work any differently than it does with musicians - if you can give up the day job (or at least go part-time), then you are likely to produce better work.

[Heron]

Originally Posted by altsounds

Watch the tab on the side "The Label" this is gonna address a lot of what we're talking about here. Sounds like you might be a man to get involved editing over there too. We'll see what happens though.

Hmmm - interested to know what you mean here.

[Floris Stoter]

I think it's unfair to say that because someone does what he wants to do without getting paid the quality of his work drops. Music journalism as a day job might be 'just' a day job for some people as well, while music journalism as a hobby is something someone really wants to do - he doesn't even need to get paid for it, he does it because he likes to do it.

I stick with my previous point; internet only means more, or too much, choice for readers and musicians. But it neither means that out of internet music journalism no brilliant writing talent might appear nor that the quality drops. Of course, with more writers out there, there's more chance of having bad writers publishing their shit, but it's not like every music magazine or newspaper is completely perfect. The music reviews in Dutch newspapers (I don't have the right to judge the English ones yet) are complete shit most of the time; three sentences, every possible cliche and an opinion; basically everything that is wrong with a review: too short, too standard and a meaningless opinion nobody ever cares about.

Music journalism never dies. Like good music, you just have to look out for it. There are almost as much bands as living people on earth, and as I said before, 9 out of 10 mainstream bands are shit as well. How can you expect people writing brilliant pieces about shitty bands?

[Heron]

Originally Posted by Floris Stoter

I think it's unfair to say that because someone does what he wants to do without getting paid the quality of his work drops. Music journalism as a day job might be 'just' a day job for some people as well, while music journalism as a hobby is something someone really wants to do - he doesn't even need to get paid for it, he does it because he likes to do it.

It's not unfair - it's just often true. Don't forget I did type likely in italics.

The majority of the most interesting music reviews I read are at the sites that are in a position to actually employ themselves and/or pay freelance writers. You may feel the opposite, but I would simply say that the majority of people who are commenting on those articles I have posted links to, agree with me.

And just because someone doing this for free may prove they love what they do, doesn't mean they love it any more than those who get paid, nor that they are any good at it. Passion for music is not enough - passion for language is equally as important (not to mention a flair for it).

Here's as honest an example as I can offer. This site gives a voice to many more people than Pitchfork, but that site gives a voice to many of world's BEST music writers because they can pay them. In terms of quality of the writing - how could a site such as this be expected to compete at this stage? If you have an answer to this other than "they can't" then please email it to one, in fact ALL of us editors please.

[Floris Stoter]

I don't say the site you like isn't any good, I just say that getting paid for writing a review doesn't necessarily mean that you're good at it. I used to read a lot of them. And I read all of them in professional magazines and newspapers. And, the occasional Mojo or Q excluded, I don't read any review anymore. Because I found most of them crap, uninspirational and opinion based.

and you shouldn't get upset, there's no reason for it. I seldom like reviews, I used to read it all, it bored the hell out of me, and now I am very picky. And more interested in background, personalities and interviews anyway.

I don't have an opinion about your site, I like altsounds because of the way it looks and reads and because you get at least more than three sentences per review. I don't know whether or not we can compete, who cares about competition? Music journalism is about informing people about bands, surprising readers with in depth interviews or funny features like Q usually does, and it's about sharing the good and the bad.

That's what the discussion was about, whether or not music journalism is dying. I don't think so. I believe there are many good writers and many bad writers. And internet gave the bad writers the chance they didn't get at real magazines. But that still doesn't mean that paid writers are automatically good writers.