Already posted some thoughts here:

http://nick-lcc.tumblr.com/post/12536432…

But I'll repost it here...

As Old Music Geek Guy, I'll say stratification has been around since the music industry started. Initially, it was a geographical limitation and lack of distribution. During the 80s and early part of the 90s, it was less of that and more relient on magazines. And niche magazines definitely existed.

Now we have it all on one Internets, so it's the opposite problem. People choose a single channel, because there are too many -- as opposed to people fighting to create several channels because there were only too few.

For every person deciding to customize his or her music world to Metal, Metal, and Metal (find/replace single genre here), another now has the freedom to do a cross-genre grab-bag of songs, and then descend down each of a gazillion branches there.

That latter part hadn't really existed until now. Criticism lives on, but it's far less this uni-directional top-down thing anymore. There's a lot more of an army of amateur critics with constant back-n-forth feedback all on the ground over-poulating each other and getting in each other's way, because hovering above apparently isn't economically feasable for the time being or perhaps moving forward. In either case, Sturgeon's Law applies in all cases.

The crux is that no one needs to construct an environment to discuss music anymore. It's easily available everywhere, anywhere, for free, if you have net access. The above premise is filled with too much pessimism (and hoo boy do big festivals trigger the pessismim gland!) It's a matter of figuring out how best to use all this free shit on the internet, rather than complain about how people are running away with it now.

To be honest, I don't see the problem with what we have. No one has had the time and/or creativity and/or technical learning to make something useful out of all of this yet.

When critics learn some programming skills, things will absolutely improve wrt Weingarten's complaint. And don't let people tell you otherwise -- programming is just a skill, like cooking, or retail, or whatever. It's just a trade, not this rocket science thingey that's too hard to learn.

Jason @1:
Of course he's upset. His job is obsolete. As a former music writer, I say good riddance.

This is much easier said than done, but now is the time for aspiring or current critics to get to learn how to *create* more of the Internets rather than *depend* on it. And this involves some basic software dev and digital network theory with some initiative to write some scripts.

This isn't *the* solution. Main point, when your current trade is outsourced and/or is dying, either you diversify your skills, or you fall.

this guy is very, very confused. he brings up some good points--i like the plea for more "because" in criticism--but he contradicts himself left and right.

first of all, just look at him. what is he trying convey with his appearance? just with-it enough to not be scoffed at by hipsters, just nerdy enough to feel comfortable delivering a talk at the twitter convention. yet he falls short of either. he looks foolish bc he believes he exists out of social context.

which is why he blames "crowdsourcing" for killing punk rock. sorry, guy, but that was social evolution killing punk rock. that was the passage of time. you need to get out more, christopher, bc things die in the real world. and good riddance--now that punk is dead it can (and will) be reborn a million times over, and critics will have no say in how its done.

then he skirts the fallacy of "popular=bad" by blaming his friends for not knowing who katy perry is, then he embraces it by chastising the masses' bad taste. you cant have it both ways, dude. your nerdster/critic bias is showing.

dude goes to bonnaroo--the largest, most diverse music festival in america--and leaves with a bad taste in his mouth because...? people arent twittering right? wha? get over yourself.

which leads to that "because" he mentions, and ultimately misunderstands. the because has become implicit in the message. the because used to be--and hed have to agree, based on his argument--"because I'm the critic, that's why. bc I'm writing for a bigtime magazine or newspaper. bc i'm being paid for my opinion about art. bc i've listened to a lot more music than you." that ivory tower criticism bullshit is over. like @1 says, good riddance. now that everyones writing for free, the bc is different.

be it a blog, twitter, a weekly newspaper, a magazine, whatever, there are only two reasons to write about music. either you really care about what you're writing about and want to share it with others, ego-free; or you want to be a tastemaker, a role that involves personal recognition and superiority. both involve the "because" but present it in entirely different ways. weingarten cops to the second, which is why, rightfully, he fears for his job.