Yeah I’m sure we share plenty! I did analytic philosophy at uni so I didn’t really learn abt Hegel or Marxism or any cultural theory. So on a lot of this I’m blagging I & I’ll be participating more as a curious amateur tbh! Finding the discussion interesting.
State of the music criticism?
DJSalinger
#58
All good stuff @zurkonic would be good to share findings at some point. Despite my reading being more of the historical UK kind (albeit with heavy external influencing) it’s vital to use the past to critically examine the present (and see a future).
Reading these comments makes me also feel that class and its attendant antagonisms are important. A majority of the writers in the UK from the late 70s were autodidacts from working class backgrounds, they added an angrier, more individually stylistic approach to the ‘educated posh fraternity’ (women being on the margins too).
I suppose what I’m stretching to articulate is that these factors, allied to societal tensions and exciting, ‘new’ music, all created new forms of criticism, positive and negative, dry, witty and antagonistic, at odds with the corporate diktats, creating forms that still pervade today. hence the feeling that today’s criticism is PR rehashed puff piece prose. ‘Advocacy’ is a great choice of word.
The marking/grading system for me negates ‘reading’ and encourages surface reading that ends up with surface listening, the writing should enchant and seduce. The grading is a primitive algorithm, consumptive classifications for the supermarket sweepers wanting the new Adele release. Oh, and then there’s streaming …
Re: your television comment, do you think/fear that maybe music has no boundaries to cross, no edges to fray, no borders to surmount anymore?
Maybe Garry Bushell was right, music has just become light entertainment, everything becomes so-opted almost as soon as it appears.
Anyhow, that’s my tuppence worth, for now.
Interesting chat thus, nice one
repentxnce
#59
The theoretical stuff is really interesting but going a liiiiiiiittle over my head. There have been some really interesting posts in this thread so far. I can’t even remember if it’s in this thread anymore, but the post about how Facebook/Twitter etc are controlling algorithms to control what we see effectively was particularly good and relevant. Mostly because my original thought was that the internet has lowered the barrier to entry for creatives, but also for critics. Just like it’s easier to get your work out there, everyone is a critic now too. I think that’s why we see a wealth of positive reviews, because someone out there is going to either like your project, or want to like it.
With that said, the barrier for entry is lower, but it’s also harder to get noticed now I think, unless you get picked up by the right people/company/online outlet. There’s probably swathes of music that I would like, that just isn’t hitting my ears, because what I listen to is mostly governed by the sites I check regularly, and my social media feeds/friendship circles. I’m sure that’s true for most of us here. I’m proficient at doing my own research on industrial techno because I like enough artists associated with that scene to find stuff that isn’t picked up by RA etc. For anything else (even genres I enjoy/would consider myself a fan of (electronically speaking)) I am pretty reliant on RA or someone picking it up and pushing it. For example, I’ve been checking out and loving Eris Drew’s mixes, but I never would have come across her if her mix didn’t make it into the monthly roundups by both RA, Fact and possibly even Pitchfork.
Basically agreed that music criticism is now mostly a form of promotion. I don’t know how we scale it back a bit. I think honest critique of art is good and should be encouraged. Another poster here said that anything mildly negative will get downvoted on RA/Reddit. This is definitely a problem. The comments on Reddit are useless for telling you whether a release is worth checking out or not because the initial reaction is almost universally positive, unless it’s an artist that particular community hates, in which case the opposite is true.
I think part of why this is a difficult problem to fix/discuss is that it’s hard to tell what is an honest difference of opinion, and what is a positive review, pandering for the sake of it. A recent example would be the new Jon Hopkins. As a big fan of his, I found the new album to be a huge disappointment and very bland. The comments online seemed to share my opinion, but all the reviews I have seen are pretty positive to very positive.
Maybe forums like this, where the focus is more on a topic of discussion rather than upvotes and downvotes will help bring discussion around albums back a bit. Anyone knows that trying to follow a genuine conversation on Reddit is a nightmare.
Just in keeping with the format of the rest of the posts in this thread: sorry for the ramble and I hope there are some good points in there. Have been really enjoying this forum so far, this thread and the discussion about deconstructed club have been particularly interesting to follow.
ETC
#60
yes, it’s an interesting thread but potentially veering off topic somewhat.
I liked @parrishcouncil’s question to start putting some ideas out there of possible action. We can all see that one artist starting a forum can make a big difference already.
I think, just to look at these structural devices for communication that we all use, may have effects upon the entire community. Looking at which conditions over the years led to better results, and learning from it. Personally, I think there was something about Myspace that held a lot of strengths. There was something about its ability to communicate something particular about its users. You could click on a page and instantly know if it was something worth checking, or just another dud. If it was worth checking and you liked the music, there was a Top Friends feed where you could find recommendations of their favourite artists, user comments allowed you to connect with potential audiences.
I’m not saying it was perfect or ideal, but if we look today at SoundCloud, Bandcamp, Facebook, Spotify, what we see is a kind of ultra-cookie-cutter profile with no worthwhile networking capabilities. Everyone looks the same, and there’s no way of really cutting through the shit. This is something you see hinted at by journos all the time: “there’s so much stuff out there, it’s just so hard to find the good stuff” etc.
{EDIT: what you started to see was artists using Tumblr or some external source to ‘express’ what their project was all about. Listeners having to literally click off-site to get some clues as to what they were listening/looking at.}
At the same time, a music critic, or a music fan, have very little space for interaction or self-promotion either. There was a time when BBC DJs and such were using SoundCloud and Myspace to find and network with artists, to a degree I don’t think is possible in the slightest sense today (if you have 3.5m followers). It’s almost as if the democratisation of culture has made it impossible for anyone to find anyone, and the only people able to cut through the cheese is Warner Bros and Sony, or a major Media brand. The demise of Blogspot as an serious outlet and the rise of Instagram or Twitter as basically contentless time-killers feels very relevant to this moment too.
I do really want to stress I’m not a ‘golden era of the internet’ believer, no such thing, there are uses for the tools out there today, but there are also instances where certain parameters worked better for what we aim to do, and the only thing stopping it happening is the phony belief that ‘the market will self regulate’… ‘if we need it, some genius will make it’… maybe it’s the time to invoke Eno’s Scenius, or maybe that’s just a cheesy way to end this post.
S.A
#61
HI wonder if forming subscription co-ops might help small (web) publications recover a financial backing. Few people will get one-by-one subscriptions for every publication they read, but maybe it would work to have one subscription for access to a sufficient number of them. There’d be a lot of kinks to figure out (how to share revenue constructively, how to choose member publications, rivalries…) No idea if it would work, but it’s something to consider.
zurkonic
#62
Hey! So in the Hardcore Continuum thread, I’m trying to slowly and lucidly (ha) explain some of the theoretical backstories that I believe explain both what it is and the different arguments about it.
I know the last thing anyone wants to do is consider what role intellectual history plays in all of this but personally, that’s what I’m seeing…still fleshing out the ideas over in that thread. But I’m writing it for people who understandably find it going over their heads cuz ultimately, I think it’s all understandable if presented correctly.
ETC
#63
ahh, good idea. also having some kind of inbuilt platform to share and comment. I was just thinking yesterday how publications eliminating comments sections may have accidentally moved conversations elsewhere, or nowhere. The ability for people to interact with things being said, and for pubs to have instant feedback. It got all out of hand with users’ negative comments a few years ago and most pubs couldn’t moderate their comment sections any more, but maybe if tied in to a single platform of sharing / subscription, it could get interesting.
zurkonic
#64
Great analysis and picking up of @parrishcouncil’s challenge to posit some actual ideas and strategies.
I still have yet to start the thread, but having first come of age in my early 20s during the mp3 and music blog days–and experiencing how something you could spend less than two hours a week on could have the kind of impact that’s almost embarrassing compared to the traffic numbers for my own site (tho NOT COMPLAINING cuz it’s the people who should find it are and that’s why it exists). I remember there being a debate on Twitter a while back amongst some friends talking about the state of criticism and Pete Swanson cited my site as an example of a strategy to reclaim music writing by music fans (leading to a typical Mat Dreyhurst rant…not talking smack, he’s been super supportive of my work but he’s also someone I need to meet in person again to communicate the area I strongly disagree with him about…but again, he’s fucking PASSIONATE and if I’ve learned anything, that’s the rarest thing of all today: sincere passion.
But of course, I freelance and do a minimal amount at the moment so I can focus on my writing projects…it sucks being poor but also is wonderful to sense that I’m slowly starting to write and say thingshow I actually want to…nonryhrlrd, I think to the period from 2006-2011 and just feel a rare pang of nostalgia as there were so many good music blogs and many of ther authos are still firends today. And to come back to this forum the ability for a group of people to self-select and join a forum like this could prove explosive
zurkonic
#65
…sorry, browser froze.
…explosive velocity towards having an actual affect on corprate music criticism. Dog knows I’m seeing far more incisive and informd analysis here than I have anywhere else of late (with the exception of a Wire article every now and then…miss the glory days of the 00s for that pub).
Negative comments…so frustrating because I hate that site disable comments tho I also don’t know what else they’re supposed to do.
criminiminal
#67
hey @nickecks thank you so much for posting this…adds a whole new dimension to this conversation, especially with regard to the noticeable rise in positive sentiment among the few working, credible journalists left. the pressure on writers to push an agreeable tone over a critical tone isn’t just shallow jockeying for VIP credentials or shrinking column space, it’s a result of how insidious “algorithmic culture” has actually become and how “rewarding familiarity” is really just another way of “punishing adventurousness”. as the editorial algorithm iterates over time, so do the types of music its critical feedback ultimately influences and informs…and with each cycle, quality erodes imperceptibly on both sides.
whoa.
nickecks
#68
give it 5 years, we’re already seeing a social media backlash…algorithmic allergy is just around the corner
nickecks
#69
a big question that arises for me is how do we break our algorithmically defined lanes and find music that challenges assumed conventions of what we’ve been fed?
labels like trillogy tapes and reliable aggregators for me, stuff that people on this forum plug and keep going back to over time…also these end of year lists and avalon emmerson’s bandcamp program are helping lots…
…not to mention good old lineups and programming by bookers…
EMReviews
#70
Hey folks, I’m in the electronic music niche and I know how hard it always was to get to the surface with a new release, to get noticed properly, to get even critics or to be reviewed. That’s why some friends and I recently launched a review channel on Youtube to help other EM producers to make themselves heard (EM, not EDM). So, social media is still a tool and always will be. Let’s see where we are in 10 years. I bet on that social medias will have even more impact than nowadays. I’m optimistic…
DeFi_Kid
#71
Writers are industry gate-keepers now. The ONLY solution is to completely dismantle the old guard. Anything less is cope
DeFi_Kid
#73
NFT independent non Badcamp labels writers write based on their actual content on blogs like Coil, Medium etc etc RA goes bankrupt Warp forced to release real music again no PAN etc etc
nickecks
#74
Agreed. I’m loving Substack as an emerging platform, I think Medium will ride to the top but I’m weary since it’s owned by guy who started Twitter so who knows where “disruption” will take us…but yeah it’s about independent writing and criticism.
Algorithms also shape a certain type of article so even Medium is prioritizing feeding what feeds their algo ( and their business that it’s built around) best.
How do we feel about anonymous criticism? Is it useful?
What about giving releases grades and scores? I like AllMusic because it seems to be one of the last places I can dig up a relatable writer giving me his or her take in words and in x/x stars. To me that helps, if only to know how that person rates it in their collection. Moreso for older releases, but it’s good to have something to align my musical navigation with.
functiondownload
#76
i agree with this. in essence, they are just revamps of european american values