How Music Criticism Influences Fan Opinion
"Bitter attitudes are surprisingly common in the trade; music journalists who play the part of hard-bitten cynics think their sarcasm lends authority to their opinions, when in fact it adds meanness to what should be a lighthearted game. There's nothing wrong with offering criticism and hard truths—that's part of the job—but at the end of the day people don't want to learn the reasons to hate something, they want to be turned on to something good…" – John Roderick, Seatle Weekly.
Do Fans Want To Be Turned Onto Something Good? See Below.
From the Media Psychology Review:
"The present study examined whether music critics can influence listeners' opinions of music or whether these critics simply reflect listeners' opinions of music. The results showed that listening to National Public Radio (NPR) critics favorably review artists' CDs influenced listeners' opinions of songs from those discs. This effect was observed across four artists of varying popularity, recognition, and musical styles (Stephen Malkmus, Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead, and Sloan), across three NPR critics (Will Hermes, Tom Moon, Ken Tucker), and across songs that were and were not referenced or previewed in the reviews. These results add to and extend the generality of previous demonstrations that music critics can influence – rather than simply reflect or predict – listeners' musical preferences…"
(via The Daily Swarm)
I watch this process in real time on Twitter pretty much every day. Seeing how the sausage of hip hop taste-making gets made is pretty depressing, but fortunately I come from politics and marketing so my opinion of humanity was already pretty low. This is an extremely important question, though, and I’m looking forward to the discussion here.
FWIW, I always prefer reviewers who deal with individual songs vs. those who want to bloviate about the album as cultural signifier. Pitchfork really screwed the pooch early on — I love their style but few bloggers have the skills to imitate it without being mere dicks.
I have a gut feeling that in coverage of more “serious” music genres, like classical, world, jazz and blues, there’s a lot less cynicism. Which makes my day rather radiant, actually. (Yeah, there isn’t as much money over here in the “NPR genres.” Maybe that’s the key.)
The closest I’ve got for snark in the fields I love is Norman Lebrecht, author of “Who Killed Classical Music?” And he is generally much more snarky about the business than about the art and artists.
There was an essay from ’05 on the Finger Tips Music blog that argued that music criticism should go away:
http://www.fingertipsmusic.com/classic/nocritics.htm
Quote: “We will be well served to reject the pop music critic model of arrogance and negativity. … So, look: there is nothing wrong with saying “I like”–it’s all there is, really, when it comes to a subjective experience such as listening to music. Being a so-called “music critic” has proven to be a crummy model for presenting “I like.””
I think NPR Music is largely an “I Like” website. There are music reviews heard in other parts of NPR, but the music section mostly just puts music up (accompanied with helpful write-ups of the artists) and encourages people to listen. It has helped me discover a lot of great new artists …
However, I still think music criticism is needed to filter out the good and leave just the great. That is where Metacritic, Pitchfork, the Sound Opinions podcast, and even Entertainment Weekly come in. Sometimes they are meaner than needed, but they do give you an idea of what is really worth investing time and money in out of the hundreds of releases highlighted around the web. It’s no big deal to disagree with them, but I would feel more lost without that additional gatekeeper given how much music is out there.
^^Great read, thanks for the heads up on this, Lynn.
Music criticism is a total sham profession. All any critic can say is that *they personally* do or don’t like somthing which is pretty much meaningless in todays massively multi-genre marketplace.
Case in point, I love Pendulum, but every critic, and die hard DnB lover absolutely hate them. Why? Because they are not true to DnB’s core tenets. You know why I love them? Cos they are not slaves to DnB’s core tenets. When critics hate on Pendulum, all they are saying is that it doesn’t contain what they are looking for. Guess what, it contains what I’m looking for so go take a flying leap!
As I work as a “internet journalist”, I have to say that that music criticism is not about promoting music, but promoting yourself, and your musical taste (as a DJ and producer, when I speak about myself). And there’s nothing bad about it – what is wrong is the fact, that – and that is true in my case – music critics are forced to comment on the genres they don’t like at all. If I was writing only about the things I generally enjoy, my words would mean a lot more to people who know my musical taste, because I’d be more credible.
But given the fact, that I, personally, don’t like modern trance -but I have some kind of respect for the old tracks – I can’t write anything that won’t sound stupid to the readers, or at least some of them – and won’t by the way have that “the old days were better” background.
It’s true that criticism influences, and it’s true that criticism is good. But it should be practised only by people who know what they’re talking about. And for me, personally, as long as the company I work in won’t change their politics, I’m either sentenced to be spit on by readers, or I’ll just have to quit at some point in my reputation-building process. Some people will follow me to the other e-magazine, website or whatever, and some won’t. I’m okay with that.
Yes – criticism is all about building reputation and being a selfish motherf***er. Don’t forget it. You can’t build a reputation as a critic, while praising anything just because it can encourage people to do something. That’s the nature of this profession – you have to be honest with people and yourself. That’s the key to being successful critic, especially in music world.
And remember two things.
1. It’s not always the content that encourages people to read things, it’s the personalities that post it.
2. As long as people are commenting, the review you wrote is good. It’s your own taste and you should be able to write what you want. Of course that’s not always possible, but that’s the other thing to discuss…
A review should tell the truth. If a song sucks it needs to be said. If there are great songs it should be underlined. This is your job if you are a journalist. Avoid being politically correct or lick band’s asses in advance for some future profits. If they are intelligent they will understand the criticism and try to improve what’s wrong with their music, especially if based on more honest reviews. If they get a fake picture of their album sent by asslickers then it falsifies all sales results and creates a wrong impact and false reaction. I personally hate when a lot of corrupted magazines write about new albums of well known bands that they are great while it’s clear the bands lost their steam a long time ago. A professional music journalist needs to have a good sense of hearing and enough of sensitivity as well as objective point of view to be able to write honest reviews. The same thing about matching bands to existing styles of music. If you can’t match, make your own name of the style instead of screwing others.
Some very good points raised there. reviews in the media aren’t about an honest opinion. Half the time the people giving the interview work for a parter company to the ones they are interviewing / reviewing. Its all about how much money you can throw at people these days. If you have a heap of cash then you can BUY good reviews. thats why i started my website http://www.youthgc.com to try and help Australian performers get their names out there in a world dedicated to money and selling out !
In the old days you had to go to HMV and purchase the CD in order to verify a critics opinion. Now you can simply just hit the play button on a sample and freely check it out yourself. That’s probably why Pendulum continues to march on building a huge fan base regardless of critics.
I think that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. To critisize is to lay your opinions about the good, bad, and ugly about a particular thing you are contemplating. If the person is honestly criticizing a material, it shouldn’t show bias, but fact based on the listening experience of the critic at that time.
Andre From Idlewood
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