Has Music Criticism Degenerated Into Lifestyle Reporting?

NOPEYou may have come across Ted Gioia’s piece for The Daily Beast this week about the dismal state of music criticism. Gioia is a respected critic (mostly known for writing about Jazz) and in the piece titled “Music Criticism Has Degenerated Into Lifestyle Reporting,” he makes a few good points but essentially declares that all working music writers are phoneys.

You can read the original piece here.

And here are some interesting and noteworthy responses…

Start with:

Jody Rosen for New York Magazine

Other coverage:

Evan Sawdey for Popmatters

Tom Hawking for Flavorwire

Mike Powell for Pitchfork

James Inverne for Classicalite

Owen Pallett for Slate

I’m not sure if any conclusions can and will be made from this debate but twitter is ablaze with opinions.

At least we’ve got a new word out of this! The “shelfie,” which means to post a photo of your personal bookshelves in the hopes of displaying the intellectual weight of all the books you have read (or at least the ones on display in your home). For the record, Rosen’s bookshelves look way cooler than Gioia’s.

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