October 20, 2009 Special Issue

MP3 in 2.0

Can print depict digital diversity?

by Madeline Coleman

Alex Chinien once dreamed of writing for a music magazine. Now he’s not even sure he cares anymore.

“I think the role of the music critic has almost diminished to obscurity,” explained the Concordia University journalism student. “You don’t need someone to tell you whether music is good or not. You just need to listen to it.”

Chinien writes a music blog called The Heart Attack Club, one that allows its readers to do just that. He keeps text to a minimum, dovetailing every post with a handful of MP3s that can be streamed off the site. While Chinien said one reason he keeps blogging is for his writing portfolio, he also feels that the fast-moving world of blogs is a better fit for the modern soundscape than print journalism.

“[Blogs have] more of a ‘decide for yourself’ kind of attitude,” he said. “Even the average person, who doesn’t have that eclectic taste in music, will still have heard about a lot of stuff.”

But Rupert Bottenberg, music editor of Montreal’s free local weekly Mirror, argues that there’s no reason why musical diversity can’t be represented in traditional media. Every week since the late ‘90s, it’s been Bottenberg’s job to sift through the shit for diamonds. And as the music scene shifts to relying more and more on the Internet, Bottenberg does too.

“Thank God for anything that can make my life easier, because there are now more bands than ever and more venues too,” he said.

Bottenberg, who got his start writing album reviews for early issues of Vice magazine, says he tries to capture the diversity of Montreal’s music scene in his editorial decisions.

“Today, with the shuffle function on the iPod and everything, there’s sort of a comparable thing; people are less and less glued to particular subgenres as a culture,” he said, adding that music journalism hasn’t always been so inclusive. “[Defunct publication] Creem was a fantastic magazine, but it was very much in that ‘70s, ‘disco sucks, rock rules’ kind of mentality.”

The trend toward eclecticism started long before blogs came online, said Bottenberg. He instead credited hip hop and the advent of sampling, calling it “quite possibly the most important genre of music in the world right now.”

“[Hip hop] is fundamentally based on the idea of whatever’s clever, whatever works, we’ll take it and use it,” he said, pointing out legendary rap group Run-DMC’s use of rock samples. “Right there you had the beginning of the idea of breaking down those barriers.”

Music journalists like Bottenberg are constantly fielding calls and press releases, both from bands themselves and persistent PR reps, making his job more about “parsing through” the heap rather than going out to look for talent.

Chinien, by contrast, has to go on the hunt. He rarely turns to publications like Mirror for anything but show listings, preferring to troll online MP3 aggregators like The Hype Machine for fresh sounds. He’s not alone. Bloggers are notorious for their re-appropriation of content, recycling each other’s discoveries over and over until what was once just a catchy song has spread like a virus.

Internet-generated hype creates a new dilemma for music journalists. Committed to timeliness, they can’t just ignore newly popular artists, even if they might feel the attention is undeserved.

“I do think it’s a bit of our task as music journalists to point out when the emperor has no clothes because of how blogs are accelerating the process from obscurity to superstardom,” said Bottenberg.

“Blogs are definitely not immune to the tendency of media to constantly consume itself and regurgitate itself,” agreed Chinien. “It definitely makes a distinction between the kinds of artists who understand how to present themselves in a way that blogs will be attracted to.”

Bottenberg, who said he doesn’t have a blog, asserted that most bloggers are not true journalists because they fall into the trap of “hype-y, amateur fan writing.” They have a different role to play.

“The blog is basically an extension of the zine and I have no problem with the zine being the taste-maker,” he said. “It’s someone who’s young, whose ears are still wide open, who hasn’t really settled in their taste. They’re basically chronicling their discoveries and doing it with tremendous enthusiasm.”