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

[koganbot]

Well, I draw a totally opposite conclusion on one point: given the Internet, the only possible future for print magazines (and to some extent, e-zines) is analysis and debate and personality (the personality of the writers, that is), since there's no way that a magazine can keep up with news and reviews. Problem might be that the magazines willing to print analysis will end up reading like boring mags like Harpers and the New Yorker. What needs to happen is for one person backed by money to make a smart decision, but I don't know if this'll happen in my lifetime.

And I'll say that in its prime the writing on ilX was way more alive and rocking and better than the writing in the Voice under Chuck, and that's not Chuck's fault at all - commercial rock criticism was already a sick sick puppy from long before the Internet. Why Music Sucks and Radio On were better than the Voice under Doug-Joe-Ann-Evelyn-Eric, and they were basically message boards on paper, though with many months of lag between posts. And the reason I got so frustrated with the smart people in WMS and on ilX (and poptimists) not taking their ideas further. You guys don't seem to understand that if you don't do it, no one will.

[koganbot]

Put a colon after "further"

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

the problem is that the space to take ideas further is hard-won -- in fact has still to BE won... my experience with taking ilx/wms ideas back to long-form "old media" has not been great (cf the noise-piece in the wire; my proposal re yr book for nlr): i have been fighting for some years for funding etc to finish my book and/or give me space for decent research

second, of course, to give myself space i've kinda had to move away from ilx a lot = cutting myself off from the energy that produced the better ideas

i am open to any and all ideas to fast-track the best possible kind of semi-public space for taking the ideas further (or actually even a semi-adequate one)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's the fate of ideas to advance incrementally via nomadic interweb energy.

[koganbot]

Well, one of my projects starting TOMORROW will be toss ideas around about how to take things further and how to finance it.

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

I feel like I shouldn't be saying this, but the only person in the US who's gotten anything close to mainstream attention lately for writing about music is Chuck Klosterman. Which maybe means something and maybe doesn't, I dunno.

[koganbot]

the problem is that the space to take ideas further is hard-won -- in fact has still to BE won... my experience with taking ilx/wms ideas back to long-form "old media" has not been great

Yeah, but that's not what I'm talking about. It's that the people on ilX wouldn't themselves take their ideas further on ilX or on blogs etc., where long-form is at one's fingertips. And I've never bought the idea that lack of time and funding is the primary reason for this failure. Obviously lack of time and funding are drawbacks, but it wasn't the Wire's fault that no one on ilX did an in-depth analysis - or any analysis at all, really - of your noise piece when you posted it on Radio Free Narnia and linked to ilX.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

yes but this is like saying why does no one write and read great epic poems in the pub -- ilx is a terrible venue for longform discussion precisely bcz of its speed, there's something new and shiny and fun to chatter about along every minute

i think "taking the idea further" really IS abt slowing the idea up -- pretty much by definition -- and the responses will be commensurately slower

so yes, in the abstract blogs and ilx are already to "space" to take ideas further, if space just means "empty page to be filled", but i guess i meant space more in the "public space" sense, and there what i see is several atttempts at creating a follow-on discussion zone -- viz dissensus, poptimists, haha sukrat, popular comments thread -- none of which quite work

also i think the kind of discussion yr asking for requires a difft kind of discussion moderator than ilx has (or ought to have) -- it needs someone whose JOB is to say, "no, let's stay on this point and take it further" (ie like you at WMS)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

it's interesting that the "rolling" threads which seem to have worked best are the ones which are based round popular musics seen (eg by simon r in that email) as "commonplace non-attractors" -- as if more "strange attractor" type musics (or media generally) will gather too many of the "wrong kind" of disputant (i'm thinking of how useless and how toxic eg the film threads always become)

(this argt slightly depends on me casting eg simon reynolds as the equivalent of dr morbius as critique-killer -- so i wonder if that's what i'm actually saying?)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

YES YES YES to your last point. I am working out how to try and pitch myself as this in the market research world incidentally! It's how I always wanted Poptimists to work but the LJ interface turns out to be useful for completely other things.

I agree that the ILX inheritor spaces don't do THIS job but they all have done jobs that ILX itself has failed to do.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I'm on a freelance music journalist mailing list which is v UK-centric (and v London-centric within that) (plus N Raggett unsurprisingly) - there was discussion of the latest crap weekly to fold, the Popworld Pulp or something, it was also discussed on Poptimists. I threw out the idea of the one print mag concept I'd be genuinely enthused about - dunno if you know the London Review of Books, but an equivalent of that which was writer-led, by which I mean led by writers with personality and also not demographic-led; it wouldn't necessarily be tied to the PR run of release schedules and so on, because that is a massive reason for poor writing (chasing promos, not being allowed to listen to promos, finally acquiring promos the day before the deadline), so the writers could write about something 50 or 20 or 10 or 2 years old, or 2 months old, or 2 months in advance, or whatever, and they'd be of a standard that this would still make for interesting reading, and there would be analysis/debate/personality and all the things you mention and also HUMOUR and variety so it wouldn't be dry, and there'd be academic stuff and disposable stuff and everything.

Anyway, everyone on the list was really enthusiastic. Also, we all knew that it would be bought by precisely five people, so it'll never happen.