If you’re not familiar with the work of the British music writer and academic Andrew Dubber, then this is a perfect place to start. He’s a man of many talents, with a very future-positive outlook to make all the current music industry doom-sayers blush. Rather than me boring you trying to sum up all he does, here’s his bio as appears on his website andrewdubber.com:

Andrew Dubber is an academic, author, public speaker, blogger, music reviewer, radio and music industry consultant, whisky writer, podcaster, record collector, DJ, broadcaster and record producer. He is Reader in Music Industries Innovation at Birmingham City University, an advisor to Bandcamp and Planzai, manages half a dozen blogs, and is the founder of New Music Strategies – a pan-European music think tank and strategy group. In his spare time, he coaches productivity and time management.

Mr Dubber has just published a new article on his blog called “Music Journalism Is The New Boring” where he takes to task the notion that nothing interesting has happened in music in the past 12 months, a stance currently being pushed by some of the world’s major publications such as the New York Times and the Guardian. Dubber positis that the problem lays not with music culture or musicians themselves, but rather with the old stream media and its failure to adapt to these exciting new internet times:

[...] while “beige against the machine” is a cute and retweetable one-liner, it’s nothing more than a cheap shot based on a faulty premise: that something went wrong with music in 2011. That musicians gave up en-masse and just made safe, ineffectual and dull music.

There are quite a few problems with that idea. I’m just going to mention just three here, but you’ll no doubt think of your own too.

1) You can’t complain about a dull year in music if all you do is report on the pile of CDs that ended up on your desk as a result of public relations and major label marketing. If you were looking for urgency, relevance and innovation in that lot, you’ve misunderstood the process. No matter how much you shout “Challenge me!” at your stereo, it’s not going to oblige if you keep putting Coldplay CDs in it.

2) Even if you are looking outside the pile, chances are you’re still looking in the wrong places. Things that sound like (or aspire to sound like) the music that did make it to the minor landfill of compact discs cluttering your desk are not likely to be any better. After all, it’s no longer the job of rock music to be urgent or important. And it’s certainly not the job of mainstream rock music. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but guitar, bass, drums and vocals is no longer by default a counter-cultural lineup. The same can be said for R&B and mainstream hip hop. It’s possible to do radical stuff in those musical domains, but it’s certainly not the norm.

3) IF IT’S BORING, DO NOT WRITE ABOUT IT. In fact, write that on a post-it note and stick it to your laptop screen. Writing about boring is contributing to the boring.

The guiding question for interesting music journalism needs to be “Yes, but what else is out there?”. More than ever before there is the opportunity (even the need) for major publications to employ investigative music journalists and people with genuine curiosity. We all know what can happen when people with these kinds of qualities are given a decent platform.

John Peel-ism should be the norm by now.

You can read the rest of the article here - it’s worth it. It’s also worth checking out the comments section, where some of the journalists being criticised in the article get to have their say. Andrew Dubber has some very enlightening things to say about the music industry and new technology, and he says them very well. If you have any interest in these areas (and music culture in general) or even if you’re late to the online party and just want to find out what the hell is going on, then be sure to check his website for regular updates.

Thanks to Joe Muggs.

Is anyone else having trouble accessing Andrew’s website?

I’ve been having problems for the last hour or so.

The idea that nothing interesting happened in music this year is patently absurd, unless you are only counting clear channel-friendly mainstream pap. Incredible, monumentally good electronic, punk, psychedelic, experimental, heavy metal and hip-hop records came out this year. Anyone who looks to sources like the NYT or the Guardian for info about arts and culture just needs to start looking a little deeper.

Start with synth-pop-musician-cum-political-philosophy-professor John Maus’ “We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves”, move on to Cold Cave’s “Cherish the Light Years”, and call me in the morning

Link to original article is broken.

Same as it ever was…..

The primary reason I read blogs is to avoid advertorial.

Gilles Peterson is still joining the dots on BBC Radio 1 but his tenure is coming to an end due to the elusive search for the yoof and that dinky demographic.

There is good/great music, film and literature being produced every day, month, year.

The downside is, no one is going to sell it to you.

You have to find it.

An ex colleague who manages a hip music chain in central london, surmised his job role as “selling shit cds to shit people “

The Free Press in the UK still does what the NME et al did 30 years ago.

Stool Pigeon hard copy.

Quietus.com interwebby.

R.I.P Arthur.

Why do we need music writers now, anyway?  You can go online, hear something, and make up your own mind.  Used to be, people read record reviews to see if they wanted to buy the record.  That’s superfluous now, but that’s still how most music writers write. 

I could see there still being a place for music journalists if they were good enough, as writers, to make you think about a piece of music in ways you wouldn’t have otherwise on your own.  If they could provide some historical or social context, or some technical descriptions that describe what a musician is doing to actually make the music.  Any of those things would be useful. 

A good music writer should be able to write about a record I am already intimately familiar with, and make me hear things in it that I never noticed on my own.  Some film writers, I like to read their review AFTER I’ve already seen the movie, just to see their take on it, to see if they noticed anything I didn’t. Some film reviewers I follow are able to do that nowadays, but no music writers that I’ve found.

The link should be working now - I’m guessing Dubber’s site got a deluge of traffic today.

@ Hoi Polloi - I LOVE Stool Pigeon (and Quietus, among many other websites) but I am a bit wary of the free press as it tends to be very PR dominated.

@ Schooley - very good comment re the point of music journalism, but people still need to have their attention pointed at stuff they do not know yet before they can make their minds up. Case in point:

@ John Franics Bittrich, yep album of the year for me too. I’d like to think I turned a few people on to that one:
http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/john_maus_excellent_new_lp_

<i>Never before has there been a greater opportunity for music journalists to be tastemakers and discoverers of exciting talent. Never before has that opportunity been so resolutely rejected.</i>

I think he’s right. Compared to decades ago, there are 100 times as many people making music now. For decades it was listeners, not the Industry, that found the “new exciting sound” eventually mirrored in the charts. Now there are dozens of charts, but they can’t resolve all the directions artists are heading. Radio stations too are dependent on the old model.

DJs aren’t, and they have the time and motivation - as radio jocks did 50 years ago, before their power was taken away - to find the great new stuff. Everything I heard in 2011 that’s fresh, new was found by netlabels or DJs. I haven’t been dissatisfied ... except when I tuned into mass media. It’s the end of the world as they knew it, and I feel fine.

One thing that online music writers can do now that music journalists in decades past could not do is actually let you listen to the music they’re writing about - as we do here on Dangerous Minds by linking to streams, clouds, websites and videos. The result is we don’t have to spend a bunch of time describing what the music sounds like, which generally falls back on worn-out adjectives and cliches. Instead, we can write about why we like it, why we think it may be culturally or historically significant and share info about the artists that may not be readily available elsewhere or, if it is, save the reader the time it would take to track it down.

When everybody has access to new music at the same time, the music critic doesn’t have the advantage of getting a new album before his readers do. Therefore, we’re all critics. But not all of us are writers.

There will always be an interest among rock fans and film fans to read the opinions of writers they respect. But music critics of today have less and less influence as tastemakers. Even if you find that non-existent critic whose opinion is infallible, you can still check out the music for yourself to cover your ass before investing in a new cd or download.

Radio deejays have also become sadly obsolete. The thrill of discovering a new rock artist on the radio is as rare as finding a cunt hair in Michael Stipe’s teeth.

Yep, we’re all critics now.

Music lost it’s power to shock a long time ago   (the punk era was probably the last time anyone got really worked up about music’s ability to cause offence) and it’s sad slide into commidification has continued ever since. There’s still good music being made but it doesn’t really seem to matter as much as it used to.

@ Andrew - dunno about in the States, but certainly in the UK rave was seen as a much bigger threat to society than punk.