Flagplanters v Cogitants

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I pulled this out of the ILX EMP thread. It's by Scott P, who is a senior editor at Pitchfork (he edits my column, conflict of interest fans). He's summarising a current hot topic.

"...To an emerging generation of kids, music criticism is 24-hour news and leaks and mp3s and ratings and getting to things first. It's not about digesting music and it's not having meaningful conversations about it or reading someone else's ideas about it. Indeed, it's barely having conversations about it all. The democratization of music crit-- on mssg boards, mp3 blogs, etc.-- seems to not be resulting in ppl sharing more ideas with one another, but falling over another just to plant flags. And now many (specifically indie) fans seem actively suspicious of anyone who talks at length about music.

P4k's very act of printing longform reviews** and attempting to share ideas about music is, quite oddly, resented and seen to many as us cramming our opinions down someone's throat or inherently self-indulgent because ppl don't look to music writers for ideas, merely for suggestions on what to download. It's resented and kicked against because music crit is, to many of them, seemingly merely used as a tipsheet and now they can just 'listen to an mp3 and make up their own mind.'

And I fear that with mp3s giving people v. little tangible to grasp onto (no album art, liner notes, photos-- no product), the internet eliminating the need to hunt for info or sounds about/from an artist (let alone make choices about who to literally invest in), the rise of DVDs and video games as products that kids cherish, collect, and participate in w/o other distractions, and music almost exclusively something you do while you're doing something else (a background/lifestyle item) that there is little myth-making or magic in pop music these days, and as a result fewer ideas and conversations and arguments. In short, the future of writing about music, or whatever Amy's panel was called, is pretty grim because the future of getting people to invest their thoughts in music seems grim, too.

** Put it another way: P4k and its peers and contemporaries could be the first and last eZines. If the future of music crit is online, then the old print mag format-- followed by P4k, Stylus, Dusted, Drowned in Sound, CMG, etc.-- is almost N/A. Maybe I'm off but I can't recall a new eZine starting in the past few years. It's all blogs, and lately all that means is posting music or videos. The energy and ideas that departed the Voice, for example, seem to primarily have gone to writing for retail (eMusic), MTV Urge, or writing about single tracks (the very good PTW). I don't blame anyone-- you'd be foolish to start an eZine now-- but what does that say about sustaining lengthy word counts, which was the very thing the internet and the first wave of blogs got right, let alone expressing and communicating ideas?"

Thoughts? Comments? This is a huge topic, obviously.

Comments

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

one of the thing scott and amy don't really examine AT ALL is the social context "ver kidz" are downloading all this material INTO: the impulse to group-historicise what's shared is going to catch up with every new generation as it gets older (probably sooner as the mass requiring retrospective organisation will be massier)

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

How so? (Also, please to talk about the "results in bad writing" idea you were going to address in yr paper)