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Advice for writing about music.

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Rez:
Good point. It'd be near impossible to not do a track by track, on say, Lindstrom's last one.

Catacombs:
For your length question, I'd say stay away from the five sentence reviews, similar to what's in the back of Rolling Stone or Spin.  That doesn't help the listener at all.  But I also HATE the reviews that are like reading a paper or something.  I always thought allmusic.com does a good job of reviewing albums.  It's long enough to give the reader a little taste of the album, and at the some time intrigue others to check it out. 

Basically short, sweet, and to the point.

Dazed:
Don't be like Rolling Stone. Rolling stone said Jack White was the 17th greatest guitarist ever. DO NOT BE LIKE ROLLING STONE.

Thrillho:
1. Do you live in Britain?
2. If so, do you want to just get real-world experience writing for a website?

I started out on www.rockmidgets.com, I wrote there for three and a half years before coming to university. It taught me almost everything I know about writing about music. Also, write reviews on amazon, just to stay in trip.

Sox:

--- Quote from: Ptommydski on 03 Mar 2009, 17:22 ---I wouldn't advise a career writing about music if you really, really love music. I've been there and it was a soul draining experience because on occasion I was forced into a position whereby I had the option of writing about bands I hated or not being able to eat/make rent/exist in general. In order to earn good money doing it, you basically have to become part of the loathsome 'Music Industry'. You're basically paid to turn art into a financial commodity by some very dubious people and corporations. It's essentially impossible to earn a realistic income writing about genuinely good music because it isn't popular enough. Also, printed and paid music journalism is on its way out. Maybe not tomorrow but it's certainly on the cards.

Start a website or a blog if you feel a burning desire to write about music. Just my two cents.

--- End quote ---

This post is on the ball, except for that part about printed/paid journalism being on the way out. Not in the near future. That's not realistic. There's always going to be a demand for physical magazines and there's always going to be a demand for high profile journalist, even ones writing about the music industry. Yes, the music industry is taking hits thanks to the sheer amount of free material on the internet, but don't get too comfortable with the belief that the entire thing is going to collapse and go away. There are enough people that genuinely enjoy mainstream music and don't give a shit about independents to ensure they'll be around for a very long time. Billion dollar industries don't go away overnight. They adapt. The NME is about as likely to go away as major record labels.

I suggest you start a blog. But I also suggest you don't write specifically about music you like. Tommy mentioned it's unrealstic expecting to be able to do that professionally. Choose an area of music, specialise in writing about it, including good and bad. Everybody can talk forever about things they like. It's harder to be professional and critical about something that you don't like. Get out there, learn about your local music scene. Get involved. Get to know the bands and their relationships with eachother. Give yourself a set time to update it, write about shows that are occuring, gig reviews, review recorded material, inform people when somebody is getting into a studio or touring. I think an important part of journalism is discipline. This means writing about things you don't neccessarily agree with while keeping up appearances of being a non-biased source of information.

Few things to remember;
*Update regularly and routinely, on time.
*Stay non-biased and cover a variety of materials, good and bad.
*Don't just write reviews. Music reviews are a very small part of music journalism.
*Try to seem passionate for what you're writing about.
*When in doubt, shop local. A lot of blogs suck, coincidentally those blogs pull random high profile releases from across the globe, or only write about post-rock.

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