"It wasn’t meant to end up like this" by Mogwai's Stuart Braithwaite

"isn’t it a little bit sad that with all the music now at our fingertips we still need someone else to tell us what to like?"

Even sadder is that many people don't even read the reviews, just check the score and in how many places the band names has already been seen..

Stuart, you are right - music is at my fingertips, its up past my elbows. Thanks to the internet I'm armpit deep in music in all its guises, the good, the bad and the down right ugly. all. day. long.

Taking to the internet and researching music, bands, blogs and other music related bullshit is like drinking from a fire hose. Given this abundant jetstream of bands, tunes and albums coming my way I readily and regulalry rely on sites like Pitchfork (a site Mogwai pointed me in the direction of following a favourable review for a Rock Action band ), DiS, Boomkat, Coke Machine Glow etc to save me time and get me to the good shit quicker. Should I even be ashamed to say that I'd use Metacritic as a yardstick when looking for an avenue to pursue? Since using the internet as my main resource for researching and aquiring music I've made significantly less wrong turns, as well as opened up avenues I'm certain I'd never have made browsing a copy of Select/Kerrang/NME and cycling down to the local record store to make my purchase. There will always be a place for well informed writers and their valued opinions regardless of the received media.

I missed the ultimate thrust of your article - you talk about listening to the good old days listening to the radio and reading the NME for your musical cues and yet appear to be belittling internet users for doing the same. I would be interested to read what your ultimate muscial utopia would be for musicians, journalists and listeners alike in a world dominated by the presence of the internet?

P.S. Mogwai rock

It’s just not right to say people need to be told what to like – is it? That might be true for whomever us “true music fans” perceive as the general record-buying public but these aren’t the people Stuart is getting at is it?

In the “good old days” (for context I'm 36 so in the "old" camp) you’d be told stuff by NME and MM etc but also pick up stuff from all sorts of other places; checking out albums with good-looking covers in your chosen section of your local record shop, flyers at gigs, buying stuff on spec because it was on sale in your local library (like in my case coincidentally Labraford; I didn’t like it), checking out other people's t shirts etc etc.

Now, even without any other sources, the fact that there are loads more digital equivalents of the old paper music press “telling” us what to like must of itself mean there’s less chance of herd mentality - or at least a lot more, smaller herds. On top of that, however, we also have loads more tangential sources of discovery; blogs, message boards, recommendations on emusic, even the genius bloody bar on itunes. Whereas before you might be limited to the recommendations of the music press, which itself was limited to its copy space, now you can easily find out about and sample bands you are “told” to like, but - if we do like them – loads of other bands who are similar, in a way not previously possible. Like, just say, by reading the various DiS specials on shoegaze, math rock etc etc…

So I don’t get where he’s going on this one. For what it’s worth, I thought the state of the music industry in the internet age was better summed here on Saturday here http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/jul/11/cornershop-interview

and I agree that there is a certain layer of blogs that do rely on PRs/management companies.

But there's also a ton out there who seem to take it upon themselves to 'dig out' the music, whether that's by spending too much time on MySpace or ploughing through demos or turning up early to see the support acts on a bill topped by an established favourite.

That's certainly how we find most of the music we post at NPIP.

is the best resource for new AND old music. I get all my recommendations from there, loads of user reviews on even the most obscure releases.

...but about how the message and the review is articulated

it's like listening to whitney houston sing about love and billie holiday....the message is still the same but one makes my heart swing and the other turns my soul to stone

so like....i dunno....when i read an article, i take more from the writing style and the way a view is expressed, rather than if the object is viewed positively or negatively. sort of...i dunno, i've been in the pub all afternoon.

the key is...the point of a review should be to make the reader view the object differently in light of reading the review....not dependant on good/bad...etc.......

lindsay anderson said it best

''one can imagine criticism so perceptive and illuminating that it can also illuminate for the artist, show him what he has been doing, and tell him truths about himself he did not see. but in practice one seems to know the faults and virtues of what one has done more clearly than the people who criticise it. perhaps this is because critics judge too much, and interpret too little. judgements, after all, are not very interesting. they usually tell us more about the judge than about the work. but a critic who can see something new and original (and maybe perplexing to most people as a result) and who has the intelligence and the culture to be able to interpret it, to reveal it's true value- this is as valuable as it is rare''

you might agree with that but it just seemed like you've put most of the emphasis of music criticism on making positive or negative judgements but it should be so much more than that

...so you mean that greater availability/accessability should give people freedom to seek out all sorts of sounds without being restricted by the positive/negative judgements arising from critical opinion...BUT.....instead of embracing this accessability and seeking out and exploring all wonder of musical possibilities, many still restrict their ears to what they've read about....and the reading material is of far lesser quality now, so you have the odd situation of more oppertunity but less investiagtion because of poorer writing.

if that's right and i haven't bastardised your argument...i definitly see your point....

i think, personally, my dominant view regarding the new oppertunities arising from greater music accessability (spotify, myspace et al.)....focuses more with the way we interact with the music once it's in our grasps. so like....i just don't think we give music enough time anymore. with greater and quicker and easier accessability, i'm not sure we are as willing to put the effort in with things that don't instantly click, which is a great shame as it's normally the things that take a bit of time that you love more in the long run.

this guy from animal collective sums this idea up

'I always think back to when I discovered Will Oldham's music... at first I bought the record because it was on Drag City and I was like, 'Well, I don't get this, is it country music or is it Americana music? It doesn't sound like Pavement, I don't get it'. Y'know, I was like 15 years old and if it had just been MP3s on my computer that I didn't buy or have a physical copy of I'd probably just have deleted it and never listened again. But because it stayed on my shelf I put in effort to get into it, I kept going back to it. And there's just one day, I don't know if it's because the weather is right or you're just in a different mood, but it suddenly clicks for you. Personally, I don't have that many experiences like that anymore because I've been taken in by the accessibility of music and I'm disappointed by what that's done'

anyway...i've waffled. interesting topic though. and cheers for the tip, that skip james book, looks good that.

maybe not enough been said on this bit...

...I had an unpleasant glimpse of the Big Beast running the show a few years ago. In the basement of a pub opposite that very same big building where the Guardian live (many of them KCL grads by the way; Oxford grads go to the Sun, where they can have more influence).

The basement. A little band of scatmunchers were playing trite piano-ballads. Towards the end, the pugly tosser singing announced "a song by someone you may not have heard of... Nick Drake". Cue cries of derision almost drowning out said tosser. How cocking dare you imply... etc.

That was January 200?; basement of the Betsy Trotwood. Never thought we'd hear from them again. In December 200?, Keane were topping the charts both sides of the Atlantic. How? What fiendish machinations got them where they were so quickly, against the glaring evidence of their musical and personal inadequacy? What armies of radio-pluggers and PRs, targeting the laziest, most taste-bereft journalists and schedulers?

On the other hand... I'd watched Mogwai becoming the most exciting band in the world through 96 - 98, getting all those singles-of-the-week; getting the support of John Peel; I'd ordered Ten Rapid from Chem U, who sent an apologetic letter when it was delayed; remember the day Young Team came out, and how it was the first 10/10 album I felt like I'd discovered for myself (as exciting as OK Computer, 6 months before). It all felt right; Mogwai deserved it... sometimes I just thought maybe we didn't.

So... yeah. There are countless bands you can watch finding their place in the world, and be pleased for them... and there are others you can see having the velvet ropes unhooked for them (Gentlemen, please, if you'd step this way... your coke and hookers are waiting for you...)

Of course people need a shove towards many of the bands they come to like or love... but when it comes to the music being marketed at the mediocracy, it can be frightening the scat they're fed.

Is wrong in my opinion. So many bands who I love now, I didn't "get" to start with, including Mogwai (who I adore now). I downloaded mp3's off the internet of these bands maybe 3 or 4 years ago when I was starting to become a music obsessive and deleated them straight away virtually. But after awhile I understood these bands and downloaded their mp3's or now listened to Spotify and then went and bought the albums. I think that if you like more "difficult" music, you will give something patience, whereas if you like pop music, you wont. I find it hard to believe that in the 80's and early 90's everyone was listening to stuff like Slint and everyone gave it the time of day even if they had bought the album.

As with any art form or communication, music journalism has to learn to evolve and I would say its doing better than people think in this process. Surely the need is to involve the readers directly, Dis do that, provide a wide range of bands and sounds, Dis do that.

The point about people relying on less reliable sources. This sounds snobbish, but, these people only listen to things because they are cool or fashionable. Isn't that the same as 20 years ago? Why would a computer suddenly make you ignore Robbie Williams and listen to Slint? Pop music will stay popular. Specialist music will stay specialist. You cant change that.

On an unrelated point. Wouldn't pitchfork be better if it had a forum and comments?

...you'd get comments like.

"scott plagenhoef u suck. this is one of the worst reviews ive ever read on this site. 2/10."

ABOUT A MILLION TIMES. It's frequent enough on this site, and obviously P4K have a few more users than we do. Though our users are generally a bit more literate than the example I attempted above.

... of course, in Pitchfork's case, their pedantic, holier-than-thou tone would be immeasurably improved by a bunch of assholes who think that cos they can type five words in a row into a comment box they've suddenly developed something interesting to say... it is a fundamental truth, however, that a sense of distance is almost inseparable to the illusion of 'authority', something Pitchfork's founders must have grasped instinctively.

To put my (probably unwanted!) two pennies worth in, I feel it's all down to a slide in quality music journalism. Anyone can now review stuff and stick it up in a blog, or on a website. Like music, 99 per cent of it is utter shite. Unlike music, that shite serves to dilute (and hide) any good music journalism.
I'm 28, and I used to love the days of buying a record unaware of what it sounded like, based on an NME review, a note in a record sleeve, or something similar. It was a big part of music, and I would also say it made a pretty insecure lonely teenager feel pretty happy- in the way that it rewarded me so hansomely for the fact that I put time into discovering stuff.
I think it's absolutely tragic if people like me don't experience music in this way.

I didn't realise p4k had boards. Fair enough then. A simple way to cut the wheat from the chaff in terms of comments would be to moderate them. Wouldn't be that hard, would it? It might not improve the quality of all their journalism but at least it would make it seem a bit more inclusive and welcoming. I get bored so quickly on P4K because it seems so austere and as if you have to be part of a cool clique to be in on their world.

To me, music journalism is meant to be like a few friends hanging out, swapping bands they've heard off. It isn't the same as plays, opera or whatever, it should be far more friendly. That may sound sappy but fuck you.

The primary usefulness of comments & boards on music websites is to gerrymander your hits / readership figures so you can sell yourself to Murdoch, isn't it?

think about how many shitty live youtube videos there are of a bands new song before they've put an official version up.

and now for a very very small price any bunch of idiots can record their music at good quality and upload it. that's why myspace is such a shit way of finding new music.

my gawd, I hope dullards like you are not the gatekeepers. Your boring writing makes me FEEL nothing.

THe problems is that there is so much music out there that its impossible to know where to start. Mags, websites, radio all have recommendations. I was listening to BBC6 last night and from hearing one track by each of them I then went to their myspace webpage. Easy and a good way of doing it. But at the same time there is too much music now ! TOO MUCH. Everytime I go on this website there are some new recommendations - some I like, some I think are crap - and I appreciate it BUT who we dont get a chance to love a new band now. It's onto the next and the next. The fuckin conveyor belt ! Listen on myspace and then maybe download the album. Maybe not. Whatever, I dont give it enough time to grow on me as Im already seeking out my next fix - wherever it comes from.

One thing that pisses me off about websites is that album reviews have to be so fuckin long. Why ? Jesus I get bored halfway as the writer tries coming at it from a different angle. YOU DONT NEED TO WRITE SO MUCH because IT GETS TEDIOUS and PUTS ME OFF THE RECORD which is surely not the idea. Everything in moderation please.

Basically - this is the way it is. Everyone's got an opinion. Everybody wants to be heard. Theres only so much our brains can take. We could stop reading amd looking but then we might miss out on a great record. Fuck imagine that. The thing is, it's already happened ! Of course. Logially if theres lots of music there then we will overlook it - so we miss the crap, the good and the great. We need a radar. Ears then. If you can find some great stuff then its purely by chance as other websites will recommend other bands from the rest. Its all luck.

yet I see the main counter-argument to some of the points made in this article is that given the vast amount of music available on-line, the music press (printed and web based) act as a form of quality control and somewhat point people in the right direction, highlighting some of the best unknown bands that would otherwise be lost in the maelstrom.

How about these for some negatives about the music press:

- Music journalists panning an artist for the sole purpose of trying to make a name for themselves.

- Music publications giving favourable reviews/review placement to artists that also pay for advertisements.