Music critics were much more needed when music was expensive and required effort to acquire. When you were plunking down $15 for a CD you wanted to know if it was any good, hence listening stations in CD stores and reviews to give you some idea of what something sounded like and if it was worth hearing before you put down possibly non-refundable money.
Since everything is available instantly and for free now, the need to pay someone else to show the way has diminished tremendously. Plus, artists can now speak directly, in real time to their fans, so much less (if any) need for a "professional" to interview them.
Thank you for mentioning Musician. I wrote for them and we were floored when it folded. I don’t know many musicians who trusted the system. Most music execs are robber barons. I’m being kind….
For a while last decade I worked for ProQuest, and one of the best side benefits was they had Musician archived online, so I could find all the great old articles.
Really? I’ve posted most of my old articles on my LinkedIn page: I kept hardcopies of the magazine. I hate to tell you that I don’t know what ProQuest is... can you tell me?
ProQuest was the software used in a lot of libraries to index all their holdings. It required a subscription, and you usually found it on the search terminals at large universities.
I think you nailed it on the head—music consumption has changed so much that listening is a more passive experience leaving listeners less invested (emotionally and financially) in the product. I remember people would actually invest energy into poring over an entire album that they purchased. Now, due to streaming, music feels almost disposable. When listeners don’t take it as seriously, they aren’t going to put a premium on curation or editorial. The medium really has affected the message.
You're absolutely correct, particularly regarding poring over entire albums. Oftentimes the best tracks are never heard on the radio (not that anyone listens to the radio anymore), so no one hears the "hidden gems." Risking ridicule for my soft spot for early 80s music, I'll refer to Quarterflash's eponymous album. It had two reasonably successful, catchy tunes that lead me to buy it. But the two best songs from my perspective are "Critical Times" with Marv Ross on vocals instead of his wife, and "Williams Avenue," a raucous jazzy tune. This can be said about scores of other albums released by big name acts over the years as well. I tend to treat albums as forty to forty-five minute songs that are confusing if the songs aren't played in the order of their original release.
You're not wrong. However, instant accessibility to everything poses another problem, which is navigating the seemingly endless sea of new releases. That's where the music critic is still valuable.
Yes, completely agree! In some sense, the music critic is more important than ever. I would guess that reviewers in the classical sense are also less sought after in other areas that still need cash to experience. Like travel, video games or theatre.
Critics opened so many new music genres to me by pointing me to convincing masterpieces. So many albums that took me 5 to 10 listens until I got it. Most of the music promoted here I would never click on in Spotify but love to be guided to. Long live the critic
People only need a small amount of new music each week, and they can quickly find that via non-professional trusted sources--be they people or recommendation algorithms. You can quickly listen to a minute of anything and decide whether to proceed because you're not worried about limited access power.
I haven't found a service that actually gives me streams of new good music to listen to. I know they are out there because I occasionally hear about them through word of mouth. But to find them in a stream had been impossible for me.
Very interesting points, the relationship between critique and curation is definitely a balance people who use YouTube and TikTok are able to strike very well, I think of Adam Neely and Anthony Fantano as case studies. Music critic, as a profession might be on its way out, but the spirit of sharing things with worldwide audiences and clueing them in to the merit of a particular artist or unusual genres is where they come in. A similar movement exists in the world of film making as well, as the recent surge in popularity of the biopic "Oppenheimer" can testify.
I have always felt that there is a small number of people who are “into music” and then there’s “everyone else”. Everyone else used to get their music from the radio - they bought what was popular - no critics/reviewers involved. I worked at Flipside records in the Chicago area in the late 80s - “everyone else” hated having to pay for the whole CD just to get their favorite song. I don’t think the streaming era has changed anything for this majority of people - now they just play the “Today’s Top Hits” playlist. These people are still and always have been passive listeners.
It has not always been that way. It's a natural consequence of the way music is now distributed and listened to, certainly a very likely outcome if not necessarily one that is inevitable, and it's influenced by culture and technology.
The late '80s was a very short time ago and there was hardly a difference in terms of culture or technology from now. You should not be surprised not to see a difference from such a frame of reference. However, before the CD it was quite different; before radio and the music station, and before recorded music proliferated, it was even more different than that.
Remember, passive listening is something new, it doesn't make sense to say most people have always been passive listeners when it is only our culture and technology that make passive listening possible.
Once, popular music did not exist, only traditional and classical of all kinds, played with all manners of instruments by all sorts of people and tuned to countless frequencies using all sorts of scales. You did not "buy what was popular", but actively participate in music and become familiar with or learn it through those around you in your folk culture and from skilled masters.
There were all kinds of different musical cultures, with all kinds of ways of viewing music in society, as well as the musician or composer. It was an environment unrecognisable from the musical world of today, where the majority of music is in a few styles, it is all totally standardised, and can all be played on a few instruments tuned to a single frequency of 440Hz. With just a few scales, you can play the vast majority of the greatest hits.
Unfortunately, the ability to record music, combined with the total destruction of local musical traditions and replacement with mass culture, has made music cheap. It should be no surprise people now passively listen to it without caring about it or participating in it or creating it, or even caring who they are listening to. But this is an aberration, it wasn't always like this and only has been for a few generations. If music can become one way, then another way, it can change again too, because our culture and traditions are reflections of ourselves and what we make them.
I was originally referring to the streaming era specifically and its effect on what was before it. Apologies if that wasn’t clear. Just spit-balling, but I don’t think the streaming era has materially made the passive listeners any more passive.
Nevertheless, I’d still argue that there have always been “music people” (active) and “non-music people” (passive). This is not to say the non-music people don’t enjoy music.
Given the historical (let’s say, pre-printing press) difficulty of experiencing music that you describe - someone has to create it on the spot - I’d argue that the listener was passive because they didn’t put the effort in to create it. They didn’t actively do what was necessary to experience the music. Prior to technological advancements, the passive listener just had less music in their lives.
Technology has simply allowed the passive listener to consume more music.
Technology does not have an effect on the those who are willing to put in the effort. Such music people will always put in the effort. Prior to technological advancements, the effort was creating the music. Post-technological advancement the effort is separating the wheat from the chafe - finding the new and interesting in a sea of lord knows what.
I believe most people are non-music people. Pre-technology they consumed what the creators created at the time of creation. Post-technology they listen to what’s popular when they are young and continue to listen to that same music as they age. I don’t mean this in a derogatory way. It’s just not that important to them.
Here’s a disturbing anecdote: There were probably 12-15 people, ages 20s-40s, in a CrossFit class that I was coaching. Kendrick Lamar’s Humble came on and I said that this whole record is really good. Then I asked them when was the last time they listened to a record from start to finish. Last week? Last month? Last year? When they were in High School? Nope. Never. Not one of them had ever listened to record from beginning to end. I was blown away.
By all means, push back on this half-baked thought. Thank you for the civil discourse.
I agree with you. I would add that as the back catalogue has grown and as society has changed the "music people" have become far less central in the culture as they used to be.
Music just isn't that important any more. When I was in my teen and early 20s, the first question you'd ask a new acquaintances was: "What music are you into?". Even the non-music people back then would join in, simply because there were only a few outlets from which they could get music: the radio and the one or two TV shows.
But when pop music became ubiquitous, thanks to muzak in shopping centres and supermarkets, it lost its cultural force. The music people became less important and non-musical people found that they could just enjoy a tune here and there without worrying too much what others think.
I have always been a musical person. I have played in punk bands and sung at the Sydney Opera House with a classical choir. WHen I hera people lament about there only being "old songs" I can only say what rot. If no young hopeful ever wrote another song, there would till be a mass of new music for us all to hear. That is the great thing about streaming. I can find something new every day. Just yesterday I found a piece by Machaut that I had never heard before. That music was written hundreds of years ago, but it is new to me. And I will never cease to find new music.
To sum up what is being lamented in te article is not the death of music, but the demise of popular music as a means for intellectual young people to influence the culture.
Agree but more niche musical forms - jazz and classical for example - still need 'gatekeepers', respected reviewers who can shine a light on new releases, point readers in new directions etc. Not so important if you're a 'pop' musician with a big social media following. With regard to jazz, it's great that Downbeat and Jazztimes are still going, but the latter's decision to abolish its review section is both a mystery and very disappointing...
This makes no sense to me. The instrument, tech, record, venues, music service companies, online radio, promotion, manufacturing are proliferating and still need to get ads out and business and musicians love to read about what other musicians do so how the #%!? was that even possible??
A hybrid model that taps into web content (equipment gurus) and everything else above would be profitable, I believe.
I just wonder, how far back into Hartnett heritage in Ireland do we go, or, does ours take off here in the USA? Ours was right around 1800, with it being in Kansas before it was even a Territory (that even included Denver at the time). bruce@ucom.net
Ours were from 3 sides of the family, both fraternal and maternal. From Counties Cork, Derry & Donegal. As I said, from right around 1800, well before the Potato Famine that brought so many over here. On my maternal side, not counting the non-Hartnetts whose nativity were here in 1696 & 1709, the closest to Ireland was in Wales, traced back to at least 1530, with the 1st over here in 1730.
I think the real reason pitchfork is having problems is because they embraced poptimism over their core indie audience. Not to pick a side here but the writing was much more interesting when they were sniping at the mainstream as opposed to being just another cheerleader for it.
Not sure if I'd ascribe their problems specifically to poptimism rather than that by embracing poptimism they made themselves virtually indistinguishable from basically every other media shop that writes about music these days. A lot of people found the old Pitchfork obnoxious or elitist, but at least it had an identity - the trend in media these days (and among those who work in media) seems to be to have the same opinions and tastes about everything. And if everything eventually becomes indistinguishable it's easy to see why people would stop paying attention.
Yeah I guess my thing is that I’m just not a fan of poptimism seeing as almost every publication is now days. But you are right that they’ve made themselves indistinguishable from other music publications through as a result of the rot current identity
Perhaps another factor is that we the U.S., specifically what are left of news-hounds or other consumers of published commentary and reportage do not demand better. That accounts for the market success of, well I was about to say Conde Nast type glossies and multi-media web platforms. Except I just noticed some of Conde Nast's biggest legacy 'zines are in trouble with declining subscribers and newsstands are fast going and gone away.
I'm not sure Corporate Capture has anything to do with quality anyway. I recall first stumbling on the investigative journalist's main online directory for reference on Muck Raking reporters and authors, namely Muck Rack. A bid-net model that I first thought would assure survival even if despised by the authentic activists that may have first been mistaken for Muck Rack's primary target audience and subscriber base. That would be the Public Relations Industry, which is symbiotically wound up with the Muck Rakers cuz without Muck Rakers there is no need for a Public Relations Industry.
To wit this verbatim descriptive sales pitch of the Muck Rack bid-net model:
"Earn coverage and prove the value of PR
See how you can optimize your media relations with easy-to-use PR software"
For a refresher read up on the Industry's founder in early 20th C. Edward Bernays (nephew of Siggy Freud, Vienna pedigree...) and concepts vis a vis a widely threatened Global Advertising industry as rise of Nazism and Communism along with Consumerism were causing concern from the late 19th Century U.S. trends and onward through to today's revival and populist rise of Authoritarianism and Triumph of the PR\Propaganda\Advertising industry over Public Forum\Town Hall style activist representational democracy in the form of the Super Power dba Republics.
As the good and grateful Media Critics always are careful to note (see Chomsky and Herman along with sorely missed Molly Ivins, Z"L Rest in Play) for context in any Media course or public discourse: There is no need for Public Relations or an Advertising Industry in any closed system such as Totalitarianism and the incremental shades of far more effective and mostly stable yet with room for
'managed instability' as a variety of familiar Authoritarian Conservative or Liberal and especially Neo-Con or Neo-Liberal Economic models.
"Milton Friedman, wrote in his early essay "Neo-liberalism and Its Prospects" that "Neo-liberalism would accept the nineteenth-century liberal emphasis on the fundamental importance of the individual, but it would substitute for the nineteenth century goal of laissez-faire as a means to this end, the goal of the ..."
Open society remains a few steps removed from such a blunt bludgeoning dialectics-free zone and economically inert regime as The Total Political system of official minders and enforcers of the Only Party Line Or Ideology (OPLOI) as Predatory Consumerism\Capitalism illustrates in any DeSantistan nation-state sealed system style barring of Critical Thinking from grade school on up; Where the primary industry is the state-sanctioned industry, yet guarantor of only perma-war and constant instability by degree: namely the DISTRACTION INDUSTRY.
It’s definitely possible imo that in some parallel world where they kept the same attitude towards the mainstream the same thing could’ve happened. But also this is possible and I can’t help agreeing seeing as they put albums by mainstream artists like Beyoncé ‘Renaissance’ and SZA ‘SOS’ at the tops of their albums of the years list the past two years. Nothing against each of those artists personally, but not only did I not think either album was very good, but based on pitchforks reputation of what it used to be it the most mainstream possible albums being at the top is baffling.
This is 100% correct and anyone who denies it is deluding himself. Why would I invest any amount of time into reading Pitchfork when their journalists have the tastes of the average high school girl? The appeal of music criticism is that it is written from a place of authority, by someone who has more developed tastes than the average person. I don't need a professional writer to tell me how great Beyonce is (she's not btw). I'd add that Beyonce ALSO doesn't need this.
I've been watching this happen for years. It's so disheartening.
I'm a small time concert promoter in the Northern California wine country. The majority of the musicians in this area play "Happy Hour" music or are cover bands. I keep trying to break new acts in the area, and it's damn near impossible to get anyone in the area to pay attention.
There is no Alt-weekly in my area. No one, but me is writing about music and my forehead is permanently bruised from banging my head against the wall.
The only way to promote music is the socials and Algorithms hide everything that's remotely promotional, as well all know.
I don't think my venue is much longer for the world. I really want to start an alt weekly for the area. A nonprofit organization that publishes a regular music magazine, and also promotes events. I want to put something tangible out into the world to promote discoverability. Because, how can people discover new music? But man oh man. Can i make enough of a living doing this? It's terrifying that everything I've ever done my entire adult life and making a living at is going away.
So thank you for posting these great essays on the music world. This was very needed today. Very hard news, but i think i need to go for it. Focus on local and building community. I think that's what we need to do, as well as get off the platforms.
I'm going to think about this a lot today. Thank you for the article and the place to vent a little.
are "happy hour" bands more likely to get asked back if they're mostly covering tired old favorites, or is is possible for a band to continue to get bookings if they play a majority of their own stuff?
One of my biggest regrets in life is having an iPod at my wedding reception instead of a live (jazz/swing) band, and I don't even think I would have cared if I didn't recognize any of the songs.
Amen to that. My band won’t be streaming our upcoming album. From our point of view, there really isn’t a business anymore. We know we are tilting at windmills now. But then--not accepting things as they are is the root of all suffering, right?
In the 70s, we sold our cds at the venues where we played. It added quite a bit to our bottom line. After all, the clubs weren't paying much. In the late 70s, our trio made $100 a night for each of us. In 2013, clubs were still paying $100 a night each. Yes, accept the Dharma and move on.
Yes, we were waay ahead of our time. No one else was playing Monk's Brilliant Corners with saxophone, bass and drums, or Jame's Brown's I Feel Good with Coltrane's Impressions for the bridge, or improvising on a Handel Flute Sonata.
Hmm... all goofing aside (thanks for being a good sport), that does sound like music worth listening to on CD or LP or tapes. What was the name of your band??
Finding new venues, outlets, connections, markets, listeners, fans, customers - however you say it - without the “help” of dying business models is the long-term answer, I think.
Agreed. I believe that some part of that is already coalescing among people who can feel the spiritual impoverishment of culture-by-algorithm. It’s like, “We tried that. It made us bored and sad.”
Coming from a totally different perspective, this also means the collapse of a supporting industry, that of music public relations. I've been doing it for about 40 years, and it has become increasingly difficult for me to justify - both to myself and to my clients - the value of hiring someone to introduce an artist's work to...well, that's exactly it, isn't it? I work hard to reach out to editors and freelance writers to alert them to new music, but there's no guarantee that whatever coverage I might be able to generate will reach an audience of eager consumers. And why would anyone want to read a review of an album now that they can purchase individual tracks, anyway? It's a completely different ecosystem now, but there are SO many musicians who just don't get that and want to keep on doing what they've always done. All of this has nothing to do with any specific publication or coverage of any specific genre. Things have been headed in this direction for quite some time, but suddenly the full repercussions of this huge shift are quite obvious.
As usual you are so right on with your views, your predictions, your insights. As a four-decade music writer, I'm hanging in there for the music...and writing about it monthly in my column JAZZ & BEYOND INTEL where I converse with artists who are not part of the 1 percent but have so much to offer. Thanks so much!
Wow, so long I've not seen your by-line, Dan Ouellette. Among my faves of my East Bay life reading the EAST BAY EXPRESS. Guess I'll have to check Muck Rack or other sources online to see where you've been managing to place your conscientiously researched and sharply opinionated pieces....DIRTY LINEN MAGAZINE is no more, alas for us World Roots Muses seekers.
It’s difficult for me to separate your specific complaint about “not discovering new artists” from the reasons I stopped caring about art critics - music, moves, books - in general: their refusal to dislike anything popular, a myopic devotion to history’s dullest political movement, and a general sense that none of them were cool anymore. What killed criticism - structural factors and poor decisions of the music industry or shit content? I think the later mattered more. After all you’ve found success by virtue of not being shitty. We know it’s at least possible.
Mustard could not agree more. Every week they try their best to highlight and interview independent musicians from all over the world on this platform. These artists are so passionate and driven to get their music heard. While it isn't perfect they hope to see more artists transfer/upload their work to Bandcamp instead of being so reliant on pre-saves and streams.
Mustard appreciates and thanks you for speaking about this.
The average quality of most record/CD/whatever reviews I've seen in the past 20 years has been pretty poor. As someone noted below, when I can hear music myself to try it out for free, the reviews are less necessary. And I still consume a lot of "reviews" - mostly from friends saying "hey, check this out". And I can and do - and if I like it, I buy it. I think the "reviewer" job has gone away, but reviewing is still happening - just in a decentralized way. Plus, the writing quality of a lot of reviews is terrible (as an earlier comment said, there was a lot of 12 letter words being used when a 6 letter one would be fine). So Pitchfork going out of business seems pretty "meh" to me - all my friends who listen to interesting music are still listening to interesting music and recommending it to me. (And for older stuff, I am discovering all sorts of cool stuff via Andrew Hickey's marvelous A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs podcast and the equally fabulous country music one by Tyler Mahon Coe, Cocaine and Rhinestones. Now, if Ted would just take on doing one on jazz of similar caliber.......
Maybe it’s a good thing that the “business” is collapsing. Paper fanzines now have a new opportunity. Besides, it has come double full circle in that the great John Phillip Sousa, who toured his band around the world and became the first music pop star at turn of 20th century, always hated the very idea of recorded music. He felt it was highly inferior to live music. And of course he was right. His influence was so great that every tiny town in American West had a band. People learned to play instruments because that was their only way to hear music. Remember The Music Man musical? Composer Meredith Willson became piccolo player in Sousa’s band. And he was from Mason City, Iowa. So these modern developments should lead to re-discovery of playing live music. And that will not only help the brains of people but strengthen communities too.
Nothing compares to live music, and maybe it's ok that it's no longer viable for musicians to get signed and become nationally known. Maybe we're heading to a time when most acts are small and local and experienced live at restaurants, concerts, and festivals.
I took my wife out last weekend to a restaurant with live music. It was a solo act, singer+guitar, mic'd for sound reinforcement. He set up his speaker behind him, causing some low frequency feedback issues with his microphone. Objectively it was a worse sound than any studio recording, but we really enjoyed it and had a great evening.
Hopefully we're returning to a time when music is something you participate in, rather than something one merely consumes.
What I have noticed in my local paper, you may have heard of it, The New York Times, is no reviews of concerts and club dates that would have had a regular review years ago.
Regular reviews of musicians at The Village Vanguard would be common. If a major jazz artist like The Keith Jarrett Trio was at Carnegie Hall there would be a review a few days later.
Now there is nothing. Those reviews would encourage me to go hear a band or just inform me of what was happening. And if the review was of a concert I had attended the review would offer a different perspective on the music.
In the last month I saw, Kris Davis, Jason Moran, and Joe Lovano and not a single review of any of them. And this has been going on for years.
It seems they all have podcasts and year end lists, and write about cultural impacts, but nothing about live performances.
Upcoming concerts will be Vijay Iyer, then Ulysses Owen Jr. and Caetano Veloso in April and I'm pretty sure there won't be a review of any of their performances.
Let's not forget the economics of music journalism--there is none. It's almost impossible to make any money writing about music or musicians (unless it's the lifestyle/scandal angle), there is little continued presence of print music journalists outside the few remaining music mags or the NYTimes. I have written about music for years but now find I prefer to do it as a labor of love and support for the musicians; money doesn't even come into the equation. Without any financial underpinning writers are too hassled and hustling, without the time to develop an audience, explore new music and expose it, as well as the musicians making it every day.
Band t-shirts are not tacky, sir. How dare you insult band t-shirted people… okay, all kidding aside, in a streaming world the most direct and best way to show bands your appreciation and keep them going is 1. Go to their shows. 2. Buy their merch, i.e., t-shirts! (It also helps fans to meet and bond with one another.)
I hope that in the future Substack will become a place for critics to group themselves under one banner-- something that used to be called a magazine-- so that readers don't have to hunt through the haystack and only come up with one point of view, or even one genre. I also hope that Substack will enable "batch subscriptions" so that I can pay a monthly fee for a handful (five?) of different writers of my choosing, rather than individual subs which are more financially intimidating. And finally I hope that Substack will improve its feeble search and browse functions, so that a) I don't have to click through authors named Jazz, for example, as I look for authors writing about Jazz; and b) have some dim hope that listeners seeking new music will stumble upon mine, which currently lies on the cold, dark floor of the digital sea.
I miss the NME and Melody Maker from the 1970's.Serious music journalism. PitchFork et al were always far too middle class and far too smug in their writings,preferring to use a 12 lettered word when one of six could easily have been used. Then came the internet and the digital " revolution" and the subsequent new business models. Today we have so much ( too much) music available which in earlier times would have been quickly culled as the barrier to entry then was far more difficult ( and expensive). It's the same with the film industry for exactly the same reasons. Far lower costs of production and every Tom,Dick & Harry thought and think, they too can be a musician and/or a filmmaker. The result being we're inundated with so much dross in both areas.
Music critics were much more needed when music was expensive and required effort to acquire. When you were plunking down $15 for a CD you wanted to know if it was any good, hence listening stations in CD stores and reviews to give you some idea of what something sounded like and if it was worth hearing before you put down possibly non-refundable money.
Since everything is available instantly and for free now, the need to pay someone else to show the way has diminished tremendously. Plus, artists can now speak directly, in real time to their fans, so much less (if any) need for a "professional" to interview them.
That said, I still miss Musician magazine.
Thank you for mentioning Musician. I wrote for them and we were floored when it folded. I don’t know many musicians who trusted the system. Most music execs are robber barons. I’m being kind….
For a while last decade I worked for ProQuest, and one of the best side benefits was they had Musician archived online, so I could find all the great old articles.
Really? I’ve posted most of my old articles on my LinkedIn page: I kept hardcopies of the magazine. I hate to tell you that I don’t know what ProQuest is... can you tell me?
ProQuest was the software used in a lot of libraries to index all their holdings. It required a subscription, and you usually found it on the search terminals at large universities.
Thank you!
I'll second that, Karen. I subscribed to that for years, after I'd dumped Rolling Stone.
I read that religiously for years, that and guitar player. I’m finding some good writing here on substack now, that’s nice.
I think you nailed it on the head—music consumption has changed so much that listening is a more passive experience leaving listeners less invested (emotionally and financially) in the product. I remember people would actually invest energy into poring over an entire album that they purchased. Now, due to streaming, music feels almost disposable. When listeners don’t take it as seriously, they aren’t going to put a premium on curation or editorial. The medium really has affected the message.
You're absolutely correct, particularly regarding poring over entire albums. Oftentimes the best tracks are never heard on the radio (not that anyone listens to the radio anymore), so no one hears the "hidden gems." Risking ridicule for my soft spot for early 80s music, I'll refer to Quarterflash's eponymous album. It had two reasonably successful, catchy tunes that lead me to buy it. But the two best songs from my perspective are "Critical Times" with Marv Ross on vocals instead of his wife, and "Williams Avenue," a raucous jazzy tune. This can be said about scores of other albums released by big name acts over the years as well. I tend to treat albums as forty to forty-five minute songs that are confusing if the songs aren't played in the order of their original release.
So often, back when, my favorite song on an album never got on the radio
You're not wrong. However, instant accessibility to everything poses another problem, which is navigating the seemingly endless sea of new releases. That's where the music critic is still valuable.
Yes, completely agree! In some sense, the music critic is more important than ever. I would guess that reviewers in the classical sense are also less sought after in other areas that still need cash to experience. Like travel, video games or theatre.
Critics opened so many new music genres to me by pointing me to convincing masterpieces. So many albums that took me 5 to 10 listens until I got it. Most of the music promoted here I would never click on in Spotify but love to be guided to. Long live the critic
People only need a small amount of new music each week, and they can quickly find that via non-professional trusted sources--be they people or recommendation algorithms. You can quickly listen to a minute of anything and decide whether to proceed because you're not worried about limited access power.
I haven't found a service that actually gives me streams of new good music to listen to. I know they are out there because I occasionally hear about them through word of mouth. But to find them in a stream had been impossible for me.
Very interesting points, the relationship between critique and curation is definitely a balance people who use YouTube and TikTok are able to strike very well, I think of Adam Neely and Anthony Fantano as case studies. Music critic, as a profession might be on its way out, but the spirit of sharing things with worldwide audiences and clueing them in to the merit of a particular artist or unusual genres is where they come in. A similar movement exists in the world of film making as well, as the recent surge in popularity of the biopic "Oppenheimer" can testify.
I have always felt that there is a small number of people who are “into music” and then there’s “everyone else”. Everyone else used to get their music from the radio - they bought what was popular - no critics/reviewers involved. I worked at Flipside records in the Chicago area in the late 80s - “everyone else” hated having to pay for the whole CD just to get their favorite song. I don’t think the streaming era has changed anything for this majority of people - now they just play the “Today’s Top Hits” playlist. These people are still and always have been passive listeners.
It has not always been that way. It's a natural consequence of the way music is now distributed and listened to, certainly a very likely outcome if not necessarily one that is inevitable, and it's influenced by culture and technology.
The late '80s was a very short time ago and there was hardly a difference in terms of culture or technology from now. You should not be surprised not to see a difference from such a frame of reference. However, before the CD it was quite different; before radio and the music station, and before recorded music proliferated, it was even more different than that.
Remember, passive listening is something new, it doesn't make sense to say most people have always been passive listeners when it is only our culture and technology that make passive listening possible.
Once, popular music did not exist, only traditional and classical of all kinds, played with all manners of instruments by all sorts of people and tuned to countless frequencies using all sorts of scales. You did not "buy what was popular", but actively participate in music and become familiar with or learn it through those around you in your folk culture and from skilled masters.
There were all kinds of different musical cultures, with all kinds of ways of viewing music in society, as well as the musician or composer. It was an environment unrecognisable from the musical world of today, where the majority of music is in a few styles, it is all totally standardised, and can all be played on a few instruments tuned to a single frequency of 440Hz. With just a few scales, you can play the vast majority of the greatest hits.
Unfortunately, the ability to record music, combined with the total destruction of local musical traditions and replacement with mass culture, has made music cheap. It should be no surprise people now passively listen to it without caring about it or participating in it or creating it, or even caring who they are listening to. But this is an aberration, it wasn't always like this and only has been for a few generations. If music can become one way, then another way, it can change again too, because our culture and traditions are reflections of ourselves and what we make them.
I was originally referring to the streaming era specifically and its effect on what was before it. Apologies if that wasn’t clear. Just spit-balling, but I don’t think the streaming era has materially made the passive listeners any more passive.
Nevertheless, I’d still argue that there have always been “music people” (active) and “non-music people” (passive). This is not to say the non-music people don’t enjoy music.
Given the historical (let’s say, pre-printing press) difficulty of experiencing music that you describe - someone has to create it on the spot - I’d argue that the listener was passive because they didn’t put the effort in to create it. They didn’t actively do what was necessary to experience the music. Prior to technological advancements, the passive listener just had less music in their lives.
Technology has simply allowed the passive listener to consume more music.
Technology does not have an effect on the those who are willing to put in the effort. Such music people will always put in the effort. Prior to technological advancements, the effort was creating the music. Post-technological advancement the effort is separating the wheat from the chafe - finding the new and interesting in a sea of lord knows what.
I believe most people are non-music people. Pre-technology they consumed what the creators created at the time of creation. Post-technology they listen to what’s popular when they are young and continue to listen to that same music as they age. I don’t mean this in a derogatory way. It’s just not that important to them.
Here’s a disturbing anecdote: There were probably 12-15 people, ages 20s-40s, in a CrossFit class that I was coaching. Kendrick Lamar’s Humble came on and I said that this whole record is really good. Then I asked them when was the last time they listened to a record from start to finish. Last week? Last month? Last year? When they were in High School? Nope. Never. Not one of them had ever listened to record from beginning to end. I was blown away.
By all means, push back on this half-baked thought. Thank you for the civil discourse.
I agree with you. I would add that as the back catalogue has grown and as society has changed the "music people" have become far less central in the culture as they used to be.
Music just isn't that important any more. When I was in my teen and early 20s, the first question you'd ask a new acquaintances was: "What music are you into?". Even the non-music people back then would join in, simply because there were only a few outlets from which they could get music: the radio and the one or two TV shows.
But when pop music became ubiquitous, thanks to muzak in shopping centres and supermarkets, it lost its cultural force. The music people became less important and non-musical people found that they could just enjoy a tune here and there without worrying too much what others think.
I have always been a musical person. I have played in punk bands and sung at the Sydney Opera House with a classical choir. WHen I hera people lament about there only being "old songs" I can only say what rot. If no young hopeful ever wrote another song, there would till be a mass of new music for us all to hear. That is the great thing about streaming. I can find something new every day. Just yesterday I found a piece by Machaut that I had never heard before. That music was written hundreds of years ago, but it is new to me. And I will never cease to find new music.
To sum up what is being lamented in te article is not the death of music, but the demise of popular music as a means for intellectual young people to influence the culture.
Agree but more niche musical forms - jazz and classical for example - still need 'gatekeepers', respected reviewers who can shine a light on new releases, point readers in new directions etc. Not so important if you're a 'pop' musician with a big social media following. With regard to jazz, it's great that Downbeat and Jazztimes are still going, but the latter's decision to abolish its review section is both a mystery and very disappointing...
This makes no sense to me. The instrument, tech, record, venues, music service companies, online radio, promotion, manufacturing are proliferating and still need to get ads out and business and musicians love to read about what other musicians do so how the #%!? was that even possible??
A hybrid model that taps into web content (equipment gurus) and everything else above would be profitable, I believe.
I just wonder, how far back into Hartnett heritage in Ireland do we go, or, does ours take off here in the USA? Ours was right around 1800, with it being in Kansas before it was even a Territory (that even included Denver at the time). bruce@ucom.net
My branch was in the mid to late 1800's, from Cork.
Ours were from 3 sides of the family, both fraternal and maternal. From Counties Cork, Derry & Donegal. As I said, from right around 1800, well before the Potato Famine that brought so many over here. On my maternal side, not counting the non-Hartnetts whose nativity were here in 1696 & 1709, the closest to Ireland was in Wales, traced back to at least 1530, with the 1st over here in 1730.
How ya doin, Cousin?
Excellent analyses.
I think the real reason pitchfork is having problems is because they embraced poptimism over their core indie audience. Not to pick a side here but the writing was much more interesting when they were sniping at the mainstream as opposed to being just another cheerleader for it.
Not sure if I'd ascribe their problems specifically to poptimism rather than that by embracing poptimism they made themselves virtually indistinguishable from basically every other media shop that writes about music these days. A lot of people found the old Pitchfork obnoxious or elitist, but at least it had an identity - the trend in media these days (and among those who work in media) seems to be to have the same opinions and tastes about everything. And if everything eventually becomes indistinguishable it's easy to see why people would stop paying attention.
Yeah I guess my thing is that I’m just not a fan of poptimism seeing as almost every publication is now days. But you are right that they’ve made themselves indistinguishable from other music publications through as a result of the rot current identity
Perhaps another factor is that we the U.S., specifically what are left of news-hounds or other consumers of published commentary and reportage do not demand better. That accounts for the market success of, well I was about to say Conde Nast type glossies and multi-media web platforms. Except I just noticed some of Conde Nast's biggest legacy 'zines are in trouble with declining subscribers and newsstands are fast going and gone away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cond%C3%A9_Nast
I'm not sure Corporate Capture has anything to do with quality anyway. I recall first stumbling on the investigative journalist's main online directory for reference on Muck Raking reporters and authors, namely Muck Rack. A bid-net model that I first thought would assure survival even if despised by the authentic activists that may have first been mistaken for Muck Rack's primary target audience and subscriber base. That would be the Public Relations Industry, which is symbiotically wound up with the Muck Rakers cuz without Muck Rakers there is no need for a Public Relations Industry.
To wit this verbatim descriptive sales pitch of the Muck Rack bid-net model:
"Earn coverage and prove the value of PR
See how you can optimize your media relations with easy-to-use PR software"
https://muckrack.com/
For a refresher read up on the Industry's founder in early 20th C. Edward Bernays (nephew of Siggy Freud, Vienna pedigree...) and concepts vis a vis a widely threatened Global Advertising industry as rise of Nazism and Communism along with Consumerism were causing concern from the late 19th Century U.S. trends and onward through to today's revival and populist rise of Authoritarianism and Triumph of the PR\Propaganda\Advertising industry over Public Forum\Town Hall style activist representational democracy in the form of the Super Power dba Republics.
As the good and grateful Media Critics always are careful to note (see Chomsky and Herman along with sorely missed Molly Ivins, Z"L Rest in Play) for context in any Media course or public discourse: There is no need for Public Relations or an Advertising Industry in any closed system such as Totalitarianism and the incremental shades of far more effective and mostly stable yet with room for
'managed instability' as a variety of familiar Authoritarian Conservative or Liberal and especially Neo-Con or Neo-Liberal Economic models.
https://miltonfriedman.hoover.org/internal/media/dispatcher/214957/full
"Milton Friedman, wrote in his early essay "Neo-liberalism and Its Prospects" that "Neo-liberalism would accept the nineteenth-century liberal emphasis on the fundamental importance of the individual, but it would substitute for the nineteenth century goal of laissez-faire as a means to this end, the goal of the ..."
Open society remains a few steps removed from such a blunt bludgeoning dialectics-free zone and economically inert regime as The Total Political system of official minders and enforcers of the Only Party Line Or Ideology (OPLOI) as Predatory Consumerism\Capitalism illustrates in any DeSantistan nation-state sealed system style barring of Critical Thinking from grade school on up; Where the primary industry is the state-sanctioned industry, yet guarantor of only perma-war and constant instability by degree: namely the DISTRACTION INDUSTRY.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_relations
https://billmoyers.com/content/noam-chomsky-part-2/
Mitch Ritter\Paradigm Sifters, Code Shifters, PsalmSong Chasers
Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa (Refuge of Atonement Seekers)
Media Discussion List\LookseeInnerEarsHearHere
It’s definitely possible imo that in some parallel world where they kept the same attitude towards the mainstream the same thing could’ve happened. But also this is possible and I can’t help agreeing seeing as they put albums by mainstream artists like Beyoncé ‘Renaissance’ and SZA ‘SOS’ at the tops of their albums of the years list the past two years. Nothing against each of those artists personally, but not only did I not think either album was very good, but based on pitchforks reputation of what it used to be it the most mainstream possible albums being at the top is baffling.
This is 100% correct and anyone who denies it is deluding himself. Why would I invest any amount of time into reading Pitchfork when their journalists have the tastes of the average high school girl? The appeal of music criticism is that it is written from a place of authority, by someone who has more developed tastes than the average person. I don't need a professional writer to tell me how great Beyonce is (she's not btw). I'd add that Beyonce ALSO doesn't need this.
I've been watching this happen for years. It's so disheartening.
I'm a small time concert promoter in the Northern California wine country. The majority of the musicians in this area play "Happy Hour" music or are cover bands. I keep trying to break new acts in the area, and it's damn near impossible to get anyone in the area to pay attention.
There is no Alt-weekly in my area. No one, but me is writing about music and my forehead is permanently bruised from banging my head against the wall.
The only way to promote music is the socials and Algorithms hide everything that's remotely promotional, as well all know.
I don't think my venue is much longer for the world. I really want to start an alt weekly for the area. A nonprofit organization that publishes a regular music magazine, and also promotes events. I want to put something tangible out into the world to promote discoverability. Because, how can people discover new music? But man oh man. Can i make enough of a living doing this? It's terrifying that everything I've ever done my entire adult life and making a living at is going away.
So thank you for posting these great essays on the music world. This was very needed today. Very hard news, but i think i need to go for it. Focus on local and building community. I think that's what we need to do, as well as get off the platforms.
I'm going to think about this a lot today. Thank you for the article and the place to vent a little.
are "happy hour" bands more likely to get asked back if they're mostly covering tired old favorites, or is is possible for a band to continue to get bookings if they play a majority of their own stuff?
One of my biggest regrets in life is having an iPod at my wedding reception instead of a live (jazz/swing) band, and I don't even think I would have cared if I didn't recognize any of the songs.
“Put faith in the music, not the business.”
Amen to that. My band won’t be streaming our upcoming album. From our point of view, there really isn’t a business anymore. We know we are tilting at windmills now. But then--not accepting things as they are is the root of all suffering, right?
In the 70s, we sold our cds at the venues where we played. It added quite a bit to our bottom line. After all, the clubs weren't paying much. In the late 70s, our trio made $100 a night for each of us. In 2013, clubs were still paying $100 a night each. Yes, accept the Dharma and move on.
Your band was waay ahead of its time sounds like, what with your prescient selling of CDs in the 70s…
Considering that CDs weren't commercially available until 1982, yes, his band was way ahead of it's time.
Yaass, of course.... sheesh...
Yes, we were waay ahead of our time. No one else was playing Monk's Brilliant Corners with saxophone, bass and drums, or Jame's Brown's I Feel Good with Coltrane's Impressions for the bridge, or improvising on a Handel Flute Sonata.
Hmm... all goofing aside (thanks for being a good sport), that does sound like music worth listening to on CD or LP or tapes. What was the name of your band??
Beverly Spaulding.
Sorry, but the CD didn’t come out until 1982…
Yes, that's what my ammended reply said.
Is that Gongtopia as in in Daevid Allen's Gong?
Finding new venues, outlets, connections, markets, listeners, fans, customers - however you say it - without the “help” of dying business models is the long-term answer, I think.
Agreed. I believe that some part of that is already coalescing among people who can feel the spiritual impoverishment of culture-by-algorithm. It’s like, “We tried that. It made us bored and sad.”
100%. More to follow, I feel confident. Fair winds and following seas.
I really like the energy in this comment. I hope more artists try working outside the box like you. I hope it goes well - good luck!
Hey, thanks!
Sorry. I should have said tapes. CDs didn't come out until 1982. It's amazing what 50 yrs. can do to one's memory.
I was thinking you had the cds before the rest of us did. Lol
I probably had 78s before the rest of you did.
I can go along with that
Coming from a totally different perspective, this also means the collapse of a supporting industry, that of music public relations. I've been doing it for about 40 years, and it has become increasingly difficult for me to justify - both to myself and to my clients - the value of hiring someone to introduce an artist's work to...well, that's exactly it, isn't it? I work hard to reach out to editors and freelance writers to alert them to new music, but there's no guarantee that whatever coverage I might be able to generate will reach an audience of eager consumers. And why would anyone want to read a review of an album now that they can purchase individual tracks, anyway? It's a completely different ecosystem now, but there are SO many musicians who just don't get that and want to keep on doing what they've always done. All of this has nothing to do with any specific publication or coverage of any specific genre. Things have been headed in this direction for quite some time, but suddenly the full repercussions of this huge shift are quite obvious.
As usual you are so right on with your views, your predictions, your insights. As a four-decade music writer, I'm hanging in there for the music...and writing about it monthly in my column JAZZ & BEYOND INTEL where I converse with artists who are not part of the 1 percent but have so much to offer. Thanks so much!
Wow, so long I've not seen your by-line, Dan Ouellette. Among my faves of my East Bay life reading the EAST BAY EXPRESS. Guess I'll have to check Muck Rack or other sources online to see where you've been managing to place your conscientiously researched and sharply opinionated pieces....DIRTY LINEN MAGAZINE is no more, alas for us World Roots Muses seekers.
Keep on doing!
To a better year for us all and our planet.
Health and balance,
Tio Mitchito
Mitch Ritter\Paradigm Sifters, Code Shifters, PsalmSong Chasers
Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa (Refuge of Atonement Seekers)
Media Discussion List\LookseeInnerEarsHearHere
It’s difficult for me to separate your specific complaint about “not discovering new artists” from the reasons I stopped caring about art critics - music, moves, books - in general: their refusal to dislike anything popular, a myopic devotion to history’s dullest political movement, and a general sense that none of them were cool anymore. What killed criticism - structural factors and poor decisions of the music industry or shit content? I think the later mattered more. After all you’ve found success by virtue of not being shitty. We know it’s at least possible.
"Put faith in the music, not the business."
Mustard could not agree more. Every week they try their best to highlight and interview independent musicians from all over the world on this platform. These artists are so passionate and driven to get their music heard. While it isn't perfect they hope to see more artists transfer/upload their work to Bandcamp instead of being so reliant on pre-saves and streams.
Mustard appreciates and thanks you for speaking about this.
The average quality of most record/CD/whatever reviews I've seen in the past 20 years has been pretty poor. As someone noted below, when I can hear music myself to try it out for free, the reviews are less necessary. And I still consume a lot of "reviews" - mostly from friends saying "hey, check this out". And I can and do - and if I like it, I buy it. I think the "reviewer" job has gone away, but reviewing is still happening - just in a decentralized way. Plus, the writing quality of a lot of reviews is terrible (as an earlier comment said, there was a lot of 12 letter words being used when a 6 letter one would be fine). So Pitchfork going out of business seems pretty "meh" to me - all my friends who listen to interesting music are still listening to interesting music and recommending it to me. (And for older stuff, I am discovering all sorts of cool stuff via Andrew Hickey's marvelous A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs podcast and the equally fabulous country music one by Tyler Mahon Coe, Cocaine and Rhinestones. Now, if Ted would just take on doing one on jazz of similar caliber.......
Maybe it’s a good thing that the “business” is collapsing. Paper fanzines now have a new opportunity. Besides, it has come double full circle in that the great John Phillip Sousa, who toured his band around the world and became the first music pop star at turn of 20th century, always hated the very idea of recorded music. He felt it was highly inferior to live music. And of course he was right. His influence was so great that every tiny town in American West had a band. People learned to play instruments because that was their only way to hear music. Remember The Music Man musical? Composer Meredith Willson became piccolo player in Sousa’s band. And he was from Mason City, Iowa. So these modern developments should lead to re-discovery of playing live music. And that will not only help the brains of people but strengthen communities too.
Nothing compares to live music, and maybe it's ok that it's no longer viable for musicians to get signed and become nationally known. Maybe we're heading to a time when most acts are small and local and experienced live at restaurants, concerts, and festivals.
I took my wife out last weekend to a restaurant with live music. It was a solo act, singer+guitar, mic'd for sound reinforcement. He set up his speaker behind him, causing some low frequency feedback issues with his microphone. Objectively it was a worse sound than any studio recording, but we really enjoyed it and had a great evening.
Hopefully we're returning to a time when music is something you participate in, rather than something one merely consumes.
What I have noticed in my local paper, you may have heard of it, The New York Times, is no reviews of concerts and club dates that would have had a regular review years ago.
Regular reviews of musicians at The Village Vanguard would be common. If a major jazz artist like The Keith Jarrett Trio was at Carnegie Hall there would be a review a few days later.
Now there is nothing. Those reviews would encourage me to go hear a band or just inform me of what was happening. And if the review was of a concert I had attended the review would offer a different perspective on the music.
In the last month I saw, Kris Davis, Jason Moran, and Joe Lovano and not a single review of any of them. And this has been going on for years.
It seems they all have podcasts and year end lists, and write about cultural impacts, but nothing about live performances.
Upcoming concerts will be Vijay Iyer, then Ulysses Owen Jr. and Caetano Veloso in April and I'm pretty sure there won't be a review of any of their performances.
Thanks for this comment—I'm sharing it on Twitter.
Let's not forget the economics of music journalism--there is none. It's almost impossible to make any money writing about music or musicians (unless it's the lifestyle/scandal angle), there is little continued presence of print music journalists outside the few remaining music mags or the NYTimes. I have written about music for years but now find I prefer to do it as a labor of love and support for the musicians; money doesn't even come into the equation. Without any financial underpinning writers are too hassled and hustling, without the time to develop an audience, explore new music and expose it, as well as the musicians making it every day.
Band t-shirts are not tacky, sir. How dare you insult band t-shirted people… okay, all kidding aside, in a streaming world the most direct and best way to show bands your appreciation and keep them going is 1. Go to their shows. 2. Buy their merch, i.e., t-shirts! (It also helps fans to meet and bond with one another.)
I hope that in the future Substack will become a place for critics to group themselves under one banner-- something that used to be called a magazine-- so that readers don't have to hunt through the haystack and only come up with one point of view, or even one genre. I also hope that Substack will enable "batch subscriptions" so that I can pay a monthly fee for a handful (five?) of different writers of my choosing, rather than individual subs which are more financially intimidating. And finally I hope that Substack will improve its feeble search and browse functions, so that a) I don't have to click through authors named Jazz, for example, as I look for authors writing about Jazz; and b) have some dim hope that listeners seeking new music will stumble upon mine, which currently lies on the cold, dark floor of the digital sea.
I miss the NME and Melody Maker from the 1970's.Serious music journalism. PitchFork et al were always far too middle class and far too smug in their writings,preferring to use a 12 lettered word when one of six could easily have been used. Then came the internet and the digital " revolution" and the subsequent new business models. Today we have so much ( too much) music available which in earlier times would have been quickly culled as the barrier to entry then was far more difficult ( and expensive). It's the same with the film industry for exactly the same reasons. Far lower costs of production and every Tom,Dick & Harry thought and think, they too can be a musician and/or a filmmaker. The result being we're inundated with so much dross in both areas.
Yes! Truly good fanzines will always be born. I reckon the old issues from 60s and 70s will become quite valuable.