I agree all around about WSJ. I don’t have a subscription, but I used to, and it’s a paper that I will pick up at the store fairly regularly, and even (gasp!) read in the library when I’m there.
Yes, it’s a Rupert Murdoch joint, but even so it’s perhaps the best example of a print publication still devoted to facts over clicks and sales in the 2010s. (Of course, part of its success in this regard is certainly due to the dependability of its readership — mostly older, over-educated, well-off white folks; not a ton of kids or working class laborers thumb through the thing, but whatever.)

HOWEVER... I don’t think Mr. Nazi was trying to refute WSJ by posting the Wire’s story (which I’m still reading, or taking a break from reading, as I type this). I think he was just saying “hey, here’s another take on this whole thing,” and offering it up as supplemental reading for the thread.

And, y’know, one really shouldn’t expect a mag like The Wire to present information in a similar way to WSJ. They’re two totally different beasts; one is a newspaper (a newspaper’s newspaper!), and the other is a feature-laden entertainment magazine. So I think the disparity between the two in terms of fact reporting is kind of a non-issue, as the two pubs simply don’t exist to produce the same kind of product. *shrug*

eh? i never said that sopas meant that link as a refutation, but he sorta called the paper names? which, from an ideological stance i guess one could do, but not from a journalistic one. those fuckers do good work.

the other thing i alluded to was that you called the wsj argument dumb. it's not. at all. it's the same argument more or less as the wire one, just from a different perspective-- the wire with the more aesthetic and philosophical take as it befits its editorial goals and standards. but both deal with the subject of media coverage and the deleterious effect of excessive praise.

(on a side note: i'm also heartened by the wire's denounciation of the absurdity of numerical scores, which i have always resisted... except where i'm used to them by repetition, like with netflix, where i must feed the machine that gives me recommendations-- but it's not the same thing.)

anyway-- let's not quibble about the details of minor misreadings and misunderstandings. let's go berate some music instead!

Im pretty sure I called Metacritic’s aggregating methods dumb (or, rather, statistically unsound). I don’t think I called the WSJ argument dumb. But I guess I may have? I dunno.

...

Stupid music sucks!

"I hate music / It's got too many notes..."

Mats know best.

The Wire is not an entertainment magazine. It's a music magazine, and a good lot of the music it covers, while GREAT, is hardly entertaining at all! :D

maybe people are afraid to be proven wrong in hindsight...like it sounds like garbage to me now..but what if it's just way ahead of me....

like some of those early rolling stone reviews of what are now thought of as classic albums.

Lester Bangs always (privately, I believe :D) reserved the right to be wrong, even when he was being ABSOLUTELY VICIOUS in his reviews. Just to give you two prominent examples, Exile On Main St. and On The Corner got the trademark L.B. shitstorm, but later he saw the light and placed them in his pantheon.

haha. fair enough!

the flip side of the coin, I remember hearing that when john peel didn't like some music he felt bad and assumed he didn't get what the band was going for and it was HIS issue which I thought was interesting as well

Funny. People should be afraid of the exact opposite.

Lik, in 2002, everyone was saying Interpol was the new Joy Division, and no small number of Trail of Dead/Sonic Youth comparisons were made if memory serves. And while those 2002 albums still hold up quite well, gushing over them would be suicdide for a music reviewer in 2017 (or ‘16, ‘15... any time after 2003, really).

I think I would actually suck nards at reviewing music. I’d overthink everything, and I’d end up making embarrassing declarations about the goodness and shittiness of things.

What I really like is when NPR or some other outlet does a series of rapid fire “first impression” reviews of a big new release with commentary from multiple writers just talking about how they feel immediately after hearing an album for the first time. But that’s not really possible with low-profile releases... or really anything other than Kanye/Drake/Beyonce/Taylor Swift stuff. Still, I think there’s something to it. Music is a visceral thing after all, so it makes sense to discuss it in terms of the feelings it inspires.

I like Byron Coley's column in the wire, everything he reviews gets like 2 sentences! And those two sentences tell you enough about the band and the record give you a clear enough idea about whether you want to pursue further

Robert Christgau has being doing the same thing for ages now (OK, mostly his reviews are not as "micro" as Coley's, but still) and in almost each one of those appraisals he's said more than anything twenty times longer.

http://www.robertchristgau.com/cg.php

Yeah. He knows his shit.


:D

Pitchfork are the absolute worse for this. The amount of albums they've SLATED and then a few years deleted said review to now give it a 9 or something is just ridiculous.

Hmmmm...

Yep. This happens a lot. There’s no taking their reviews seriously. Honestly, it’s just a thing to bolster your own positive opinion of something it they happen to agree, and a thing to bitch about if they disagree.

If I like an album and it gets an 8-10, I’m happy about it. If I like an album and it gets less, I bitch. If I hate an album and it gets an 8-10, I bitch. If I hate an album and it gets less, I’m satisfied. That’s all it’s good for. Bias-bolstering.

Ah well, poor guy is half a silly fool. I’ll pray for him or whatever.