I get it - they are in a tough situation but... This is not the best way to go about it.
First time seeing the site - it's hard to navigate, small fonts that are hard to read and tons of text all squished together. Then when I read, what is essentially a sales pitch and I still don't know what they DO.
Like - you tease "but just look at what you get in return…" but don't actually answer what you are - or how you are different from a million other publications.
Sure, you don't have a ping pong table, but can you tell me why I should pick you over say the NYTimes Music section? Or some other indie music magazine?
This sounds like I am crapping all over them, and I guess I am a bit, but I just get frustrated when people can't be clear about a differentiator. Tell me WHY I should pick you over everyone else, THEN tell me pricing and perks.
I think the target audience of this is people who already regularly read the site and know what it is, but haven't subscribed. It's not an external ad to attract new readers.
From my experience, they find interesting new artists well before you're likely to hear about their work on the NYTimes, Guardian, or MSM music publication. They are particularly good at catering to listeners with an interest in experimental and ambient music.
An arts and culture publication, with a focus on music. I've discovered far more interesting new music through The Quietus than Spotify's algorithm. Well worth a subscription.
>We’ve recently had to strip back what the Quietus does, closing down our film and arts sections and have reluctantly put our books section on ice. In order to protect our music coverage we need at least another 350 people to subscribe to the site...
I used to read music reviews in order to discover new music. Then I read them to confirm that I had good taste and pick up talking points that would make me insufferable at parties. I was stumbling into enough music I liked on my own. Now I just like what I like and mostly don't read about it.
This personal trend is not just a loss of anxiety over liking "cool" music or gaining confidence in my own opinions. Getting access to new music used to involve a trip to a niche music store and a significant outlay of cash on a CD that you might have only read about. Reviews were an imperfect guide to finding new music. You just had to hope you'd like it as much as the reviewer.
You don't need to do that anymore. This is a key function of music reviews that has been rendered completely obsolete.
I still read reviews for movies and books because these require a larger investment of time. I want some assurance that my time won't be wasted. For music, I just listen and make up my own mind.
Reading a music review today (I just tried it) is actually a somewhat frustrating and unrewarding affair. If the reviewer talks about a specific part of a specific track, sometimes I have to seek back and forward trying to figure out what the heck they're talking about. Perhaps, in a world of instant multimedia content delivery, print is no longer a good medium for music reviews.
Almost half a million subscribers. He seems to be doing okay. His thing is to take music people already love, mainly video game music, and break down how and why it works. You learn something about composition when listening to him, and large part of it is because he'll play a passage and then immediately talk about it. This is next-level stuff when compared to print music reviews, even if the function it serves is almost backwards in comparison. You're not listening to this guy to discover new music, but to learn about what you already enjoy.
I'm not suggesting that print music reviews are utterly dead. You can write about almost anything and make it compelling. There will no doubt be gems of music criticism written in the coming decades that will be a joy to read. The question is, will there be enough of them for a site specializing in music criticism to stay afloat?
Music publications are still very important in curation. Sure, you don't need to put money down on a record before listening to it anymore, but just because we have a universe of music available to us through streaming doesn't mean that all of those options are good. Albums are usually at least 35 or 40 minutes, and there are far more albums being released than movies, so it's still impossible to listen to them all.
The Quietus in particular focuses on highlighting artists far outside the mainstream that people might not otherwise notice amidst the sea of new releases on Spotify. We might not need reviewers to cover the new Drake album, but what about Horse Lords? Decius? There's a slim-to-0% chance I would know about these artists were it not for The Quietus. That said, I agree that print is a tough business to be in these days, insofar as every independent publication has it tough.
I don't understand the comparison to a reaction video on youtube, since you even acknowledge that it has a different purpose. A better point of comparison would have been Anthony Fantano, since he does video reviews, but honestly if he published transcripts of his videos I'd probably prefer to read them.
It is still very important for young people to have affirmation that the music they like is 'cool' or fits the in-group they are trying to be a member of.
However, young people generally are not reading zines or long-form music reviews any more, and instead are watching TikTok clips, YouTube videos, etc. to work out what kind of music is 'cool'.
This comment is particularly insightful, I think:
> Perhaps, in a world of instant multimedia content delivery, print is no longer a good medium for music reviews.
I would say though that print was never a good medium for music reviews, but there were no other options. Column inches in a newspaper were better than wasting money on a record. Then, it was better to read reviews online for free than waste hours downloading a file on Napster/Kazaa/whatever.
Now, with instant streaming, it takes less time to consume the content and decide for yourself than it does to read a review.
I think it's exceptionally hard to make a convincing value proposition particularly for music journalism at the moment.
Print is a way better medium for music reviews than anything with actual audio, paradoxically. You can't review music using audio, at that point you may as well just play the track.
A written review is a kind of two-step, a puzzle between the writer and reader. The writer evokes the gestalt of the music without being able to reference it directly. It's more interesting than the actual music a lot of the time, and there's a vague erotic tinge to it.
I used to listen to Kerrang! Radio in the UK when it first launched and they did these super interesting deep dives through an artist's catalogue later on in the evening, where they'd play snippets from songs, interwoven with the story of the band. I can't remember the name of the guy who did most of them, but I really enjoyed them.
I agree though often it's easier just to listen to the song and make your own mind up.
I've never read music reviews of particular releases 'on purpose' so to speak, but I've discovered it's actually great now to read reviews of sub-genres or an article about half a dozen artists, because it's easy to cue up a sample track from each artist as you go along.
There's a lot of great music out there but to get to the "just listen" part, you need to find the artists first.
First time seeing the site - it's hard to navigate, small fonts that are hard to read and tons of text all squished together. Then when I read, what is essentially a sales pitch and I still don't know what they DO.
Like - you tease "but just look at what you get in return…" but don't actually answer what you are - or how you are different from a million other publications.
Sure, you don't have a ping pong table, but can you tell me why I should pick you over say the NYTimes Music section? Or some other indie music magazine?
This sounds like I am crapping all over them, and I guess I am a bit, but I just get frustrated when people can't be clear about a differentiator. Tell me WHY I should pick you over everyone else, THEN tell me pricing and perks.