Is SPIN really circling the drain?

last heard about her when she was getting joan of arced on village voice's cover

rip 2006

I see Whiney has put his foot down

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Magazines Killed The Twitter Star

As long as it's an augmentation rather than a replacement, then yeah, I don't see what's wrong with that. Though I like incredibly negative reviews as well as incredibly positive ones.

140 words? That's a novel. These guys do it in almost half the number of words.

Um, tweets are 140 *characters*, not words.

"character" is a word, emil.y, get it together.

Ah, a mere Tweet. My bad.

It is an agumentation, they say they will still do 20 long form reviews a month on the website, but that seems like a hugely reduced number from what their print mag was hitting per month before they went to bimonthly. I don't know, I love Whiney and I enjoyed his original project and I know this is inevitable, but I find this turn depressing as fuck. I like to read well thought-out longform criticism. I also know that will still exist other places, just disappointed that this is a step in the wrong direction.

i guess i have no idea what anyone here means by "longform" but spin certainly wasn't publishing any long form criticism in its magazine

Well, thats true, but still.

I just pulled the "longform" quote from Whiney's release. Problem is that I don't see many people to be as creative and clever with tweet reviews as Whiney was.

honestly i think that pulling out 20 of the most important records a month for "longform review" treatment (that is a lot of records, btw) while just lumping everything else into a grab bag of bite sized blurbs makes as much sense as one 500 word review and twenty 80 word blurbs

Like I said, it was inevitable, but I'd still rather read those 80 word blurbs than 140 characters. Minor point, but keep in mind these 140 characters will need to convey artist and title, those 80 word blurbs were at least free of that limitation.

I know I'm getting old man yells at clouds here, but I really hate this massive rush to abbreviate our exposure to culture.

Love that line about "under-covered genres" like hip-hop, metal and chart pop.

BY SPIN was i think the implication there

But, lets also remember that cokemachineglow proves that longer reviews are by no means inherently better.

lol

It just makes it feel like Spin in running on fumes in the ideas department. Like, that's the best thing you could come up with? An idea that's already been done, was fun for five minutes in 2009, but is well past its sell-by date at this point?

you don't spend a lot of time around here do you

It will give Whiney more time to complain about hipsters on ilx.

Makes me feel like Position Position was running on fumes in the criticism department.

Fart fumes.

lol

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/That_Makes_Me_Angry.jpg

anything that makes people mention/talk about/think about spin magazine can only be a good thing. at this late date.

I didn't know whiney even had a job tbh

if it were possible to discuss this decision without Whiney getting super-aggro, it's an interesting and "important" decision with much to say about it, but lol at anybody who thinks Whiney didn't go into this with an "oh boy, lemme scrap with some people about this, I love to argue" attitude

I have the impression Whiney does everything with that attitude - ordering coffee, picking out socks, changing the channel on the TV

it's an interesting and "important" decision with much to say about it

i will be very surprised if anyone is thinking about this feed by 01/13.

(bc the mayans will have destroyed the world)

this is a weird/sad concession to the fact that cultural discourse has become largely truncated and economically worthless... is that what's interesting about it?

isnt the trade-off that there will now be actual long-form criticism in spin? (am i reading this right?) seems like a net positive

its sort of a switcheroo, people think that they're taking a step towards twitter but really they're taking a step towards critical essays

Bring back Joshua Clover!

I wish magazines had much larger reviews sections. More music is made than ever and I'd quite like to read about some of it. I hate the NME style of a couple of reviews over 2 pages with most of the page taken up by a photo.

wait the NME is still being printed

yup

i guess selling 20,000 copies a week will still make more money than being the uk's answer to pitchfork

its sort of a switcheroo, people think that they're taking a step towards twitter but really they're taking a step towards critical essays

if that were true, it would be a decision of remarkable courage, but here's what looks to be the case; first

Thankfully, this new plan also means no more overwrought 80-word blurbs on middling, nobody-cares bands where a grade of "6" or a "7" ultimately translates to "Hey, this exists; and it doesn't totally blow!"

this is otm. Review space in Spin and elsewhere is now so trimmed, and the per-review word count so short, that there's really no point in the reviews at all. Like, no point. They're only there because music magazines, historically, have had record reviews. But this (emphasis added):

We will still be posting about 20 longform reviews a month on SPIN.com. The very best records of the year will be given special consideration and placement, notated by the tag "SPIN Essentials." You can read our first Essential review, a celebration of Guided By Voices' triumphant return, Let's Go Eat The Factory, written by SPIN magazine's editor-in-chief Steve Kandell.

links to a 700-word piece, only "long form" by the most easily-distracted reader. I mean - the decision is half-right; there's no point in running 100-word reviews. Anything under 500 words is kind of a joke, in terms of actually offering critical insight; I'm more likely to buy and read Spin if it doesn't have a "here's where the reviews go, these aren't really reviews though" section. Tweets are fun to read & are a great exercise in concision, but the idea that they're of actual critical value (or that, since the object of criticism can be easily heard by the reader, the function of criticism is somehow diminished) is dubious, to put it mildly.

But more than anything, and this I think is healthy and good, this seems like a decision by the new editor to do something restoring a little vitality to the magazine. The actual idea, I think, is full of holes, and the editor couldn't really defend it without resorting to a lot of questionable assumptions - about readers, about how things got to where they are, about what might be done about that. But as a gesture, it indicates a willingness to think big, to get attention, which like...I don't like that you gotta do things that get attention, it makes me sad, but you do, and so you should at least do things that get attention that open up some discussion because that's a net good. So, good decision, stupid rationale, kinda, is my take

To me it sounds like 1500 opportunities per year to drive traffic to the website and that's about it.

My friend's band recently got a 6 or a 7 in Spin and was super thrilled about it. I doubt he would've been as pumped to add a tweet to his press kit.

No, polyphonic, I think you're wrong about that; I think the editor has passionate opinions about music coverage, I don't think we have any evidence that his general curmudgeonliness is actually cynicism.

x-post

I think actually that tweets attributable to Spin will be just as good as # ratings from the magazine as far as the press kit goes. And honestly as a guy who has hated numerical ratings systems since he was a kid I'd be pretty happy to see them dispensed with by @SPINreviews.

I don't think we have any evidence that his general curmudgeonliness is actually cynicism.

I definitely don't think Whiney is cynical about the music he cares about, and I'm sure lots of bands that wouldn't normally be highlighted by Spin will appear for the first time via the tweets, but I don't think Twitter reviews are very effective. I didn't care for Whiney's 1000 or @Discographies or any similar projects. Might as well just link to a YouTube at that point.

eh numbers are the only thing that make one sentence reviews a 'viable form of criticism'

I would prefer the SF Chronicle rating system tbh

http://kookykitsch.com/Portals/0/productimages/294_2298e.jpg

I don't know - I thought 1000timesyes occasionally achieved a sort of condensed ideal. (I totally love @discographies.) The first several @SPINreviews are up, though, and the shortcomings are pretty immediately clear - a lot of things (Ladysmith Black Mambazo, for example) can't really be usefully reviewed without first placing them in a context. Sure: readers can Google to get the context, but the critical value of the tweet review is nil. Plus, most businesses want favorites & retweets bad, so the probable tendency will be toward zingy lines and colorful similes. This, like I need to say it, is neither a service to music nor criticism.

isnt the trade-off that there will now be actual long-form criticism in spin? (am i reading this right?) seems like a net positive

― Sh1pley Gohard (D-40), Wednesday, January 11, 2012 7:09 PM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^^^^^