Don't believe the hype machine

Listening to Christopher Weingarten is less fun than reading his writing. Not because he often comes across as that kind of whiney nerd who swears too much for effect, but because he's right. His speech at last year's 140 Characters Conference kind of summed up my thoughts about music writing and re-inforced the fear that there is little to no chance of making any money from it. He recently gave another speech at this year's conference, (below), and, what can I say, dude's got more points than Michael Jordan has won MVP's. For someone who is still trying/pretending to be/become a music writer, it's depressing viewing.


What he calls "wet spitballs of non-news" being lobbed around Twitter is a phenomenon visible to anyone who logs on to the wretched thing whenever there's a gig of a certain importance going on. Every music magazine or webzine will have someone at the gig "covering" it - but not just, as you might expect, in the form of a knowledgeable review, but in a kind of verbally constipated, stuttering "live-feed" that reads like a collection of haikus written by a drunk 5-year-old. Some of these writers actually do this voluntarily, which makes it even worse. It's like if you didn't tweet about how Courtney Love just dropped her guitar onto her roadie's head, you weren't there.

The bit about "exclusive content" is spot on, too - although I have to say the Guardian's new(ish) way of streaming soon-to-be-released albums (The Hold Steady, The Fall, Hole) and letting a critic in in an actual dialogue with those who comment (rather than just let them pile up into an unreadable mess) is an idea worth mulling over - until you think about just how quickly these streams will end up on What.CD and Mininova.

But yeah, right on, Chris. Thanks for getting my hopes up. Oh, and the new Broken Social Scene doesn't suck.