pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

morrisp's thing as new guy is putting on airs among all us reprobates like he'll finally get to the bottom of things with his incisive critical interventions

the feigned ignorance by ppl who have posted here for 15 years when we talk abt rockism and popism is one of the weirdest things imo

its kind of like the ‘how could i possibly understand what “intersectionality” means—that word has like, eight syllables!’ routine from 5 years ago

iLM built a great tower to reach pop heaven but GOD struck it down and now all our pop music discourse is confounded

LOL @ u guys

except I don’t understand why you guys are talking about cool kids turning up their noses at pop music as if that’s a new phenomenon

i mean, it’s more abt the ebb and flow about the mean. some cool kids (rightly) don’t turn up their noses at pop music, but maybe more do now than did 8 years ago

If you say it, I believe it (sounds like you have your ear to the ground)... it just struck me a little funny, I thought “not liking the most popular stuff” was a fairly constant signifier of “coolness.”

This conversation is very interesting, except I don’t understand why you guys are talking about cool kids turning up their noses at pop music as if that’s a new phenomenon(?)

for me at least this wasn't really about pop music per se.

more the idea that in an age where the starting position is that you can listen to virtually anything there are some pockets where the 'perverse' choice of only listening to (and passionately investing in) <insert> acquires a heightened nobility precisely because it's a more arbitrary choice than it used to be.

it's not being anti-pop music (although it can be combined with an anti-pop stance) - more anti-eclectism.

i mean again that was something that always happened but it feels like it has a different resonance in this era

I see what you’re saying...

I only interact with one “Zoomer” on a semi-regular basis — a teenager in my extended family who listened to classic punk in middle school; was heavily into Black Veil Brides and Kyary Pamyu Pamyu a few years ago; and now sometimes wears t-shirts of obscure local rappers. I asked her a few weeks ago if she likes Billie Eilish (because she kind of has that “look”) — I received an emphatic “No.” Why not? “She just copied Melanie Martinez, and her music isn’t as good.”

What I think has changed is that music is so extremely accessible, effectively for free, that the economic structure of young people's relationship to music has changed.

The conditions of access to music have changed but the revolutionary implications of this shift haven't rattled the habits of most listeners. The obsessives' palette of obsessions has broadened while almost everyone else is stuck in an algorithmic ghetto of curated playlists. (This is all anecdotal, of course.)

people always say this but it’s extremely simple and everyone who reads this board understands what it means

I don't agree with either part of this fwiw.

Likewise. I support certain versions of poptimism and vehemently disagree with others.

TS: Poptimism 1.0 vs. 2.0

I'm a 1.5er myself.

This is the most interesting discussion on ILM I've seen in a long time. Good stuff, esp. flopson and Tim F.

At the newsroom today the editor blasted Angel Olsen, CCR, Cream, Method Man, and George Benson. This miscellany would, of course, defeat anyone. When I asked him about it, he said, "This shit just comes up" on Spotify recommendations.

tbf, this is the same response I've gotten from different record store clerks the last few times I've inquired about what was playing in the store while I was browsing, which is why I don't ask anymore. Another hallowed ritual ruined by streaming. Now I just use Shazam.

I don't know if "ruin" has anything to do with it. That's excellent variety even if algorithmed.

For me and I guess most ILXors, my adolescent engagement with music was in a context of relative scarcity: I had to consciously prioritise certain music acquisitions based on my available free cash, which in turn has a whole bunch of consequences:

1. Structures of taste which limit your exposure can actually be useful in that they make it easier to work out how to spend your available money: in particular, tribal/genre affiliations (i'm a metalhead; i'm a raver) provide a basis on which to turn the economic reality of limited music acquisition capacity into a virtue;

2. Against (1), the economic (and/or time-based) pain associated with locating and acquiring a large swathe of music, whether on a depth basis ("I have every consecutive Halo-numbered Nine Inch Nails release") or on a breadth basis (being genre-agnostic), confers on that pursuit a different kind of virtue ("you're a real fan" / "you know a lot about music") which loses its force in an era when the vast majority of music is readily and immediately available at effectively no cost.

3. More simply, if you can only afford to buy, say, one album a month, then you're pretty much going to be forced to invest in that album much more than if you can stream a different album each day. Moreover, the more music you hear, the less the idea of massive investment in a single album or piece of music or artist makes sense as a way to structure your taste.

4. Finally and further to (3), if music is expensive to consume and you have limited funds, then the use of gatekeeper authorities (such as music critics, magazines, trend-setting friends) to assist you to order and prioritise your music consumption activities becomes much more important.

This seems like a v good summary of how different things were and why.

back in the day the skater kids used to play hardcore and Public Enemy on their boomboxes

nowadays I always hear Drake at the skate park

this is the same response I've gotten from different record store clerks the last few times I've inquired about what was playing in the store while I was browsing

What kind of self-respecting record store clerk...?!?

that one who's just completely over it

tbf, this is the same response I've gotten from different record store clerks the last few times I've inquired about what was playing in the store while I was browsing, which is why I don't ask anymore. Another hallowed ritual ruined by streaming. Now I just use Shazam.

I'm so glad I haven't run into this (yet) at any of the good shops I like to visit.

ipeople always say this but it’s extremely simple and everyone who reads this board understands what it means

I don't agree with either part of this fwiw.

― All along there is the sound of feedback (Sund4r), Tuesday, October 15, 2019 7:02 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

narrowly it’s just unapologetically liking pop music (rejecting concepts like ‘guilty pleasure’) and affording it the same critical/analytic seriousness as rock music or any other art. more broadly it’s about acknowledging that we come to music with inherited preconceptions and biases about which music is ‘serious’ or ‘authentic’, and unpacking those as well as trying to move beyond them. ned raggetts 90s List is a beautiful example of an alt-canon that a less rockist critical frame can be. in the context of mid-00s indie when indie people started to embrace pop sounds and terms like ‘perfect pop’ were everywhere, poptimism was in part a backlash to the hypocrisy of doing so while ignoring actual pop

not complicated; surely you all already knew this. i know some of you have humanities backgrounds and are averse to defining terms but it’s a pretty easy and useful one imho

poptimism 2.0 was a sociological observation made sometime in the last few years by maura, whiney and others that many critics who champion pop today are doing so in a way that reifies the bad old ‘rockist’ values such as: album orientation (vs singles), artist as ‘auteur’ (vs artist being face and voice of a collaboration between many producers, songwriters), strong unified aesthetics, projection of artistic ‘integrity’. lana del rey, beyoncé this decade. it’s similar to how annoying certain robyn stans were last decade (she writes her own songs! is scandinavian!) but writ large

whiney somewhat confused the matter by implying that poptimists have to write effusively about imagine dragons. which doesn’t necessarily follow, but is probably symptomatic; poptimists don’t have to *like* imagine dragons, but imo it is indicative of something that so few pop critics wrote about them

also worth noting that a lot of ‘og’ ilx popist people have walked back into rockism. j3ss h4rvell was recently saying on twitter that early-00s poptimism was only because of frikki-frikki timbaland and neptunes production sounding like experimental music, and that by 2003 pop wasn’t worth critical attention anymore. which is a repulsive and horribly misguided sentiment imo, but just goes to show how far we’ve fallen since then

Somewhat related, I suppose: a close friend of mine contends that the economic devaluation of recorded music is a correction, not a problem (or anything else). He contends that recorded music was never meant to have economic value, and (then he starts talking about Adorno and the concept of "culture industry") that recorded music as an art form will only be elevated as its economic value decreases toward zero.

I can't say I necessarily agree with him, but it is an interesting take

it's definitely a correction. for most of human history music was essentially economically worthless.

there’s an argument that the price of ‘zero marginal cost’ goods (where once you’ve paid the fixed cost to make it, the cost of one additional person consuming it is zero) should be zero. often applied to intellectual property. the tricky part comes in when you want to incentivize the creation of the thing, which is why patents exist.

recorded music didn’t exist for most of history, playing live music was actually a pretty good gig (relative to, you know, working on a farm)

even today touring is where a lot of musicians make the dough

working on a farm isn't bad, kind of satisfying

Unless it's Maggie's farm.

today perhaps. for most of history it was a terrible job. also just in terms of wages, it was among the lowest

I've done both farm work and been in a shitty van full of dudes and music gear driving to a small city in the Midwest to play for 14 ppl, I can assure you the former is better

but as someone who grew up on a farm I feel like this derail will be quite edifying for me

dude shakey said for all of history, so compare travelling from village to village playing a lute vs being a serf

on the occasion that i end up doing a pro bono session with a young band looking for simple marketing/pr recommendations, one of the first things I suggest is that they invest whatever money/time they have to spare not spent making music on making a good, unique, simple recognizable logo
there is no money in selling recorded music, some money in touring and composing, more money in licensing, but the way that a lot of folks actually manage to quit the day job is selling branded caps and hoodies.

playing live music was actually a pretty good gig (relative to, you know, working on a farm)

don't think this is true at all tbh

I'd bet most lute slingers were more intinerent drifters than well paid musicians

so compare travelling from village to village playing a lute vs being a serf

the serf was likely to get fed and have a support group, itinerant musicians generally lived hand-to-mouth and were disreputable as shit. this is true going back to the Greco-Roman era. The exceptions were musicians that were supported by royalty/essentially servants of the ruling class. And then you had a broad class of amateurs musicians in the lower classes who basically just played to entertain themselves/their communities. This is broadly true across cultures and most of history.

Thread title still relevant.

I'd rather talk about lutes than Imagine Dragons tbh

even today touring is where a lot of musicians make the dough

as ums points out fwiw this is also not true, esp if you're not a one-man band

it paid higher wages and many didn’t have bosses. if you did you often lived in their house. you might not fully realize how shitty agricultural labour was for most of history.

in any case, musicians did not make ‘zero’ money throughout history and there’s not something intrinsically nonvaluable about music; its a service performed by a skilled person. today price of *recorded* music is close to zero because of a combo of zero marginal cost and supply glut

luting for grog >>> grappling with a hog

they were disreputable *because* they were free

it paid higher wages and many didn’t have bosses.

I think the key distinction between itinerant musicians and serfs in the pre-industrial age is that one was generally homeless and the other wasn't.

but oh the freedom of freezing/starving to death on a back country road - hey at least you weren't pushing a plow amirite

if you have fans and play a lot you can make a good living from touring. yes the pace is brutal and touring is hard. my friends in mid- or third-tier indie bands tour 1/3 of the year and don’t have to work the rest of the time

iirc minstrels were more likely to be eaten in times of hardship. there was sometimes even 'much rejoicing'.

it helped to have a poptimistic attitude