Writing about music was never a route to riches, but the digital era has made it an even tougher livelihood. There are more public spaces for music discourse than ever, thanks to webzines, blogs, message boards, and other online forums. At the same time, analogue forms of music criticism are also thriving: specialist and small-run print magazines proliferate as the golden age for serious books about music continues, from weighty macro-narratives mapping eras and genres to micro-studies that focus on individual albums or songs. What to make of this paradoxical situation where it’s never been easier to voice your opinion about music, but never harder to make a career out of it? Author Simon Reynolds, critic Anwyn Crawford, journalist Craig Mathieson and cultural historian Rebecca Sheehan discussed the past, present and future of music writing at this public forum.
This was a Sydney Ideas event presented with the Faber Academy and the US Studies Centre.
