From the older ways of going to underground gigs in the 1960's - 1990's, making fanzines with whatever is at hand about bands that nobody knew and the latest big magazine issue being equally the word of god for the national music press. To the online phenomenon of blogger journalists, the freedom of free press, the accessibility of free music, the closeness to your favourite bands and of course the wider internet itself having major differences forced upon the world of the music press; changes that just as harshly and definitively effected the record industry and film industry. I will discuss how Music Journalism has been modernised in today's industry.
Music Journalism has always been a competitive industry, many journalists have always been under pressure to find the latest band and follow them. Larger published organisations have always been on the prowl for new writers, so there's always been freelancers that face the risk of never really having the cutting edge that pays off and when it doesn't they may end up conscripted into the ranks of the magazine's underbelly, writing other people's work on a band they've never heard; with poor pay to boot. Though that's the image painted for future journalists, the reality is any writer's unwavering passion for music. This isn't a very well paid industry but for the right writer the job pays off enough for just doing it, in Julie Burchill's opinion, a well known Music Journalist, she defines the mindset of a passionate writer, “I was flash, amatuerish, out of my box on sulphate, unable to hold the most basic conversation with record company personnel – in fact, I could barely function as a grown-up – but I also brought a degree of innocence and integrity to the paper that was unheard of. I wasn't interested in ligs or freebies or expenses or all those other things that ruin writers”. ('In Their Own Write, Paul Gorman, 2001)
One of the biggest issues that faced journalism since the dawn of the internet lay in the free and easy access to the press. The internet provides free access to blogs and a free means to make them. It's a journalists dream to be published, it's almost pointless when other people's opinions are published for free and read by a limitless and untraceable audience. Journalists used to be in more control of their intellectual property via the print media but now opinion is rife all over the internet. 'Blogger.com' has been the blogging pioneer since the internet began and millions of blogs have been created with just as many different purposes. As well as that, more recent sites such as 'Wordpress' have provided more options for writers and it allows any given journalist unlimited access to very advanced tools; as well as any other creative writer for that matter. “In a world where anyone can publish anything with a click of a button, substance can seem as impossible to find as an objective, nonpartisan political biog. As content devolves into the least common denominator, cat videos are shared incessantly and hastily written, half-researched opinion pieces are described somewhat generously as "real-time journalism.” (Bhargava, 2012)
It's always been about the latest band in the music press, it's about the passion for these bands and the love for the music they make but the latest band will change quicker than your underwear. The internet is a mess of bands and creative art on various formats, this time recorded and badly produced online rather than playing a dingy pub in a nowhere town, which most still do anyway. 'Myspace' did it first, providing an easy option for users to share their music and their opinions via comments. But there have been artists who've achieved fame through their MySpace page, for example, Katy Perry was found on MySpace and through various ventures provided by a management company she got her fame. Though when it came to actually looking for online music to write about regardless of these stunning artists, the boost of independent bands, artists and DJ's almost broke the music industry's banks and the virtual world became overwhelmed with music. The bands we all wanted were being leaked for free and the bands we didn't want were throwing demos in our faces. (Brian Message, Solent Guest Lecture, 2009).
This tempest of free music has since died down as more organisations develop new ideas and new models to harness the power of the internet, the music press is no exception to these renovations. Journalism within the music industry has evolved with the times just like the record industry. Articles are available through websites, videos, audio podcasts and various mediums we could search to get our latest fix on our favourite artists. There are many working journalists out there but unfortunately there are also many other people with musical opinion who act like journalists. This is the largest challenge presented to any budding writer though it's not as different from the older days of fanzines, where journalists or just 'people passionate about music' made fanzines with whatever they could find. The same issues have existed for years. The internet has only brought the industry's pro's and con's into a different light.
One of the most important issues is the reaffirmation of any given Music Journalist's right to their intellectual property. It has always been an issue of being paid the wrong amount or not at all for creative writing within any information industry however since the internet and its new models have been more firmly established, it's simply back to a matter of price and how much you need to do to preserve the right to your creative ownership. “The Internet has brought forth many wonders, from the silly to the sublime to the skateboarding bulldog on YouTube (which is both). Newspapers no longer have a monopoly on serious journalism, and their mistakes are promptly challenged. Anyone can create culture instead of simply consuming it. It's never been easier to distribute creative work. At the same time, it's never been harder to get paid for it.” (Robert Levine, 2011).
The internet itself is a grey area of corporate driven laws and piracy driven loopholes. It's a minefield when it comes to copyright but lately some genius ideas have arisen to encourage, rather than restrict, the sharing of intellectual property, in this instance I'll mention wikipedia and the sharing of intellectual resources, written by the world, for the world, for the price of an internet connection. Online blogs with a nationally recognised stamp on it (Virgin, NME, Q, etc) who encourage people's opinion and even publish printed articles, via their blogs, that consist only of questions curated from readers (example: Josh Homme Interview, Q Magazine, March 2011). These are examples of how publications survived the internet's almost apocalyptic setting for any music organisation's given future and turned it around, sharing the views expressed by their readers and even acting as the messenger to any given readers favourite bands, though it's not a completely new aspect to music magazine's, it is much easier and more common to do so.
FRONT magazine, though mostly regarded as a little more 'lad mag' than 'music' mag, is a good example model of the future of music and entertainment journalism, with or without the boobs. Social media blogging, underground music journalism, extreme sports journalism, fashion journalism and film journalism, it's all here and aimed at the kind of demographic that lives a perfectly normal social life alongside a rich healthy online social network of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LastFM, Xbox Live, etc that are all intertwined with each other. The magazine consists of the voices of the many rather than the individual opinions of the few. Everything is personal yet social, as if you're reading about your mates ideas and opinions, which in turn is really what social media has done to us, as if by accident we expose our deepest opinions without fear or judgement even though everyone can see it and in turn you can see everyone else's sometimes most guarded opinions. Even though we could be miles away, it does bring everyone much closer to each other.
This brings me onto an issue female journalist's have been facing since it began. In FRONT, as an extreme example, some of those topless models are journalists within that magazine, as well as in other printed and visual/audio formats, and quite well respected as such, maybe not by older or more right-winged men but of this generation definitely, who by design are far more liberal, whether the writers are topless or not, their opinions and of course their written work is respected, quotable and has value within a given community, which is the aim of any journalist. In any given opinion, they take the stereotype the male press covertly designs and parade it in an 'in-your-face' way, proud of their bodies and even more proud of their creative contribution. More importantly, to bring this into context, not all the women writers are models either. The way women have been represented in the music industry is an attitude that lacks in desirability, respectable artistic women are expected to act raunchy and look like a sex icons and men in the music press will have that expectation reflected in their writing, having shunned female opinion as 'not serious', in fact it's a type of writing that has been built upon and from what modern music journalism has developed into. “The vast majority of music journalists in Britain are male –men at Melody Maker outnumbered women by more than two to one –and female journalists are often relegated to the least important parts of the paper, such as reviewing readers’ demo tapes. The music press assumes that all its readers are male as well, so that the situation is often one of male journalists writing for male readers, a fact reflected in the mode of address of much music writing.” (Davies, 2001) It can be viewed as a very feminist point but it's an important point nonetheless.
FRONT's demographic is not explicitly male, they have a high percentage of female readership compared to other magazine's in their genre, even if that genre is 'lads mag'. It creates a common interest in the extreme sides of sport, music, video games, gadgetry and films; FRONT even prints 'this is no lads mag' on the cover of their issues. This model of journalism is contrary to defined and aged music writers of the Q, NME or even The Independent, though they are all not of any given music genre collectively, they do appeal to men more than women however you look at it, the male artists are presented as what men want to be and the female artists (or models) are presented as what men want to be with. Though in FRONT, it can be argued that the women are also who women want to be, giving an equal empowerment rather than a conflicting empowerment to the female sex that tends to happen when it comes to arguments about equal female rights.
This line into exploitation of women has been severely greyed and blurred, since most of our generation have found more access to artistic elements of style and imagery through the internet rather than the mainstream portrayal of music that we've been force fed throughout the years after 1950's rock 'n; roll. Overall, it has been an issue of the individual's authenticity within any given group or subculture rather than the band and always will be, but even musical genre's can be dismissed easily within the music press.
Authenticity of a particular genre defines the success of a journalist. There are several important points that are considered when discussing the authenticity of a genre. Firstly, “authenticity is dependent on the degree to which records are assimilated and legitimized by a subculture”. Secondly, “the distance between a records production and it's consumption is relevant to the cultural value bestowed upon it”. Thirdly, “the environment in which a record is produced contributes to its authenticity”. Lastly, “the ideological vagaries of music genres like their communication of bodily 'soul' or their revelation of technology play a main role in whether records come across as genuine”. (Thornton, 1995). This is an old text compared to modern music journalism but very valid for any developing journalist. Many journalists have 'favourites' though it's good practise to be open-minded. Eventually every budding journalist finds a niche and sticks to it. This is a compromising development in a journalist's career and it could shoot them into writer's fame or condemn them as an outdated or misplaced identity. If a creative piece breaks any of these guidelines to authenticate it's existence it's rarely boosted into mainstream media but may still appeal to less mainstream audiences over the internet.
The internet does gives us access to those niche's and the shackles of just writing for print and writing within a particular confine have been shed; even bloggers or more liberal writers get their limelight. Women and less 'authentic' subcultures are given an equal place within the media because of the internet and it's getting rarer to find a female opinion or a niche subculture shunned because there's always a reader and a culture that will respect it for it's artistic and informative values, though there is still that ever present reality that women are still regarded as inferior intellectually in some areas of the media. So it may not be well paid but it's also not as costly any more and can carry more weight within any given community of readership, bringing us back to that career defining point Levine makes, 'the internet makes things easier for everyone but it's also just as hard to get paid for it'.
Bibliography
- Thornton, Sarah. 'The Authenticities of Dance Genres', Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital; p.66-76, Cambridge: Polity, 1995.
- Davies, Helen. 'All Rock is Homosocial', Popular Music, Volume 20/3, Cambridge University Press, 2001.
- Levine, Robert. "Not paid in full: why creators must reassert their rights in the information economy." Billboard 5 Nov. 2011: 19+. Academic OneFile. Web. 10 Jan. 2012.
- Bhargava, Rohit. "How curation could save the internet (and your brand): with an overloaded web, the people who create more content become less valuable than the curators who organize it into digestible, powerful and sometimes even profound pieces." Communication World Jan.-Feb. 2012: 20+. Academic OneFile. Web. 10 Jan. 2012.
- Edited by Paul Rees, Q Magazine, 29th March Issue, Bauer Publishing Group, 2011.
- Gorman, Paul. Quoted by Julie Burchill in 'In Your Own Write' p.266, Sanctuary Publishing Ltd, 2001.
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