22 July 2009 — Stuart Braithwaite Doesn't Like Criticism
Stuart Braithwaite of Mogwai was asked for his take on the state of music journalism, in this piece in Drowned in Sound. He says some interesting things, but I'm not sure what his point is.
It would appear that he's trying to suggest that, despite the ways in which the internet has changed the music industry, people still seem to follow arbiters of taste such as Pitchfork, rather than finding their music through some other means. He finishes by saying: "isn’t it a little bit sad that with all the music now at our fingertips we still need someone else to tell us what to like?"
So it seems that we should be discovering our music some other way. Which is a fine point to make I guess, though not one I would agree with.
Earlier in his piece, though, he says: "When I was younger I used to think that the only reason that Labradford sold a fraction of the amount of record Robbie Williams did was because people hadn’t had the chance to hear them. I was wrong. So. Fucking. Wrong."
I liked this bit, not because I love Robbie Williams, but because I haven't heard of Labradford. Is he saying that they aren't selling now because Pitchfork doesn't like them, so the music listening public isn't going to buy their stuff? I honestly don't know, but it seems to imply that we need something to direct us to new music, even if we take their advice with a grain of salt.
Anyway, Drowned in Sound has a number of articles about music journalism at the moment, and they're worth a read. No doubt I'll bring some of them up here at some point in the future.