The pacification of music criticism

Kelefa Sanneh hit a home run with his excellent piece in the New Yorker, covering the decline of music criticism from acerbic, witty truth telling to the placid, homogenized landscape that we have today.  

Additional context comes by way of a video by Dave Hurwitz, and even though he's talking about the classical music industry (his specialty), the sentiment is applicable to other genres as well. In short, as magazine readership began to decline rapidly, publishers and editors became reluctant to risk alienating a shrinking pool of potential advertisers with negative reviews.  The magazines continued on their death spiral, and review culture never recovered.  

In particular, Sanneh makes a fascinating connection that I'd never considered before.  As rockism fell into disfavour -- in no small part due to Sanneh's endless debated piece in the NYT --  and poptimism rose to fill the void, negativity in music reviews also waned.  He writes, "poptimism intimated that critics shoudl not just take pop music seriously but celebrate it ...".  This new culture of positivity was also spurred by the explosion of blogs and online mags, where countless writers competed to be seen as tastemakers with a keen ear for discovering and popularizing new music through glowing reviews, mp3 blogs, etc.  

Sanneh highlights the online presence of Anthony Fantano and Rick Beato, as two examples of influencers (each with millions of followers) who aren't afraid to regularly dole out negative criticism.  It's important to note that Fantano and Beato are independent and not beholden to an editorial direction influenced by outside funding.   It's hardly a surprise that "old school" criticism lives on through outlets such as theirs.  

Sanneh makes just one misstep.  Toward the end of the piece, he explains that twenty years ago, he wrote negative reviews regularly, whereas now feels less compelled to do so.  This is in part because when reviewing an album that he doesn't take to immediately, "why commit that judgement to print, when, instead, I could wait to see whether it will grow on me, as awkward -seeming albums sometimes do?" I believe he's trying to restore some nobility to the art of writing reviews, seeking honour in this new era of criticism where very little is actually criticized.  But for me, this sentiment runs counter to a fundamental consequence of good criticism.  The critic's skill and expertise give them the vision to recognize a record's greatness and its potential long-term impact long before the general public catches on.  This is a key motivation behind my writing -- opining on the music I like and don't like, putting a time stamp on my thoughts, and hoping to be proven right in the long run.  And even if I'm wrong, or change my mind, or what have you, there's always a learning experience in the process.  In contrast, biding one's time and letting their opinion be continuously re-shaped by the shifting consensus isn’t leading the critical charge—it’s following it. It’s almost glorified gossip-column hackery: scanning what others are saying to gauge public sentiment, then presenting the safe, majority-approved opinion.