First off Michael Azerrad is most known for his biography of Nirvana. That being said he along with a table full of other 'pro's sat around and discussed the state of music in wrting. See, things have come pretty far from the Rolling Stone, Creem, Spin days, hell some most of those arent even around anymore.
What is around is scrappy bloggers with nothing too lose. They're gaining strength and this DIY punk rock movement of people with a laptop are making an impact as no one thought would. Similar to the old school 'fanzine' saying what you mean and not worrying about the ramifications is liberating, but it is also a new way of getting noticed.
Even at our smaller size we hear at rocknyc hundreds of press releases a week. Spread amongst our writers PR firms, labels and bands themselves reach out to us to mention them. Its the new way of business. Where once it was more a 'find the new big thing' mentality now the new big thing is going to come to you- you just have to sort it out.
Azzerad has a bit more haughty opinion:
Back in 2008, I was on a panel on IFC's website with some distinguished names in the field of online music writing: Pitchfork founder Ryan Schreiber, Bill Crandall (then at Spinner), and Maura Johnston (then with Idolator). We discussed how the rise of blogging would affect music writing. I was enthusiastic about it — when media gets democratized, taken out of the hands of all-powerful conglomerates and given to the people, good things can happen. I wrote a book called “Our Band Could Be Your Life,” which is about when that started to happen in music in the '80s: Thanks to new technology and the DIY ethos of punk rock, all kinds of media became more readily available to ordinary people, and they started fanzines, record labels, recording studios, and bands. In other words, they Did It Themselves, and we got to hear a lot of great music that might not otherwise have been heard.
Name dropper. But he makes a good point. But perhaps now with all the blogging being done (guest lists are full of kids with iphone cameras and a tiny blog) is it time for bands to simply write about themselves?
Says Azzerad:
I'm always very careful to make the distinction between music criticism and music journalism. A lot of people don't. But criticism doesn't require reporting. You can write criticism at home in your underwear. On the other hand, journalism takes legwork — you have to get out there and see things and talk to people. And that takes resources for travel and hotels and other expenses. And because music magazines have taken a financial hit in recent years, music journalism has taken a hit too. It's just much cheaper and more page-view-friendly to run a review or a listicle.
And even criticism has taken a hit: For a while now, many music publications — including really major ones like Rolling Stone, Time, and Entertainment Weekly — have reduced their reviews to a paragraph or so. That can make for some pithy, witty writing, but it takes more words than that to spin out something truly thoughtful. A lot of music fans are still interested in insightful perspectives on music — maybe even more interested than ever, since everyone needs help making sense of the incredible variety of sounds that have sprung up in the wake of the internet revolution. There's a lot of room for unique, qualified voices who can provide good reads. And musicians are an excellent source for all those qualities. Musicians think and talk about music all day, so they have lots of practice discussing it. They hear lots of new stuff and find out about it before most people. They certainly know how the sausage is made. And guess what: a lot of them can write really well.
Where does this lead the future of music thoughts? Everyone has an opinion. Everyone what's to sell you their beliefs. Some people, like my co editor Iman Lababedi have been doing this for so long that he simply wouldnt function without it. An ingrained love of music of all sorts begs to be discovered and offered to anyone who will read it- no matter how many or how few. Michael was obviously using the panel to talk up his new music website "The Talkhouse" where he has musicians writing about music and is about as blah as you would expect to be.
I am always shocked when I hear our hit counts. Having done this for these few years I still consider writing about music like talking in my living room. When we get comments (or death threats) I cant help but wonder why you're reading this. Go find your own opinion, or did I just convince you to love Morrissey and hate Bob Seger?