Rolling Music Writers' Thread

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

http://www.mtv.com/news/2727414/brother-from-another-planet/

Greg Tate's piece on David Bowie from the site

jessica was the one who let me do the dollar bin column for pitchfork review. haven't heard anything since she left. so i guess i'm not doing it anymore. it was fun while it lasted!

Don't see who her successor there is, listed online...

serious question? have things ever been worse? obviously the answer is "no, but you've never" but I can't think of a time in the past... 7-8 years or so with a worse ratio of people who want me dead (via twitter and email, sometimes in those words) to people who want me not-dead (via payment for work)

I haven't suffered that (thank goodness) but in terms of pitching and getting responses, I can't begin to imagine the floods people are dealing with on all levels. (Heard an anecdotal story that confirms what it must be like on the editorial front.)

I can't imagine any freelancing situation that could be described as a "flood"

In terms of promo mail to sort through on the one end and pitches on the other? If I'm not in a constant flood myself, I don't know what else to call it.

relevant

https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2017/mar/31/five-things-i-learned-as-guardian-music-editor-rock-music-writing-michael-hann

that one is a treat.

"There used to be room on the charts for something dynamic and exciting such as the Arctic Monkeys."

TBF, that was a quote from someone else.

what is this "fair" you speak of...?

it was just a bright neon quote to me.

here's a thing I wrote about music writing way back when...way back.

https://medium.com/@markcoleman57/the-opposite-of-a-career-or-how-i-became-a-rock-critic-787020176542

Now that there is a good read.

id like to know how ppl keep from feeling like 99% of the writing they do isn't just ineffectual in the grand picture of life—wasnt it ever thus or w/e—but ineffectual even at reaching the ppl you want it to reach, or even making waves in the smaller communities in which we're writing

it just feels like shit isnt moving, theres no sense of a 'conversation,' just a lot of ppl being mad

try teaching

I wonder how much of it is just down to circumstance and luck. I mean: writing for the AMG when I did meant that as time went on I kept hearing from more and more people who had read my work and, in a number of cases, had said they discovered many bands as a result, that what was 'just' my words intrigued people and meant something. I still get occasional comments on those fronts, so in that regard I've been lucky enough to get a sense of validation, for lack of a better word. I don't feel my work is deathless, but knowing that it connected with others at a particular time and (virtual) place is enough.

"Over the course of 1977 and ’78 I attended concerts by, among others: Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon, Ella Fitzgerald, Roy Eldridge, Johnny Griffin, Woody Shaw, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra and The Art Ensemble of Chicago."

that there's an edumacation.

"it just feels like shit isnt moving, theres no sense of a 'conversation,' just a lot of ppl being mad"

there are lots of little conversations everywhere.

the internet makes me not want to read music writing at all. that's the truth of it.

I'm still adjusting to how disposable music content is these days. Publications used to print reviews with great authority, as if they were the final word. They were literally archived, and re-printed year after year. They were written so you could go back to them.

Now many reviews (to the extend publications even run reviews) are designed to grab clicks by commenting on "the conversation" or whatever the outrage or hastag of the week is. They're takes that are intended to look like they're original or even contrarian, even though they're clearly intended to square with the value system of their perceived readers. And it does work for grabbing clicks, but the content ages horribly because of it.

The other challenge, mostly unrelated, is for whatever reason readers seem less interested in ever in curated recommendations. People don't want to read about bands/artists they've never heard about

just looking at the gig listings in the village voice when i was a kid was powerful and overwhelming. i don't know what i would be like if i were growing up now. the too muchness. i would probably just retreat into one of those smaller conversations on the web. i suppose it would have been nice to have people to talk to about stuff i liked when i was a kid.

i guess reading reviews felt like talking to people about back when i was a kid, though of course w/bangs or christgau it was one sided conversation

about music

"People don't want to read about bands/artists they've never heard about"

the RIYL generation has VERY specific likes/dislikes. they do not want surprises. but maybe that has always been true. people like comfort.

it did feel like a conversation. the letters in Creem were the best. the letters in most magazines. except comic books. those people could drive you nuts.

x-post

i still feel like more people could DIY it and make some money? maybe? there is the youtube route but that's not for everybody. but just a cool website. doesn't cost much. what do people even read online? pitchfork and...uh.....which is my point. advertising. spotify links. whatever. i'm no financial genius. it takes some doing though.

it just seems weird that websites are dead. spotify deaded everything. someone did.

I mean I for one feel that my work is deathless, in that there is no point at which a review is sufficiently old that no one is going to send me hate mail for it anymore

have things ever been worse? obviously the answer is "no, but you've never" but I can't think of a time in the past... 7-8 years or so with a worse ratio of people who want me dead (via twitter and email, sometimes in those words) to people who want me not-dead (via payment for work)

The convo kinda veered from this original post, but some of this unfortunately seems unique to the experiences of a woman music writer. Like, I don't get all that much hate on Twitter as a guy, aside from the occasional band-orchestrated flood if they don't like a review I write (I had one band tweet at me to go fuck myself, then for the next three days my timeline was all retweets and likes telling me to go fuck myself). But that's pretty tame and just on Twitter—I don't get emails telling me that, and I'm guessing most of the guys itt don't get many hate emails, either.

And yeah, the idea of getting hate mail for a very old review. Never, never, never happens to guys, I don't think.

My relationship with music writing and views on it would be INFINITELY different if I were routinely getting threatening mail for shit I wrote years ago. I just don't have the stomach for that.

Writing about music if you're a minority is as bad as it's ever been.

at least fifteen years ago if I applied the queer or Latino lens there weren't 600 posts on social media and another 600 columns and "think pieces" condemning homophobia and racism. Thanks to the flood of such pieces, segments of the readership for rockcrit tunes out in 2017.

I get hate mail from time to time. Mostly when I write about female pop stars as if they have some sort of agency w regards to the product they put out though.

I don't know that the hate mail I get is different from anyone else's, but the proportions are different. the whole thing about hearing more and more people say they've read my work does not really happen for me; if anything, it's less and less. it's mostly a reflection on me, of course, but the situation still exists

Re the difficulty in covering new bands, as discussed by the Guardian ex-editor above: the main way I've gotten around that is by writing more previews---so many bands make almost all their money on the road, as ever---and the main way to distinguish between them, if any, is by making the preview mainly a microview of current product---there being only so many ways you can rehash the career saga of most 23-year-olds, however gifted---especially if they keep coming back to town (lotta bands, yeah, but when it's five on the bill at the death metal bar, with some of them sitting in the alley between sets to appease the fire marshall, you do tend to see some familiar faces and backstories two or three times a school year---of course I'm talking about collegetown alt-weeklies, nothing useful for Guardian-type coverage.) Given about 100 words a shot, it can work---compression has its own fascination...

who says they have more readers now? i think i probably have less readers now than any time in the last like ten years despite being moderately more 'successful'

I haven't done any writing for six years but it actually started a few years before that. I was able to survive into my mid 30s working at an independent record store and writing about music because Columbus is a cheap place to live and I had meager needs and I was always able to write for a local weekly newspaper (I did so in Raleigh before Columbus, I eventually was editing the entertainment section of a weekly newspaper that tied in with Ohio State) which was consistent work as well as international metal magazines and the odd piece in something more mainstream.

However in 2007 I got a gig at a metal record company however this meant relocating to a new city. The editors at the local weekly newspapers here literally ignored every email I sent and phone call I made. Combined with music magazines drying up and the 50+ hours working at the label cutting into the hours I could have spent hustling up writing assignments, my writing trickled away.

Not long afterwards there was writing on the wall that my job was going away (that writing being all of my duties at work were going away). Right around that time my state legalized poker in casinos and I was able to jump into a job as a poker dealer. I quit the record company just in time to avoid being laid off but suddenly I was making well more than twice as much money doing something I enjoyed (I like poker).

It's funny, the last thing I had published was after I started working at the casino. Out of the blue William Goodman from Spin.com emailed me. He was supposedly given my name as a Philly writer who could review a rejuvenated Glassjaw concert. To date that is the last publicized music criticism I ever did. (Oddly enough it's still online.)

It's funny because I was paid $150 to review the show. It was a day off at the casino but it occurred to me that getting $150 to review a concert was probably pretty high for what I would get from most outlets, and if I had to take a night off work to do it, I would have lost money since even a bad day dealing cards for 8 hours was netting me at least a third more than that. It kind of solidified my decision.

Well, next week I am getting something published for the first time since then. It's for a friend and former editor's webzine. I won't be getting paid but I am hoping that it might help offset the costs of being a consumer (last year I spent $3,713.17 on music, with about $2,600 of that on CDs and tickets to concerts). I am working days now for the first time in years so my nights are free and I will try and do this again. Hopefully I won't suck too badly at it.

Anyway, this thread popping up now as I am nervously taking steps towards writing about music again made me want to share my story. I wonder if anyone has any advice? Or assignments? :P

i think its fine if people can do stuff forever, but there is a part of me that thinks its kinda cool if people move on and then younger people take up where they left off. i like the evolution of ideas and opinion. there's something to be said for someone putting their heart and soul into a fanzine for a year or two and then just...stopping. and then other people do the same thing. the conversation keeps going.

this guy i know put on a year's worth of shows at my store. 50 shows? it was too much! it was crazy. but memorable. and that was it. one year and done. and after that other people did stuff in other places and he rented a space and did a series of shows in one space for a summer and on and on. permanence is overrated. maybe that's why i'm not a big fan of reunion shows.

(not really talking about people who write for a living but more the part-time/freelance/love of it kinda people as far as crit/writing goes.)

I write for Burning Ambulance whenever I can. Sometimes that's two pieces in a week, sometimes it's nothing for a month.

I like having columns. It's a guaranteed deadline I know about at the beginning of every month. Right now I have a monthly column for Stereogum, and a periodic column for The Wire (not every month, more like every two or three months).

I don't like pitching, because the stuff I want to write about, very few people care about, and the stuff people are willing to publish, I mostly don't care about. The only places I pitch now are places I have a track record with: The Wire (articles and reviews), Down Beat (articles), and Bandcamp (articles). Most of my income currently comes from other, writing-adjacent work.

I couldn't imagine having to crank out 500 words in, like, two hours whenever Beyoncé releases a new video. That must be pure fucking hell, even if you actually like Beyoncé.