How Would You Like Your Music News Madam?
So with NME’s cutting its physical publication a few weeks back, it got me thinking about a chat I had with James Kendall founder of Brighton music publication Source Magazine. Back then The NME had just become free, now you will only find the publication online. When we spoke the fate of music journalism was quite similar to today but with the dwelling uncertainty of what would happen to physical publication. It’s fair to say as we put the NME magazine to rest, the direction is quite obvious. Oh well, save the trees n all.
We spoke during the creation of Revival so, yes this conversation is about two years old. Never the less this chat is still very much relevant, I think we touch on some very interesting topics James really showered me with his music journalist knowledge. I thought I’d only be genuine of me to let you into the research process behind ma baby blog, give you an insight into my noggin.
Basically, this interview is a lil gem and I want to share it with you lovely people.
Just in case, you didn’t get my awful pun the overall contentious is a discussion as to what is the prevailing platform for music journalism: physical vs online publication.
I had the idea that idea that the fanzine, the DIY publication was set to have a revival, in physical format but then I realised that maybe not, maybe it isn’t?
“People have started to appreciate objects again, people who grew up with the Internet are appreciating having something and that’s why vinyl records have had a revival.”
Yes exactly, I compared vinyl to the possible physical publication revival.
“Yes you are bang on with the vinyl analogy, it’s the same as with the cold craft beer thing people like things that have had some effort put into them, and things that have got no physical being are difficult to prove that effort, things that are so throw away. But to have something that someone’s put enough love into it to bother to get it printed or made makes a huge, huge difference. Saying that it is much more expensive to print a magazine, or fanzine that it is to build a website, which costs you exactly no money. So yeah there are people that are doing magazines, but there is probably less printed material that there was 5-10 years ago, the things that are being made are the more sorta’ special things. There’s an element of ‘people wanna’ make something that isn’t being represented, there’s no point making a fanzine that is similar to Q magazine. If you’re interested in feminist punk or some obscure music, it seems like hip hop and dance music are more of an online thing, and guitar music is the thing that’s more likely to be featured in a fanzine.”
I originally based my project on fanzines similar to ‘Sniffin’ Glue’ during the punk era but punk has derived and changed so much that it’s not what it used to be it’s not as DIY.
“I think there was a necessity for fanzines in that era to be physically printed, where are no if you’re really punk then you’re not making something that cost money you’re doing something in the cheapest way possible. Now a true punk aesthetic would now be online. There’s a sort of middle-classiness of fanzines now.”
Do you think if blogs where around then punks would use them?
“ When Sniffin’ Glue came out there was nowhere to read about punk, I’m not quite sure about the chronology of NME and The Melody Maker but there was nowhere. When The Sex Pistols where on The Paul Grundy Show it was a big sensation, it was shocking that they were on TV. There were no music programs apart from Top Of The Pops, there was nowhere to find out this stuff; so people had to make something - to talk about what they wanted to talk about. Now you could make a video, you could put something on YouTube, you could do a podcast, you could put something on a blog.”
I think the platforms changed the prevailing platform isn’t; really physical anymore like it was. Many people say they want physical nice things but at the end of the day, the internet has given everyone a platform to talk about things I guess...How do you think the internet has effected physical publications and music journalism?
“Massively, massively. In a way that I never expected when it came out, I thought it would be a threat to magazines cause of the speed of reviews coming out makes something like NME a week out of date as soon as it’s hit the newsstand. But that’s not how it’s affected, it is effected that if you wanna’ know what a song sounds like you go on the internet and find the song; and listen to it, and find out whether you like it or not.”
I guess you can review if yourself in that sense.
“Yeah, when I was sorta’ eighteen/nineteen the only way you could hear music and find out whether something was good or not, was by reading reviews. You had to know which review was shaped to your taste, which publications, you had to read a lot to figure out whether it was worth spending a tenner on a record. Music was more expensive in those days as well. So yeah it would be a big risk buying a record, some shops would let you listen to it on headphones, but if it was a busy Saturday probably not. So you kind of had to hang out in the record shop a lot, or you had to read a lot of music reviews. Now you could just go online and listen to it, and if you like it you can save it to your Spotify, or you can download it for 79p off Apple, or just play it again on YouTube, so you don’t need people to tell you if something’s any good or not. What you do need, is something that is similar, that is kinda a filter as to what is good. There’s 15,000 songs that come out in the week, and you can’t listen to all of them, so you need someone to help you through that, and that might be through a weekly compiled Spotify playlist or through somebody’s opinion. But the whole, reviewing an album to tell somebody whether it’s any good is not necessary anymore. There’s still an argument to say that music journalism is important, cause what music journalists can do that lots of other people can’t do, is they can contextualise something in the history of music, they can say whether it’s interesting with what’s gone one now and the past joining these links.”
Do you think in the way anyone can be a bedroom DJ, anyone can be a producer, anyone can make music.. so anyone can create a blog, do you think that has a negative effect on the industry because there’s an abundance of opinion?
“It would be a bit negative for me to say that other people can’t write about music, only the chosen few, of which, I’ve been one of those, that would be an awful attitude to have. The more people that write about music, the more good journalists discover that they can do this, and the better journalism should be overall. So yeah, it is the same as music... I mean dance music; it’s a prime example of this, when you had to get things pressed onto vinyl it has to be good enough for the label to spend £1000 to get it pressed. So there was a quality barrier there, and then as soon as Beat Port came around all of a sudden there's thousands and thousands of tracks every week, and loads of them haven’t got anything really important about them and will disappear. The fact that people are able to on a cheap computer - people were making records on PlayStations for a while. So the fact that there are kids on housing estates are able to make beats, and then their mates can rap over the top, then they get it out on beat port or iTunes, or, whatever is amazing. And the fact there is a kid on the same housing estate that can write about that on their phone, and update it to Tumblr, is an absolutely brilliant thing. Any old people that say it was better in my day are wrong. There are challenges is in every situation, but the fact that more people can access to their writing, and get their writing out there is the best thing that could possibly happen to journalism.”
Do you think there is a battle between physical and digital format, in terms of are people more inclined to read something online then buy something physical?
“People are definitely more included to read something online because of the speed of them. For example the NME might write a news story of Beyoncé falling of stage, and have a picture on physical format - if you read that online you probably will have a video of it, so that’s a better article not just cause it’s out there quicker, but because it’s a richer experience. Although it’s more difficult to read a long article online on your computer, there’s a reason why books are still around just as much. There are no distractions from other notifications, it’s easier on your eyes and it’s a nicer experience. There are different positives for physical and digital. I think what has happened, is people have decided that they’re either going to do physical publications or are going to focus on online, we’ll be known for one thing. Pitchfork is a great example. They’ve got enough readers to put out a magazine, and people would buy it but they’re concentrated on the online format. The NME is also interesting, they’ve been all about their website for quite a long while.”
Now the magazines free right?
Yes now the magazine is free, and that completely changes things. Now they’ve got a 1/3 of a million readers or print run that’s going out there, it seems to me that their website is doing a different thing to their magazine, and they don’t have a lot of cross over. You can’t look at the magazine online on issue, they do a preview but you can’t see the whole thing, which is really interesting. From an advertisers perspective, they want their adverts to be seen, so if they’re appearing on the digital version of issue that’s fine, but NME have decided they want people to pick up the physical magazine, that’s important to them. They’ve got both physical and digital but it’s not that same content.
Do you think all digital publications are all transferring online? Or the magazine will become free a like NME as well an online platform?
“ I used to have my own magazine, so I know how much it costs to print a magazine, and it’s a lot of money. So my magazine we did like 10/12,000 copies, on the lowest quality paper, like 60-90 pages, and it would cost somewhere between 3,000- 6,000 on printing. So that’s 3-6,000 pounds of adverts you’ve go to sell before you even break even.”
That was my main problem I faced with my project, funding and with my own experience I felt a blog was an alternative that did the job just as good. I just have an inkling that all publications will be online.
“Yeah. I find it interesting that the Independent has stopped printing, so it’s the first newspaper to shut down in thirty years or something so that’s really telling. But what happens to a shrunken advertising market for print publications is that when people split up their advertising budget they don’t put so much into print anymore. That print advert money is smaller, and as it filters through, the big print publications don’t suffer as much, but the smaller ones suffer massively. And that’s what happened to us, local adverts disappeared because of social media, a way of getting your message out there that’s free. So we replaced it with bigger brands and companies, but that sort of died out even though our print run was the same as ever, our readership was the same as ever, but we were getting less of that money as it wasn’t filtering through the magazine industry. And that’s why we went out of business, the magazine industry as a whole wasn’t big enough for us to take a share that was enough for us to do a good quality magazine. There are other local magazines, but I would argue that they are surviving, as they aren’t spending enough money making a decent project.”
Do you think major scale print publications are okay then?
“I think it’s become more and more difficult, even for major publications. Something like vogue, which is like 700 pages of advert - advertising is a sign of quality for them; they’re okay. If you look at something like Uncut Magazine it’s a lot thinner than it used to be, at one point it was so thin people stopped buying it. So it’s a spiral you get in, you haven’t got enough money to print such a good magazine, because you haven’t got many readers, then you haven’t got many readers cause your magazine isn’t as good, it’s a spiral and goes down and down until you go out of business. It is probably a good argument to say that paid for magazines will totally become free; I’m surprised by what the quality of the current NME, I’m surprised it’s doing so well. Shortlist and Stylist continue to do really well, and Time Out it struggled and firsts but it’s better than it’s been for years and years. So four of the most successful British magazines are all free. Everybody’s looking at that, everybody’s struggling. There will be some premium magazines that survive but everything else will be free. Lots of publications will try to go free, some people will make it some people won’t. To be a successful free magazine, you will probably have to be a big company, it will be big companies that provide successful free magazines - it won’t be the independent.”
I read ‘How To Write About Music” and it says that physical publications are just a regurgitation of PR
“ Nick Davies uncovered the phone-hacking scandal; he says that the problem with journalism (he’s talking about newspaper journalism) is the journalists don’t have enough time on a story to dig deep enough to find the truth they can only report what they are told. What is happening is that you are getting somebodies carefully PR’d opinion. That is definitely true about music journalism as well. If you don’t have enough time to devote to finding out what the truth is you are either rewriting a press release or you’re rewriting somebody else’s story.”
Do you think blogs are more passionate, more excited therefor it’s more of an honest raw opinion?
“ It is more honest but it has probably come from less knowledge. If I was writing about Slaves I probably no more about to roots of their music than the actual band themselves. But if you’re 15 and you’ve never heard punk before, and Slaves is the first band you’ve heard like that, it’s going to be very exciting prose and a very honest review, but it’s not going to have much depth. It was the same with me, I really loved Suede, and then I realised they were a rip off of David Bowie.”
I’m kind of focusing on that for my blog, I’m looking at the nature of revival and how we are living in a culture obsesses with it’s own past.
“Looking at it through that lens, it’s a retro thing again, were as when Sniffin Glue came out that wasn’t a very retro thing, it was cutting edge and modern. So if you are a punk band or a punk journalist that’s putting out fanzines it’s really you’re like; if you were about in the punk era you’d be writing about Jazz basically, because you are looking back at something that’s nearly 30-40 years old. When I was young it was at the tail end of the acid house era, people were kinda into this punk idea, but at the time It was dance music which was very DIY, on the edges of legality and that was the punk thing of the time. Not a revival or something that happened ten years ago. I think you could make an interesting point of the revival of fanzines and what they mean.”
Interesting, any last words?
“ So I think that blogs are the new fanzines; in terms of people who are not getting info on the sort of music that they like, people are writing blogs about it. People who are making fanzines have lost the DIY origin, its more about crafting something and making an object, whereas making a blog is about getting a voice out there and information about a subject that isn’t being portrayed in mainstream media. That’s how I would sum it up.”
