Rolling Stone is now mainstream media. Never thought I would see the day but it is here. RS would never feature Hunter Thompson if he was alive today and certainly not the artwork of Ralph Steadman. I haven't seen them do much with taking on real outlaw country in a meaningful way. I don't think they dare. What you write about what is now classic old rock music is interesting. I work with younger musicians and the older stuff is very highly regarded among them.
I live in the U.K. and that rack of magazines is familiar as hell - without going into the story, about 15 years ago, I was the editor of a new music mag and got the proverbial bullet in the head by my publisher for putting a new band on the cover. Sales were the same as always but it was the principle of the thing to them - it was different to what all the other mags were doing and standing out isn’t what publishers want. They all want to belong to the thing they believe is selling copies - and you can see why when most adverts are for classic bands from a time that’s never coming back. This is a great article for so many reasons but the saddest of all is that there ARE people who care out there who can also write well but there’s no place for them in the world (not unless you want to write for a credit and a free copy of a magazine).
In my first job as a local newspaper reporter, mid-1980s, I also produced the music page with a colleague. We reviewed local gigs every week & tapes that people sent in. It was a small northern town (in Britain) and we surfaced and helped some very talented, original bands. It was a lesson in how much great music rarely sees the light of day and - yes - it was the right thing to do.
I am repeating myself. If you limit your ears to jazz, American or European, and rock and its permutations then you are missing out on a lot of great music from the Caribbean, South America (Brasil itself is a continent of music) and Africa. Much of might not be new but it will be new to those who have never heard it before.
I would argue that the mags are passe, and that social media allows musicians with a PLAN to bypass traditional routes, bad advertising, and lazy club owners. Also, with no national/international monoculture anymore, there are many more opportunities. 'Regional' matters more than ever before.
I'm glad I teach college and have kids in their early 20s, or I wouldn't know how much word of mouth still matters, and how much they also discover via Spotify, Bandcamp, and TikTok. Whether us older folks learn anything from that or not... well, that's our problem. Thanks as always, Ted.
I realize it's an example and not the point, but Rolling Stone has completely changed their music coverage. I think it started when Wenner sold. The last few music covers artist include Harry Styles, Blackpink, and Doja Cat. There is something about Bad Bunny in literally every issue.
I didn't renew my subscription and I've been subscribing since I was in college in the '90s. Mostly, it's because they upped the cost to $100 a year but also they aren't writing about anyone I care about it. I'm fine with new artists, but I'm not really into pop.
If "young unproven musicians" are to have a hard time of it in this new reality, what about "aging unproven musicians" aka "late bloomers"? Asking for a friend...
The old music economy, and its ancillary fields— like music journalism— depended on a much more unified culture, perhaps even stable demographics, with enough values in common that discussion was quite possible. Economics has gone winner-take-all for two generations now, and culture as a reasonably unified entity allowing mutual discussion had probably passed by the late 1990s.
Ted, in reply to your question about RS's first ‘all-time greats’ list, their 1987 ‘100 Best Albums of the Last Twenty Years’ issue springs to mind. '87 was the magazine's twentieth anniversary, and that issue was the first of two high-page-count retrospectives they published that year (the other being a compilation of interviews).
There’s truth at the confluence of many of this thread’s comments. Legacy print magazines struggle to survive at all and naturally cater to their primary (and ever-aging) demographic, while trying to sneak in a few features on newer artists. Major labels promote just what’s determined to produce significant ROI, which has resulted in a shrinking roster of artists dominating the upper reaches of the charts. Disaggregation of media consumption makes it hard for new artists to break into widespread consciousness. The speed at which algorithms feed us an unbroken stream of decontextualized music-as-content doesn’t allow us to sit—absorb, commune—with any of it before it’s immediately replaced by the next tune. I haven’t even mentioned radio, because I’ve long since (I mean decades ago) lost faith in its ability to bring me new music worth hearing, because my tastes are neither mainstream nor easily categorizable.
Underlying all of it is wholesale embrace of nostalgia. Apart from pockets of afro-futurism, doesn’t one have to look back to the ‘50s to see any American cultural enthusiasm for what the future holds?
I know for a fact that we’re awash in outstanding new artists who are sailing almost entirely under media radar because, in an attempt to “be the change”, a few years ago I launched my own monthly streaming music show, a pure labor of love for which I scour Bandcamp to unearth remarkable independent artists. It’s time-consuming, entirely manual, expensive (because I buy all the music that appears on the show), and—because my interest is in finding and presenting music, but not in learning yet another social media platform and promoting myself on TikTok or YouTube—only reaches a tiny handful of listeners.
Ultimately I’m not convinced that, even among my community of diehard music fans, many people really care about finding new music—or, at least, not right now when the world feels like it's constantly on fire and people naturally seek comfort in the familiar. On the rare occasions that I open Spotify and see the feed of what my friends are listening to, it’s almost invariably playlists of the same old classics.
Funny how radio - community radio like KXCI in Arizona or WERU in Maine - seems to be able to showcase new and local musicians, promote touring groups, and offer "historical" shows of blues, bluegrass, etc. Perhaps music journalism is moving to this audio format, where the listeners want thoughtful, future-oriented writing: Radio-podcast-audio essays, with new music actually shared.
This reality reflects the change in risk-taking behavior across the creative industries (and I would include media news and entertainment) occasioned by the rise of the digital economy. Revenues and profit margins have been squeezed, even as markets have grown. This puts legacy publishers and distributors in an existential crisis to survive. The response has been to reduce the risk of not surviving by reverting to what worked in the past. In music, reselling the catalog is a low risk endeavor that yields profits through very low marginal costs. Streaming is a short term boon for publishers and a long term disaster for innovative new artists (they now bear all the risk and little of the reward).
In media, it means giving the audience exactly what it wants based on past metrics. So, a cover article on Bruce Springsteen is a sure bet relative to some unknown underground artist or new artistic movement. This can only be rectified by rebalancing the market between creators and consumers (and probably eliminating many of the middlemen or at least only rewarding them for value added).
Art has become a commodity, but true art can never be a commodity, so the road we are on would mean the death of art. However, I am optimistic that the creative spirit cannot and will not ever die. And, with the proper sustainable model, consumers will willingly pay for the real value in art.
Is it stagnation or was the music scene more vibrant and easier to access and more exciting? Can there be a new Bruce, Zep, Aerosmith, Pearl Jam, without a vibrant community that reaches into the street - radio, pub, bar, record stores? Online is not nor will not be the equivalent. Far too limiting in building a sense of community. I look for new music suggestions in some of the current mags - Uncut, Classic Rock, et al. (not the reprints of old interview types), as surely will not find that on the radio. The question I think is vaild but chicken or egg in that, there must a hunger for those topics or else publishers would not print. So, why is the hunger there? Lack of current talent? Or lack of places for that talent to been seen and heard on a large enough scale to build a lasting audience? When I was in college there was live music somewhere every night, and all over the place on weekends. Two close female friends of mine were both college students and traveling musicians. They did not have a deal, nor would they ever, but, they had venues to play, and audiences, raised on radio wanting hear their music. I now live in Macon, GA home to some of the finest music the world have ever produced. And while there are some venues now, there was a dearth for many years. And even now (covid a factor for sure), live music is sporadic. And other than the hand bill, you can forget about publicity. Non existent.
Thanks for another informative article. As usual, you are 100% right on the nose. If not for responsible people in the field like yourself keeping the fires burning, the flame would be doomed to wither and die. If left to only the do-nothing, gutless, risk avoiding current music industry, it would sputter out in no time at all. Again, thanks for all you do Ted. You keep the fires burning bright.
Regarding the importance of profile articles - I think there's an unwillingness on the part of the artist to engage in the give and take necessary for these to be successful. Instead, they want to manage their PR to a degree that artists of an earlier age could not or did not. I was recently contacted by a Nashville agency to help promote a new (and much anticipated) release from a notable yet still up-and-coming artist in my region. Overall, the agency rep was very professional and helpful. She gave me a link to the album, liner notes, and several different versions of their official press release. She answered all my questions promptly. But when I tried to set up a time to interview the artist and his management team... just days and days of silence. They couldn't even bother to get back to me (or her) with a definitive 'No'. As I dug deeper into the story, I found several pieces online in a variety of outlets purporting to be 'news' of the new album, but (because I already had copies) were really only regurgitations of the initial press release. I suspect if I had credentials from a national platform, things would have run differently. But when it came down to it, what the PR team really expected from a local was a dutiful push for the new record, and a 'profile' cobbled together from existing sources. If you pay close attention to the great profiles of the past - think of Stanley Booth following the Rolling Stones on the '69 US tour - what's extraordinary is the level of access available to little 'ole writers. Oh how I wish artists would understand the importance of engaging with us. Maybe there's a fear we'll misrepresent them? Everyone afraid of a hit piece? I can't say with any surety. But it left a bad taste in my mouth, and so I finally wrote back to the agency to let them know I'd stopped working on the piece, and would not be supporting the album in my journal.
Guilty as charged, I suppose. (Maybe "tribute bands" have something to do with it, too.)
I wonder about the matter of how tunes spend a longer time on the charts on average these days--an indicator that fewer songs have the chance to become hits--and I suspect that today's "nostalgia" has only an indirect relationship to that, and may actually be part of a backlash against it. Much has been written about how mainstream music doesn't really seem to want to be actively engaged with. The whole world is a dance floor.
One other thing: It's easier to fall in love with an old album these days, because it doesn't necessarily sound "old" the way an old album did fifty or even forty years ago--at least not if it's remixed, something that couldn't even have happened before the late '60s. And there's so much music out there now, and unmediated transmission on the Internet means the music can more easily be judged for itself. All this means that older music has more of a chance than it did before against newer music, in much the same way as happens in the classical music world, where the music generally isn't bound up with a recording and a new recording can easily be made of a piece that's hundreds of years old.
Rolling Stone is now mainstream media. Never thought I would see the day but it is here. RS would never feature Hunter Thompson if he was alive today and certainly not the artwork of Ralph Steadman. I haven't seen them do much with taking on real outlaw country in a meaningful way. I don't think they dare. What you write about what is now classic old rock music is interesting. I work with younger musicians and the older stuff is very highly regarded among them.
I live in the U.K. and that rack of magazines is familiar as hell - without going into the story, about 15 years ago, I was the editor of a new music mag and got the proverbial bullet in the head by my publisher for putting a new band on the cover. Sales were the same as always but it was the principle of the thing to them - it was different to what all the other mags were doing and standing out isn’t what publishers want. They all want to belong to the thing they believe is selling copies - and you can see why when most adverts are for classic bands from a time that’s never coming back. This is a great article for so many reasons but the saddest of all is that there ARE people who care out there who can also write well but there’s no place for them in the world (not unless you want to write for a credit and a free copy of a magazine).
In my first job as a local newspaper reporter, mid-1980s, I also produced the music page with a colleague. We reviewed local gigs every week & tapes that people sent in. It was a small northern town (in Britain) and we surfaced and helped some very talented, original bands. It was a lesson in how much great music rarely sees the light of day and - yes - it was the right thing to do.
I am repeating myself. If you limit your ears to jazz, American or European, and rock and its permutations then you are missing out on a lot of great music from the Caribbean, South America (Brasil itself is a continent of music) and Africa. Much of might not be new but it will be new to those who have never heard it before.
I would argue that the mags are passe, and that social media allows musicians with a PLAN to bypass traditional routes, bad advertising, and lazy club owners. Also, with no national/international monoculture anymore, there are many more opportunities. 'Regional' matters more than ever before.
I'm glad I teach college and have kids in their early 20s, or I wouldn't know how much word of mouth still matters, and how much they also discover via Spotify, Bandcamp, and TikTok. Whether us older folks learn anything from that or not... well, that's our problem. Thanks as always, Ted.
I realize it's an example and not the point, but Rolling Stone has completely changed their music coverage. I think it started when Wenner sold. The last few music covers artist include Harry Styles, Blackpink, and Doja Cat. There is something about Bad Bunny in literally every issue.
I didn't renew my subscription and I've been subscribing since I was in college in the '90s. Mostly, it's because they upped the cost to $100 a year but also they aren't writing about anyone I care about it. I'm fine with new artists, but I'm not really into pop.
If "young unproven musicians" are to have a hard time of it in this new reality, what about "aging unproven musicians" aka "late bloomers"? Asking for a friend...
The old music economy, and its ancillary fields— like music journalism— depended on a much more unified culture, perhaps even stable demographics, with enough values in common that discussion was quite possible. Economics has gone winner-take-all for two generations now, and culture as a reasonably unified entity allowing mutual discussion had probably passed by the late 1990s.
Ted, in reply to your question about RS's first ‘all-time greats’ list, their 1987 ‘100 Best Albums of the Last Twenty Years’ issue springs to mind. '87 was the magazine's twentieth anniversary, and that issue was the first of two high-page-count retrospectives they published that year (the other being a compilation of interviews).
There’s truth at the confluence of many of this thread’s comments. Legacy print magazines struggle to survive at all and naturally cater to their primary (and ever-aging) demographic, while trying to sneak in a few features on newer artists. Major labels promote just what’s determined to produce significant ROI, which has resulted in a shrinking roster of artists dominating the upper reaches of the charts. Disaggregation of media consumption makes it hard for new artists to break into widespread consciousness. The speed at which algorithms feed us an unbroken stream of decontextualized music-as-content doesn’t allow us to sit—absorb, commune—with any of it before it’s immediately replaced by the next tune. I haven’t even mentioned radio, because I’ve long since (I mean decades ago) lost faith in its ability to bring me new music worth hearing, because my tastes are neither mainstream nor easily categorizable.
Underlying all of it is wholesale embrace of nostalgia. Apart from pockets of afro-futurism, doesn’t one have to look back to the ‘50s to see any American cultural enthusiasm for what the future holds?
I know for a fact that we’re awash in outstanding new artists who are sailing almost entirely under media radar because, in an attempt to “be the change”, a few years ago I launched my own monthly streaming music show, a pure labor of love for which I scour Bandcamp to unearth remarkable independent artists. It’s time-consuming, entirely manual, expensive (because I buy all the music that appears on the show), and—because my interest is in finding and presenting music, but not in learning yet another social media platform and promoting myself on TikTok or YouTube—only reaches a tiny handful of listeners.
Ultimately I’m not convinced that, even among my community of diehard music fans, many people really care about finding new music—or, at least, not right now when the world feels like it's constantly on fire and people naturally seek comfort in the familiar. On the rare occasions that I open Spotify and see the feed of what my friends are listening to, it’s almost invariably playlists of the same old classics.
Funny how radio - community radio like KXCI in Arizona or WERU in Maine - seems to be able to showcase new and local musicians, promote touring groups, and offer "historical" shows of blues, bluegrass, etc. Perhaps music journalism is moving to this audio format, where the listeners want thoughtful, future-oriented writing: Radio-podcast-audio essays, with new music actually shared.
This reality reflects the change in risk-taking behavior across the creative industries (and I would include media news and entertainment) occasioned by the rise of the digital economy. Revenues and profit margins have been squeezed, even as markets have grown. This puts legacy publishers and distributors in an existential crisis to survive. The response has been to reduce the risk of not surviving by reverting to what worked in the past. In music, reselling the catalog is a low risk endeavor that yields profits through very low marginal costs. Streaming is a short term boon for publishers and a long term disaster for innovative new artists (they now bear all the risk and little of the reward).
In media, it means giving the audience exactly what it wants based on past metrics. So, a cover article on Bruce Springsteen is a sure bet relative to some unknown underground artist or new artistic movement. This can only be rectified by rebalancing the market between creators and consumers (and probably eliminating many of the middlemen or at least only rewarding them for value added).
Art has become a commodity, but true art can never be a commodity, so the road we are on would mean the death of art. However, I am optimistic that the creative spirit cannot and will not ever die. And, with the proper sustainable model, consumers will willingly pay for the real value in art.
www.tukaGlobal.com
Is it stagnation or was the music scene more vibrant and easier to access and more exciting? Can there be a new Bruce, Zep, Aerosmith, Pearl Jam, without a vibrant community that reaches into the street - radio, pub, bar, record stores? Online is not nor will not be the equivalent. Far too limiting in building a sense of community. I look for new music suggestions in some of the current mags - Uncut, Classic Rock, et al. (not the reprints of old interview types), as surely will not find that on the radio. The question I think is vaild but chicken or egg in that, there must a hunger for those topics or else publishers would not print. So, why is the hunger there? Lack of current talent? Or lack of places for that talent to been seen and heard on a large enough scale to build a lasting audience? When I was in college there was live music somewhere every night, and all over the place on weekends. Two close female friends of mine were both college students and traveling musicians. They did not have a deal, nor would they ever, but, they had venues to play, and audiences, raised on radio wanting hear their music. I now live in Macon, GA home to some of the finest music the world have ever produced. And while there are some venues now, there was a dearth for many years. And even now (covid a factor for sure), live music is sporadic. And other than the hand bill, you can forget about publicity. Non existent.
Thanks for another informative article. As usual, you are 100% right on the nose. If not for responsible people in the field like yourself keeping the fires burning, the flame would be doomed to wither and die. If left to only the do-nothing, gutless, risk avoiding current music industry, it would sputter out in no time at all. Again, thanks for all you do Ted. You keep the fires burning bright.
Regarding the importance of profile articles - I think there's an unwillingness on the part of the artist to engage in the give and take necessary for these to be successful. Instead, they want to manage their PR to a degree that artists of an earlier age could not or did not. I was recently contacted by a Nashville agency to help promote a new (and much anticipated) release from a notable yet still up-and-coming artist in my region. Overall, the agency rep was very professional and helpful. She gave me a link to the album, liner notes, and several different versions of their official press release. She answered all my questions promptly. But when I tried to set up a time to interview the artist and his management team... just days and days of silence. They couldn't even bother to get back to me (or her) with a definitive 'No'. As I dug deeper into the story, I found several pieces online in a variety of outlets purporting to be 'news' of the new album, but (because I already had copies) were really only regurgitations of the initial press release. I suspect if I had credentials from a national platform, things would have run differently. But when it came down to it, what the PR team really expected from a local was a dutiful push for the new record, and a 'profile' cobbled together from existing sources. If you pay close attention to the great profiles of the past - think of Stanley Booth following the Rolling Stones on the '69 US tour - what's extraordinary is the level of access available to little 'ole writers. Oh how I wish artists would understand the importance of engaging with us. Maybe there's a fear we'll misrepresent them? Everyone afraid of a hit piece? I can't say with any surety. But it left a bad taste in my mouth, and so I finally wrote back to the agency to let them know I'd stopped working on the piece, and would not be supporting the album in my journal.
Guilty as charged, I suppose. (Maybe "tribute bands" have something to do with it, too.)
I wonder about the matter of how tunes spend a longer time on the charts on average these days--an indicator that fewer songs have the chance to become hits--and I suspect that today's "nostalgia" has only an indirect relationship to that, and may actually be part of a backlash against it. Much has been written about how mainstream music doesn't really seem to want to be actively engaged with. The whole world is a dance floor.
One other thing: It's easier to fall in love with an old album these days, because it doesn't necessarily sound "old" the way an old album did fifty or even forty years ago--at least not if it's remixed, something that couldn't even have happened before the late '60s. And there's so much music out there now, and unmediated transmission on the Internet means the music can more easily be judged for itself. All this means that older music has more of a chance than it did before against newer music, in much the same way as happens in the classical music world, where the music generally isn't bound up with a recording and a new recording can easily be made of a piece that's hundreds of years old.
It may be that no one under the age of 50 reads magazines in the first place.