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Who Needs Negative Music Reviews? You Do!


A couple of the city's biggest music critics got together on their regular radio show to discuss, among other things, the absence of negative album reviews.

Maybe you hadn't noticed that most album reviews you read these days are positive. That's not because albums have suddenly gotten better, it's because now-struggling publications are being paid by also-struggling labels to say nice things about their albums, which, as we all know, nobody pays for anyway.

How to tell if you are reading "sponsored content":

If you find yourself reading a positive review for, say, the new Norah Jones tantric fiddle album and then you turn the page and see a half-page ad for the very same Norah Jones tantric fiddle album, you can bet your sweet ass that the writer was informed that there was an "ad buy" attached to this release.

In other words, "say something nice...if it kills you".

How do you think a publication like Pitchfork (now owned by publicly-traded mass media giant Conde Nast) stays afloat in the modern age?

Ad dollars, then as now, are how publications like Pitchfork, Brooklyn Vegan, and Slicing Eyeballs keep the lights on.

Back when advertisers with blank checks were plenty, a Musician magazine or Village Voice could slag the new Lou Reed album while still running an ad for the very same record in the very same issue and there wasn't a damn thing the record label could do about it.

Because we readers noticed this shit, we knew that we could take the likes of Greg Kot, Jim DeRogatis, and Ira Robbins (no relation) at their word when they informed us that, in fact, the new R.E.M. album might not be all that.

Even a fledgling underground publication like Pitchfork wielded enough readership power that they could get away with running ads for albums that were on the receiving end of some of the most beautifully scathing reviews published anywhere.

I saw the banner ads with mine own eyes for the new Jet album Shine On after laughing my ass off for the past half hour at Pitchfork's review of the album, which consisted only of a video clip of a chimp drinking its own urine.

If nothing else, seeing the same album that was being predictably gushed over in the pages of Rolling Stone revealed for the absolute fraud that it was by a younger, faster publication like Pitchfork was refreshing to the extent that it playfully revealed the disconnect between major media publications and those who actually listened to the album before stringing together a few superlatives.

If only there was some publication out there where the truth could still be told and that no amount of ad money could sway our, er, their opinion, someone you could trust because you knew Irving Azoff's money was no good here, er, we mean there.

Yeah, "if only".

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