Music criticism in Web 2.0
Words: Laura Nineham
The Internet has become so cheap and accessible that anyone can publish their opinions and call themselves a critic – all you need is a laptop and a WordPress account.
While some blogs offer an alternative insight into the world of music, thousands upon thousands read like the ill-informed rants of people who are so unfamiliar with the music they’re judging it’s like asking your Nan what she thinks about Rage Against the Machine.
That’s the beauty and the curse of the Internet – uncensored, self-publication.
The Internet can bypass the filters that are instilled in traditional media, whether that’s being forced to tone down a negative review because you need to keep the PR guys sweet or write carefully for fear of losing advertising.
It raises questions about who can be labelled a critic and whose opinions are credible. Is the guy with the pay cheque and logo behind him more credible than the kid typing up his bedroom blog?
One of the main issues with music criticism and the Internet lies in the fact that anyone can post a review online and call themselves a critic. If they could honestly label themselves that way, where is the art in being a critic? If anyone can write a review, what justifies the column inches and salaries earned by critics?
It’s like letting a karaoke singer headline your local venue – they’re actually quite good when compared to the 10 other tone-deaf locals who’ve got on stage to howl through a song, but they’re no Beyonce. They’ve never practised their singing much, they have no technical ability and they haven’t found their own sound.
This is a problem mirrored in reviews published in the local press. If you pick up any local paper and flick to the reviews section you can read half-a-dozen poorly written accounts of gigs that the editor’s mates have bashed out in order to justify free tickets to Girls Aloud. The web is like looking at those two pages of text, except some idiot has photocopied them and wall papered your house with it.
Before the explosion of the web into our homes, hearts and mobiles, you could invest your hard earned pocket money in a magazine that featured critics whose opinions you respect. A few of my favourite albums are those I’ve gone out to buy on the back of a well-crafted review.
Now there is so much free music online that it questions whether we need critics any more. Last.fm’s radio player will lead you to similar artists that it thinks you will like. If you look at a band’s top friends list on MySpace you are more than likely to stumble across more music you’ll become a fan of. Add Spotify to the mix, and most importantly your ability to create and share play lists with friends, and it seems like social networking is the only filter needed when looking for new music.
It is for these reasons that I think music critics are more important than ever. We can bypass the critics if we want to aimlessly wade our way through the sewage that seeps across the Internet as we search for our next fix of new music. Or we can seek out those we trust to guide us, like a musical Sat Nav, straight to the good stuff.
Critics in the age of Web 2.0 do the hard work for us. They sift through an incredible amount of music so we don’t have to, letting us know which artists to avoid like Swine Flu and which albums are worth treating ourselves to. You can rest assured that when a musician armed with a bedroom studio and MySpace account makes something worthy of your attention they will be shouting about it so loud you’ll hear them down your fibre optic cables.
I'm one of those people
that has a Wordpress account and writes about music. I don't consider myself a critic, and certainly have no pretensions as to how meaningless my opinion is to anyone other than me.
I still don't understand however, what the problem is with people having somewhere to offer their opinions? I've stumbled across blogs which have been a damn sight more entertaining than a lot of stuff I read in magazines, and I certainly think that (save for personal vendettas) the blogosphere is capable of offering a much more balanced and fair perspective of the music, considering it isn't under as much pressure from PR companies and advertisers. After all, what good is a critic if they can't write what they feel (I know it's the wrong format, but the Gamespot/Eidos scandal a while back justifies that question)?
At the end of the day, I write about music and artists that I've come across in various ways, and I write about them to inform others. People might not (well, won't) care what I have to say, but as long as I have the chance to say it I'm happy. If someone then goes on to enjoy the music I've written about, then that's just a fantastic bonus.
I agree with the argument in this article.
I simply do not have the time to separate the wheat from the chaff so the critics perform a valuable function for music lovers in my humble opinion.
I agree with the argument in this article
I simply do not have the time to sift through the wheat and the chaff, so in my humble opinion professional music critics do a valuable job for music lovers.
Always_Right has a very fair point
One of the actual reasons why I started up Careless Talk Costs Lives in 2001 was because I was fed up with being asked to review the same six CDs, week in week out, by an array of dot.com websites. I would offer them a choice from up to 50 and without exception they would always plump for the same music as one another.
With all those music blogs, we don't need critics to tell us what music to listen to
we need them to tell us what music blogs to read.
primus inter pares
Laura you're absolutely right we need or rather we deserve that musical sat nav more than ever. Yet I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss all these "amateur" writers out there. Each opinion is valid. Even if it's the most uninformed, illiterate fluff ever, as long as its got integrity it's got its place online. Take Last.fm for instance, millions of music fans can post their reviews of gigs, discuss albums on forums or post their top new underground discoveries in their journals - who better to trust than your musical mate, who as a true fan might well be the best informed - though not always the most literate - person on the planet.
question.
isn't the point of criticism, music or otherwise, to champion the good, destroy the bad, pop the hyperbole bubble, pull back the curtain and challenge listener and artists perceptions when necessary? I'm not sure if there are really enough bloggers stepping into this role.
this RIP music journalism week is irritating the fuck out of me personally
if writing about music is dancing about architecture, then what does that make writing about writing about music?
Read a mag anyday
I grew up reading Meloday Maker (not NME !) and really appreciated the insightful language that often filled the pages. Writers like Simon Reynolds. David Stubbs, Chris Roberts, - really, really good - economical but coney their views and the music so well. Allan Jones too. Reading about music on the web just isnt the same - there's no quality control. I want something different and often people are trying too hard to write in a "new" way to get your attention. MM had loads of different writers with different styles and the more you read them the more you got used to their likes and dislikes and you would read their reviews first - cos when you found a common bond you would stick to it.
There isnt that on the internet. Its too split and vague with no continuity. I love the internet but for music criticism it sucks big time.
what's so wrong with dancing about architecture?
....or even architecting about dance, for that matter?
^this^
agreed.
Painting dancers, dancing about architecture?
I don't actually mind the subject myself though.
I too am armed with a laptop and a Wordpress account, and I try to only write about stuff which I feel needs championing and no one else has written about. I think that's the point of blogs, which ties into what others are saying about all the review sites covering the same stuff.
I find it tough though, running the blog is obviously not my job, I have a very time consuming job which means I rarely get around to trawling for good new acts. Normally end up just reading DiS or Pitchfork...
Yes, good point
I agree with Always_Right, and Everett_True's response, but I also agree with Harryaintemo. I receive a fair amount of promos of new music for my radio show, and I hardly have time to listen to all that. Some of the stuff is dross, and I'm sure I could find much more interesting stuff on blogs. But if I was to trawl through all the blogs myself, I'd have to give up my day job (the radio is voluntary) and I'd have to give up my own band (wouldn't that seem kind of counter productive?). So, ultimately I need to rely on someone, or someones to separate the wheat from the chaff on my behalf.
I agree
with Mr Ben Myers - trouble is, there are so few magazines that seem to do that and so few bands/artists that generate the good tales!
man I hate that "dancing about architecture" tripe. It's completely bound up in an anti-intellectual, romantic notion of feeling divorced from the constraints of history/culture/language.
what?
this "death of music journalism" series is meant to be an ironic statement, right? go do real features on bands and stuff. maybe bands and new music that people haven't discovered! shock horror, the effort involved would be horrendous. it's like an extended Guardian music section on here sometimes.
I like it
Nice work. I'm an English teacher (groan), (another 'killer'/'over-analyser) and if I may, I'll use this as a conversation starter for a Y12 class.
what a sorry state of affairs
Although Laura Nineham's article is attractively cynical it's completely unfounded. Yes 2.0 plays home to infinite ammounts of unsolicited shit but to posit that we're worse off because of it is a pitiful way to think. There is more good writing online than in print, there are more good writers online than in print. Glass half full.
How is the problem with local journalism similar? Is it only because it too can house unprofessional writing? Why is the traditional media more suceptable to 'keeping PR guys sweet' surely less critical with a wordpress account and 3 PR contacts is more vunerable? Why shouldn't everyone reserve the right to be a critic?
The biggest drain on music critisism is that poeple believe the talent is in say what is good/bad and not why something is good/bad. This article is peppered with so many assumptions and empty statements it fails for the same reasons.
My personal opinion is...
... that most music criticism / reviews is / are pretty damn poor, whether on sites like this, magazines, newspapers or blogs.
Clearly the average ‘published critic’ (I include sites like this as ‘published’) are more ‘competent’ than the average ‘unpublished critic’. But that does not alter the fact that decent music journalism is inspiring whether you agree or disagree with the review, dislike or like the band in question. Most ‘published criticism’ does not do that, most is pretty boring. So to slate the enthusiastic amateur is a bit rich – try putting your own house in order first.
Some fantastic critics write stuff that can come across as ‘ill-informed rants’ and they are a million times more interesting than (reasonably) well thought through dross written by most published critics.
Anyone can set themselves up as a critic that much is true. And a good thing too. I am sure plenty of musicians (punk springs to mind) were slated as not being musicians when they came along, only for it to turn out 12 months later that they could sell records and influence millions. And whether these critics are self published and read by no-one, or published in print in a weekend broadsheet, I still have the right to say that they are useless. At least many of the unpublished ones are prepared to take a few risks, whereas the few ‘published’ ones that do are either edited into oblivion or criticized on comments sections like this by pompous arseholes who wouldn’t know good writing if it bit them on the arse and gave them rabies.
Personally I use music criticism now mainly as a way of compiling very long lists of bands to listen to on the net from the headlines. Relatively little is actually worth reading, and at the risk of being unkind Laura, your piece is absolutely no exception. It would appear that you are trying to get yourself a job writing features for the Sunday Times Magazine. Good luck to you, but forgive me for my lack of interest in your opinion on music or music criticism.
DiS joins the Music Alliance Pact + May 2013's global MAP compilation
Drowned in Bristol #12
DiS Does Singles 13.05.13: Swim Deep, These New Puritans, The National
Darkstar, Ed Harcourt, Halls, Wall +more for 3 DiS-curated nights at Great Escape 2013
Interview: Frank Turner on The Olympics, The Backlash, Thatcher and Black Flag
Drowned in Nottingham #14
Twitter
Facebook
Last.fm
SoundCloud
MySpace
Friendster
RSS
Comments
- Post a new comment on this article