Rolling Music Writers' Thread

if you know a magazine hates Imagine Dragons or Lumineers or whatever and you're cold pitching to them for the first time with positive feature ideas on those bands?

Magazines/websites should not hold party lines on any band (ex. the obv Skrewdriver etc), they should be open to good writing on any band even if they are normally critical whipping boys

i don't think that's how professional publications work

XP: Yeah, and I should get paid for every piece of writing that I do at a rate per word that's gone up noticeably in the last 25 years but I don't. I just wrote a piece on a feminist Egyptian film maker documenting an underground revolutionary dance scene in Cairo. It's gone up on my site because no one will pay for it. In an extremely abstract way I think this is wrong and that NME or Q should give me a decent amount of money and cover my travel expenses, instead of me having to save up for ages so I can pay to do my own job but I'm not upset about it - it's just the way things are. So you can either deal with what things are like and get work or sit round complaining about what they should be like and not get work. There are enough threads on ILM about how rubbish the music press is, I was under the impression this thread was different and about practical advice.

And, as I said, quite clearly, I am open to good writing on any band but I'd sooner give that kind of work to a trusted scribe. If you are cold calling as a first time writer how do I know you're going to provide good copy? More often than not people sending these kinds of pitches in are indulging in immature passive aggressiveness: "I want to work at your magazine - here's why I don't like it."

I'd recommend telling them to move to London, meet a few friends who're cooler than yourselves, then bam, you'll end up writing for Vice like me.

I've never been paid for anything, which sucks a bit after doing music writing nearly week in week out for four years now.

*yourself

i think it's very important for people to ask themselves why they want to do something, regularly

NV otm.

I don't pitch pieces or hustle but I imagine it's pretty stressful. Writing pieces can be stressful. Sending pieces for review is stressful. Seeing them published and having dozens of people telling you that you are a idiot for liking x, y or z is stressful. It's also fun and rewarding but doing it every day and knowing my financial security depended on it would be too much.

I accidentally wound up writing for money after being approached by a publication whose message board I posted on. It's possibly an underrated way of getting your ideas, tone and style seen by editors.

xpost A former ILX regular once used that very tactic with me, Nick.

I can probably guess who.

https://twitter.com/Spinner/status/327858136218206208
https://twitter.com/Spinner/status/327858952425574401

what was it?

(tweets gone now)

aol shut down spinner effective today

And AOL Music in general, it seems.

Say I have what I think is a good idea for a profile piece. However, I'm an untrusted scribe. If I pitch the idea to an editor and they like it, wouldn't they just say "yes, good idea" and then commission one of their trusted scribes to write it? Alternatively, should I go ahead and write the piece and then submit it in full? If I do that, though, I wouldn't be able to say to the subject of the profile that I was writing about them for such-and-such a magazine.

http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/214774/spin-lets-its-editor-in-chief-go

Ouch.

http://crumbler.tumblr.com/post/87321590093/the-oral-history-of-music-tumblr-2008-2014

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLKnCeeAW48&feature=kp

is "music tumblr" something different from regular tumblr? i've never actually tumbld. i've always hated how tumblr looked.

if i read someone lamenting the death of music pinterest in 10 years i will know that i have lived too long.

This music tumblr---well, this tumblr of pics and links to music---is good-to-great:
http://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/

courtesy ilxor's own tylerw.

this is a big deal

okay, i guess it makes sense. like music blog. i guess i'd never heard it used like that. like, in the title of something like that. so people who tumbl probably don't like it when you call their thing a blog, right?

I don't know about that, but tumblr occupied (occupies?) some area in between blogs and message boards.

though that was just where the livejournal crew ended up

number of times the phrase "safe space" comes up there is telling i might suggest

"I’m not sure critics are necessary for musical evaluation purposes as much as they used to be. Which is why, when you see music criticism on Tumblr now, you’ll mostly find discussions about feminism or queer representation or other social and cultural concerns. It’s becoming less about the music and more about the discursive implications of performance and image and art. Which is interesting in some conversations, but also obvious. Like, I get talking about Beyoncé’s feminism or Macklemore’s queer activism, but why isn’t anyone mulling over the discursive elements of a One Republic song? We need to get less obvious, I think.” — nervousacid

word

norm is the best dude in that whole cascade of whatever, otm

doomandgloom a stellar music tumblr also otm

"number of times the phrase "safe space" comes up there is telling i might suggest"

tumblr is a platform with millions of users who belong to many different demographics. this is the equivalent of saying "number of times #tcot comes up on twitter is telling"

Extended trailer for Ticket To Write, new doc about rock writers in 60s and 70s, with appearances by many of the same. From director of A Box Full of Rocks, The El Cajon Years of Lester Bangs, also linked on this page, with much other Bangsiana, incl. "Let It Blurt."
Director overhypes it a bit, but mostly comments by crits in this nice-sized sample
(do we get the whole thing if subscribe to his channel? Haven't tried it yet)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQ1isHKPHbA

Seems like emphasis is on early to mid-70s with less late '70s (but that's just a guess based on the trailer)

Think so, yes. More info when I get it.

Ron Charles ‏@RonCharles 20m20 minutes ago Manhattan, NY

Ellen Willis's daughter Nona accepts #NBCC Criticism prize for ESSENTIAL ELLEN WILLIS.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B_7so-_UwAA0vyt.jpg:large

One the first, still one of the best.

Posted this on a freelancers thread but maybe its better here:

http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/6707243/music-journalism-usa-today-times-picayune-daily-news

Music coverage at metropolitan dailies has taken a major hit in recent weeks, with writers at several legacy city papers leaving their full-time positions.

Jim Farber announced on Sept. 17 that he had been let go from the New York Daily News, where he had been covering music since 1990, in a round of layoffs that hit the paper's highest-profile talent particularly hard. New Orleans’ Times-Picayune dissolved its music department in a 21 percent budget slice of the paper's content operation. The Advance Publications-owned title laid off music writer Alison Fensterstock and offered her colleague Keith Spera a metro reporting job that would, according to a Facebook post, allow him to "write the occasional music-related news story."

The 2.8-million circulation national daily USA Today, meanwhile, said goodbye to its longtime music writer Brian Mansfield. The Nashville-based 18-year veteran of the paper reveals his next move will take him out of traditional journalism into a new role as content director at public relations firm Shore Fire Media (Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, St. Vincent).

Saw Alison Fensterstock speak at an EMP re New Orleans bounce music and other subjects, and have read her stuff. Its a shame she has been laid off

"Music Coverage Endangered" in a world where there's like three Noisey posts on the fucking Future/Drake tape

obviously great but not surprising -- the thinking is almost certainly "show previews can run in briefs, national music stories can be wire."

fwiw the person who got me into journalism in the first place is still at the paper but again it's more metro/lifestyle

*NOT great. christ. (as if anyone doesn't know my stance on newspaper layoffs by now)

re: writing for free

I've never done it because I generally don't think we should, but do you all make exceptions for, say, a badass publication that covers great shit and all-around rules but exists largely thanks to the efforts of volunteers? (They do sell ads.)

Like I love this magazine - a sort of fringe-ish but substantial publication in a big city - and pitched a story idea and they say no one gets paid for contributions. Which I don't have any reason to NOT believe.

Should I be more skeptical?

If it's something like ESOPUS or whatever that clearly exists to exist, the do it.

If it's like Brooklyn Mag or the L Magazine or whatever the version of that is in your city, then pass with a quickness

Or just go pick any Vice vertical and they'll pay you a little bit more than free!

more the former than the latter, imo

thanks wgw

(xpost)

Sometimes I wish there were, or had been, a music publication that worked on a similar model to the old Mean Machines mags I used to read: A small, familiar editorial team; not afraid of being ribald or humorous; two-page major album features including 2-3 capsule reviews by different members of staff representing differences of opinion. Could that have worked?

Mean Machines? gaming zine

yeah from the early 90s. I used to love it when I was a spotty teen. They weren't afraid of making fun of themselves and the content they were covering. I guess Select had a similar sense of humour in its heyday. But yeah, I never knew why it's always been the case that publications and sites depend on the view of just one person when talking about an album for example.

Down Beat publishes 3-4 reviews a month where 3 different writers cover each album. But that's jazz so nobody knows about it.

http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2016/01/8587714/grantland-redux-mtv

5 Grantlanders now at MTV Music News website plus Greg Tate and others

From Jess*ca Hopper tweet--Brian Phillips, David Turner, Hazel Cills, Molly Lambert, Amy Nicholson, Meaghan Garvey are @MTV now.

Oh, and Jessica is now editorial director at MTV news! I guess Pitchfork has some job openings now

Have people ever gone to MTV.com for music writing before this? I can't remember ever reading an article there. I just assumed it was there so people could stream whatever episodes of The Challenge or Teen Wolf they'd missed.

I never have.

So I missed the old news from November 2015 that Hopper was leaving Pitchfork
http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2015/11/13/music-critic-and-editor-jessica-hopper-on-her-departure-from-pitchfork