Drowned in Sound have been posting pieces all week about the death of music criticism, featuring such provocative titles as:
- Being a music critic when music criticism is dead
- The strange and cryptic lore behind assigning numbers to records
- Love thy reader
- Kissing without the sex
Looks interesting (I haven’t read it). Any thoughts? Either on the pieces themselves or the general idea(s) being bandied about?
RockCritics.com 
The biggest differnce has been that it’s now much easier for a music consumer to get reviews of albums or shows. And for the internet music fan it’s all right there free. Now some music critic’s will tell you that the internet is not the best source for music reviews. But I’ve found a ton of stuff, written by a bunch of people that I never knew existed, that’s been pretty enlightening.
Still, I love to read the legends of music criticism. Christgau, Marcus and Marsh. These guys want to get paid for their stuff and don’t give away their opinions to freely.
But with more music magazines going down yearly, the internet will soon be the only place they’ll be able to get paid. Outside of Rolling Stone, of course.
I’m fairly certain that 80% of the new music I’ve heard this decade has been the result of reading things online, by which I don’t mean going to rollingstone.com to read a cyber version of an already existing ‘zine, but rather, stuff I hear people chattering and arguing about in chat groups and blog comments boxes and whatnot. Another 15% is just finding songs I’ve needed to use for DJing, i.e., consulting Billboard charts. This leaves 3% for overhearing stuff on the radio or in shops (or in a movie or TV show), and 2% for finding out about new music through “traditional means” — i.e., reading a review in a legit publication. That’s a pretty accurate breakdown, I think.
Much enjoying the 3 versus 2 percent breakdown! I think I’ll go spin Todd Snider’s “Statistician’s Blues.” (Wait, I guess we don’t spin on i-pods).