The Ezyrider wrote:
That's all well and good but what does it have to do with critiquing average music?
Fair question.
In the vast vast majority of cases, street press (in Australia) and visual braodcast music programming (in Australia) dating back to Molly and ever since, has been reluctant to say "here's the latest from xyz - don't bother - it's shite."
Reason? Commercial reality. It's a tough enough road to make a quid anyway with advertising. To give a bad review on artist 'xyz' (let's say released on 'abc records') will all but guarantee that label not spending for not only that release but all other releases. Further the opposition mag that 'helps out the label with its dog of a release' will get a Christmas bonus and the next ad campaign exclusively.
Repeat dose for a couple of releases (with a view to building credibility or high readership for instance), and I can assure you that the publisher will quickly be an ex publisher, possibly complaining on bulletin boards about lack of independent reviews.
The income from street press comes from advertisers, not copies sold.
Copies sold huh? What about the plan of dissing the bad stuff, gaining credibility with readers, increasing circulation and encouraging advertisers to buy into a high circulating credible read? Doesn't work. Back to the old ex-publisher bin.
What about a plan that shifts the 'publisher's slavery to the advertiser' to the end consumer by printing the credible dissing of the crap band, then trying to sell the mag and generate circulation income instead? Been tried. Heaps of cover price mags out there. They're dropping like flies. Ex-(paid circulation) publisher bin for them.
Problem there is people don't want to pay for music journalism (in sufficient commercial quantities) when they can either get it for free in street press, or on the internet, or pay a sufficiently high price for it.
OK, that's the commercial woe part of it. Let's have a look at the saviour of the universe *choke* independent JJJ. Funded by the tax payer, voice of a generation *still choking* great white hope? Not a dirty income dollar in sight. I can't recall the last time that I flicked on JJJ and heard 'The Hour of Shite'. "Yes that's right folks, here are 10 releases by emerging (or established) artists that need a bullet. Don't waste ya money. This stuff is crap." Doesn't happen.
Can you imagine the same on Rage? 1am to 2am. We interrupt all these excellent clips to bring you an hour of utter shit. "We say so, we're independent and credible and after all you're footing the bill so we better tell you that John and Fred from Newcastle don't cut it - and truth be told - what they've pinned their career on is frankly nothing short of ordinary. We're your ABC."
Back to street press. What to do with crap releases? Well we tread a commercial middle ground. We elect not to review the weak stuff. Or if we do, we allow the reader to read between the lines and take away from the article what was not said, as opposed to what was said. That means we try and retain some semblance of credibility, and make sure we can also get next week's issue out.
OK, fuck this bullshit - there must be a way around it where readers can get the good oil and where advertisers can't buy silence or false positives. There is. And as I suggested in an earlier post, it will happen when consumers (in sufficient commercial quantities) decide that street press, or JJJ or TV Hits or whatever can go and get fucked.
In the interim, ET can have $50,000 from me to get going with his ideology, and when it falls in a heap (and it will) we can all idolise him as the guy who tried (and is now working at the quickie mart).
[Ironic note: the start-up cash came from sold ads in a different (and still going) mag]Footnote:
The trend towards the internet. We have myriad (commercial) sites competing for eyeballs. Their content is all but music related and they rely on commercial spends from festivals and record labels. I wonder when people will start refusing to visit their sites (in effective commercial quantities) because the site refuses to bag a crap product, while accepting its ad bucks.
No commercial venture, radio, tv, print or web is in the business of saying that xyz sucks. Funny that.
And so to the non-commercial web-sites where we can write what we want ... until one day, the web-site publisher says "hey, we've a got a lot of hits here - this indie 'tell-it-like-it-is' is working - I don't have to do this for the love of it any more - I've got an audience - let's make a living and sell some ads!"
Oh shit :)
