Rolling Music Writers' Thread

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.

it's just a job. writing about beyonce on deadline. digging ditches. it's work.

i've dug some enduring ditches

I have dug the ditch of my life

I have measured my ditches with coffee spoons.

i like this thread.

also "500 words in, like, two hours whenever Beyoncé releases a new video" -- when I wrote music news I fucking wished I had two hours, the expected turnaround is more like 15 minutes

These are fairly dire times, indeed. Actually, for the last two years it's kinda felt like that, though the rot started setting in 7-8 years ago. We were all born a bit too late, honestly.

My dream for the near future is that, after I move back to Baltimore in a few months, I can find a better paying day job than the one I have now, and...just kinda pull away from freelance. I mean, I like it. I like reviewing albums, I like discovering new artist, I like all that, but freelance once felt novel and "extra" and supplemental income, and now it's something needed to survive in an era of scraping assignment scarcity, so now it's exhausting and anxiety-inducing more often than not. Don't want to feel dependent on it.
Also, honestly, I'm old and a bit sick of how much of an arms race this game feels like now.

To Scott's point above, I guess: In 5-10 years I'll probably drop freelance to a bare minimum and go back to solo zine-ing.

A classical music critic offers another perspective.

the madlibs thing she mentions is basically why i resolved to stop writing reviews regularly, i just started having a more-negative-than-usual relationship with my own work (and only after i made that decision did i figure out how much i'd come to depend on reviews as a regular source of income, lol)

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.

Agreed. How many opinions can one person hold about music anyway? Surely there comes a point when critics are staging the same arguments they've made countless times elsewhere. And that should be the point when you bail.

Aside from the Wire I rarely read any professional writing about music anymore. It's a shame, I used to hoover up so much stuff, but I just don't find very much inspiring right now. I assume, perhaps wrongly, that people who could write intelligently about music are too intelligent to want to pursue it in the current climate.

Being let go from the AMG essentially meant the end of regular reviewing on my part -- after almost fifteen years of steady work I had AMG writing down to a science, perhaps to a fault. I tried to treat the standard 300 word review approach as a series of miniatures -- I might not be able to say everything, but I could say a lot, and well, once I was locked into an album. At the same time I recognized my own ('particularly fine') crutches over the moons, and felt a little tired of that particular voice I created. Losing the small but reliable income was a bit of a stretch for the next few months -- private matters but I could have used it during a rough period personally -- but once things stabilized I can't say I missed what had been a bit of a grind. The downside, though, was that I missed essentially being forced to listen to at least ten new albums every couple of weeks if not more -- 'forced' sounding bad, but I ended up hearing a lot of people I wouldn't necessarily have otherwise, and there were always many diamonds in the rough. Now (per my flood comment earlier) the amount of music I regularly receive is even greater, but the time is less and less to hand -- I used to catch up on listening at work at UCI, and while I can do it here as well it's less convenient -- and since I've mostly now settled into feature writing of one form or another thanks to the general changes in the writing market as many have noted, any reviewing as such would have to be on my own account. No bad thing as a mental exercise at all, but honestly it is mostly a mental exercise than a written one, and if something really excites me I would generally rather seek to interview the act in question for a story. (As for larger theoretical ideas or reflections on the state of things, they come as they do.)

(I wrote all that and then note Position's riff on Scott's point re moving on -- I suspect there's an element of that at play too. I've made my general cases, now I'm looking for standout examples, and not necessarily going into my own aesthetic while doing so, though as ever it remains a happy slumgullion, aiming to take in music across the board.)

I miss reading the Wire. Need to find a relatively close bookstore where I can get it on the regular (or just subscribe, already).

And Ned, I feel a lot of what you're saying. Honestly, I listen to less music with each passing year, and tend to spend the most time with albums that really excite me.

Here's a contrarian opinion: I love writing about music more than ever and still get paid to do it, and it's a great thrill when a stranger emails or leaves a comment on my blog. I've never pretended the market for rockcrit or filmcrit was larger than a coterie, but unlike the pre-net days, there's always a chance a kid in Poland will disinter a review I've happily forgotten filed in 2004 and write to say it helped her think about Band X – in fact this happened to me last week.

I still get comments on my AMG work in particular, from people who say it really helped them get into a number of bands. I ascribe this to a certain luck on two levels -- the AMG's continued existence, meaning the content is still out there, still heavily linked to via Wikipedia, etc., and that I had a chance, when the site's content was still ramping up in the 1990s, to write about a number of notable acts who already had a certain cachet. I may consider my own efforts to be reflective of whatever time/mindset I was in -- the ones I'm now most ambivalent about would be my Swans pieces -- but generally speaking I stand by the work and people continue to enjoy it. Works for me.

I see things I wrote for Burning Ambulance pop up on Twitter years later - there was a big spike in interest in a John Coltrane piece recently - and it's fun. But lately I'm searching for stories that will allow me to have an interesting experience while writing them. Being sent to Helsinki back in December to cover a jazz festival, for example. A few years earlier I might have said no to that; this time I said yes, and had a fantastic time.

I just wrote obit pieces for my local weekly on go-go producer Maxx Kidd, and on rockabilly and more guitarist Evan Johns. The Washington Post has not run anything on them, nor have other locally based websites, so my articles are getting shared around a bit.

I write about young living musicians too.

Here's a contrarian opinion: I love writing about music more than ever

wtf

nerd

I just write obituaries for musicians who haven't died yet. And then I wait to share them....

Happy Halloween!

Sorry if I'm coming across as overly gloomy here. It's not all bad and nightmarish, obviously, and getting to cover Trip Metal Festival for SPIN last year was a career-high thrill. (Also getting to cover Ende Tymes in 2014 for Village Voice.)

I think I used to have 3 main hopes when writing about music, which for a long time I did about one night a week: that I might connect some music to new listeners, that I might put some music in some interesting context, and that I might demonstrate by example some aspect of how to sustain curiosity and enthusiasm about new music in your own listening life.

It's now my actual day-job to type into a computer in order to try to connect music to new listeners, put music in interesting contexts, and foster curiosity and enthusiasm in listeners directly in their own listening lives. My old column connected thousands of people to hundreds of artists. My job at Spotify helps to connect about 100 million listeners to about a million artists. So that's pretty cool.

There are a few obvious caveats. As a column-writer I was trying to find fans for artists I liked myself. As a programmer, my personal tastes are irrelevant. As a column-writer I was typing prose for people, and now I'm mostly typing code for computers. So if those aspects are integral to you, then the two jobs may not seem related at all. But on the other hand, the pay is better, and where writing reviews actually slowed down my own personal discovery process, working on programmatic music-discovery tools accelerates it.

*chorus of boos*

nerd

― ToddBonzalez (BradNelson),

Description, not criticism.

it's been about five years since I wrote regularly anywhere and in that time I've grappled with feeling a void that writing used to fill and yet also being forced to acknowledge that a not-insubstantial part of my satisfaction with it was derived from having an audience of at least some size, whether that was a daily newspaper or a popular website. hence I haven't been able to motivate myself to start back writing for its own sake even if (essentially) no one was reading. in my current position I can't think of a better strategy than what Alfred has done with his blog, but he's worked damn hard to build an audience/community as well as a voice that distinguishes him from a million other people with a blog. what i'm saying is that if I ever do start writing regularly again it'll probably just look like a knock-off of HtV.

thanks, evol :)

yeah, apologies if I am coming off as awfully gloomy; it's just the particular combination of being a quasi-public figure yet still worrying every month how I am going to make rent for the next month, let alone the next several decades of my life that gets to me. which is, of course, my own fault, but recognizing that it's my own fault does not affect conditions on the ground

I understand, in that sense I feel lucky to have not been in possession of a little more talent and desire than I had, such that might have made it more difficult for me to hang up my cleats and carve out a more stable existence. Writing was never my sole or even primary source of income but I don't think it's a coincidence that I quit in the middle of going back to grad school in serious pursuit of nailing down an actual decent-paying career for the first time in my life. but as I suggested before, not being a quasi-public figure is unfulfilling in its own way too.

I think this is pretty much my take, too. I co-set up and wrote for an experimental site for a bit, with a bunch of like-minded people (the Liminal - we had about nine readers, I suspect), which, by the by, ended up with putting on a few local gigs and getting a few bits in Mojo and the Wire - all alongside my hugely unfulfilling day job. I had designs on trying to push it towards something else, but I didn't have the wherewithal, the stubbornness or a thick enough skin for it. I miss the 'public' aspect of it (however small), and the relationships, such as they were, but don't really miss the enforced listening or the drudgery of the pitching/(silent) rejection cycle.

update: I was wrong, it got worse

holla

Update: I am enjoying writing and don't hate what I have written thus far.

It's easy though, in that I am no getting paid - and I know that cheeses off people in this thread whose livelihoods are diminished somehow because assholes like me will work without a paycheck. and I get that because there was a time I was resentful of writing for free after I established myself to some extent. I actually turned down writing for Magnet because they couldn't pay me when they first started and I was kicking myself when it became a pretty good magazine that wouldn't give me the time of day when I pitched them.

But getting on guest lists and maybe CDs (in my small sample size publicists seem very reluctant to send physical product to the likes of me) will help offset being a music junkie still even as I hurtle towards 50.

And dig this - I missed writing about music. I missed that feeling when I turned a phrase that I liked or made an observation that I thought was unique and informative.

There are negatives such as paying $500 for a real camera as my wife is learning to take photos so we can spend more time together and I don't have to take them. I was up really late writing and now I am tired with two jobs to do today.

But this weekend I (likely) have free tickets to see a two-day festival with a ton of great bands which would have set me back $160 including ticket fees. And last night I hung out with a publicist and "talked shop" and schmoozed a little and it felt like old times.

It's a work in progress but the positives outweigh the negatives thus far.

try having my inbox the day after anything I write goes up, see how much you enjoy writing then, or life

You can always quit. I didn't write for six years and somehow survived.

it doesn't matter if I quit or not, there is no statute of limitations on this shit, I still get hate mail about stuff I wrote years ago

I can see how that would get frustrating. Possibly you can change your email address.

I know how terrible it can be. I am friends with Kim Kelly who gets shit on constantly. I wouldn't want to deal with the shit she deals with.

Fortunately nobody much cares what I write except my editor, my wife and the publicists. And since I am only doing this because it's fun again, I will have zero problems stopping when it's not.

Catching up on some old bookmarks...

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

― Dogshit Critic (m coleman), Tuesday, April 4, 2017 2:26 PM (one month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Awesome read! When's part two coming out? ;)

it doesn't matter if I quit or not, there is no statute of limitations on this shit, I still get hate mail about stuff I wrote years ago

― a self-reinforcing downward spiral of male-centric indie (katherine), Thursday, April 20, 2017 2:35 PM (three weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Jesus, that sucks. Getting shitty hate mail would give me anxiety, for sure. For whatever it's worth, your review of the Austra album from earlier this year was the sole reason I checked out one of my favorite albums of the year.

yeah well the first result when you google me is a hate site so rip my chances of ever making a fucking living from now until the day I die in our age of employers googling you

the way I found this out incidentally is my sister visiting from fucking england, asking if I had a website, googling me and finding it. so no, quitting will not help because it is there forever

I think I found what you're talking about and it was like watching a badly programmed robot dismantle itself.

so if you have ever longed to live a life where you have to explain to your sister, who is crying because she doesn't understand why she upset you, the number of people who shit on you on a near-daily basis, a number that is positively correlated to the (sub-rent) amount of money you make, but never zero, then sure, by all means, become a music writer. at least actual celebrities have money and power and fans to insulate them. here you have all the visibility, and none of the insulation

katherine as someone who has admired your writing, particularly on TSJ, I have to tell you that the person on that page has no clue. Even when I think your opinions are different to mine I find your work stylish and brimming with a sense of personality, please do not let this become A Thing in your life

You're a brilliant writer. Sorry about all this shit you're going through.

Katherine, if it's any consolation, a lot of the writers who have been "ripped" regularly write for The New York Times and the New Yorker and whatever, so it's not exactly a death sentence

Normally when I tweet at people, they just block me or send GIFs of black women waving goodbye.

Fuck this guy for about twenty different reasons (not the least of which is being wrong about your writing).

Probably for another thread, but I'm astonished at what people say to each other online that they'd never (a lot of assuming here) say face-to-face. It may just be my age (37) but my online "personality" is the exact same as my real-life self, for better or worse.

RipFork taught me to be more thoughtful when spending roughly 20 minutes reviewing an album -- based off one skimmed listen -- just after being informed of a death in the family.

Imagine thinking of starting that website, having the time to do so, then actually following through for several years of your (presumably) adult life.

Whitest Words: cloying, oeuvre, orthodoxy, affectation, ubiquity, overwrought, incongruence, authorial, Sapphic, relegated, mimicry

fuck this dude for real

― condaleeza spice (The Reverend), Monday, January 4, 2010 6:54 AM (seven years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Guy who operates a music-criticism mockery website to Roy Ayers: "You sound white."

http://www.cision.com/us/2017/06/jessica-hopper-mtv-news/

June 22, 2017/in Consumer & Lifestyle, Media Updates /by Cision Media Research

Jessica Hopper has left her role as editorial director of music for MTV News to join Spotify. She joined the network in 2016 after serving as senior editor for Pitchfork.