Music News Has Lost Its Appeal
a.k.a. Shifting reader appetites, and the media's struggle to adapt.
“A certain 24-year-old artist called me a psycho recently because he saw me checking Resident Advisor on my phone.”
That line, uttered by Local Action label founder Tom Lea, was by far the funniest moment of the most recent episode of No Tags, the podcast he launched late last year alongside music writer Chal Ravens. And while the comment was delivered with a hearty laugh, it emerged out of a fairly serious conversation the hosts were having with Henry Bruce-Jones about the state of contemporary music journalism. More specifically, they were also undertaking what might be described as a post-mortem of FACT, the UK publication where Lea and Ravens had worked together for many years during the 2010s, and where Bruce-Jones, until recently, had been handling much of the magazine’s remaining online editorial. (As it turns out, he’d been laid off only a few hours prior to the recording of the episode.)
Unlike the recent layoffs at Pitchfork, which came as something of a surprise and triggered widespread handwringing throughout the music industry, the editorial contraction of FACT—which, to be fair, still has a biannual print magazine that will apparently continue to be produced—has been a gradual, years-long process. Once one of electronic music’s most prominent media outlets, the site had become a shadow of its former self, existing in a kind of zombie state following the elimination of most of the permanent editorial staff and a head-scratching pivot to video (in January 2020, well after that media trend had already been exposed as the byproduct of a huge lie on the part of social media platforms). And while it’s impressive that FACT’s esteemed mix series somehow survived those changes and cutbacks, becoming essentially the magazine’s only regularly occurring online content series, this month’s muted announcement (scroll down to find it) that it was being discontinued felt like the definitive end of a chapter, a severing of the final connection to the publication’s glory days.
Aside from a few scattered tweets and news stories, the cancellation of the mix series didn’t generate much uproar online, and though the subsequent tidal wave of Pitchfork conversation—which hit just a few days after the FACT announcement—certainly had something to do with that, the general lack of outcry also reflected just how far the site’s star had fallen in recent years. I’d wager that plenty of readers and music fans didn’t even realize that FACT was still active, and even among those who fondly remember the site’s mid-2010s peak, the most common response was one of sad resignation, not outrage. Hollowed-out publications usually wither and die, and given that that FACT has been operating with a skeleton crew for several years now, the eventual demise of its online editorial—and, quite possibly, the entire publication—has long felt all but inevitable.
This situation isn’t unique to FACT, of course, and in the months and years ahead, it’s likely that more niche media outlets will shrivel up and / or blinker out of existence altogether. Right now it’s pretty difficult to feel optimistic about the future feasibility of music journalism as a professional field—and no, the recent uptick in newsletters and blogging probably isn’t a long-term solution—but that hasn’t stopped plenty of people from considering what a solution might look like. That was part of the discussion on the aforementioned No Tags episode, and while they didn’t come up with any concrete answers, some of the most telling / worrying assertions came from Bruce-Jones, the only zoomer in the room.
His comments included the following:
“Anyone thinking that a website is where anyone is going to discover anything… that [idea] is already super antiquated.”
(Cue everyone who’s worked as a music journalist during the past 15 years collectively sighing.)
Although the question of how to reach the proverbial “kids” has pretty much always been one of the music industry’s central challenges, the contemporary music media is clearly struggling to connect with younger audiences. That reality plays into the “looking at Resident Advisor is psycho” sentiment that Lea mentioned, and while its root causes are numerous, the changing nature of what kinds of information music fans are interested in consuming certainly has something to do it. The No Tags crew touched on that in their discussion, and one exchange in particular felt rather illuminating:
Ravens: People aren’t as plugged in to getting that music news every day… I don’t think 23-year-olds who are really into music are bothered about music news now.
Bruce-Jones: No one needs it, because you’re just discovering new stuff on the Spotify algorithm, or you’re in your own little communities and [information] is being shared in a more localized, organic way.
The notion that streaming platforms are making music journalism irrelevant (or, at the very least, are reducing its general utility) is nothing new—it’s definitely been one of the main knocks against Pitchfork during the past two weeks. But most of the time, that argument is used to account for the declining demand for music reviews, the logic being that the average consumer doesn’t need recommendations / evaluations when they have access to most new releases and can make their own decisions instead. What’s novel about Bruce-Jones’ comment is that he extends the argument to cover music news as well.
Why is that a big deal? Because during the past 10-15 years that music publications have operated primarily online, news has quietly been the bedrock of most outlets’ editorial offerings. Artists and labels may clamor for long-form features, and reviews and lists are more likely to get people arguing on social media, but when it comes to driving traffic and attracting eyeballs, particularly on steady, day-to-day basis, it’s news coverage that most sites have relied upon. So if what Bruce-Jones said is true—and, for what it’s worth, I don’t think he’s off base—then music journalism’s editorial framework (and, by extension, its business model) will likely need to do more than merely reconsider the role of the traditional review. It may need to be rebuilt entirely.