Album Reviews in the Age of Spotify

What is modern music criticism after the death of physical media?

What is the point of music reviews in the era of Spotify? When I was last writing extensively online, circa 2010, streaming music was not yet ubiquitous. A few years before, when I was devoting many hours a week to a music review blog of exceedingly minor note, I felt like the point of reviews was simple: Let people know if their money will be well-spent if they choose to buy the record.

That task involved a certain level of criticism and understanding of the broader musical landscape. It required honing the ability to determine what elements of taste might incline someone to like the record or not. But ultimately it was not an exercise in critique or comparison. It was trying to inform people so that they could decide whether or not to hop in their car, drive down to the local Hastings and put down $20 to own the album in question.

There was an additional element of potentially encouraging people to find new music, but even that was in service of helping them understand if this expansion of their music horizons was worth three hours at the federal minimum wage.

It was a heady responsibility.

I was conscious at the time that what I was doing wasn’t music criticism. (I did some of that in a weekly newsletter I posted alongside the reviews, but it was minimal.) I was not Lester Bangs nor Mark Fisher nor desired to be. I was a poor kid hoping to help other poor kids get the most musical euphoria out of their pocket money.

What is the point of reviews like this in the era of ubiquitous streaming? I’ve been thinking about this ever since I posted my review of the new Mogwai album. (Spoiler if you haven’t read my take on it: it fucking rips.) I wrote that review more or less the way I wrote reviews almost two decades ago. I even ended the review by articulating who the record might be good for.

It strikes me now, in the era of ubiquitous streaming, that this is no longer a useful kind of review to write. Or at least, it no longer serves the same purpose that it served then.

After all, these days, if someone wants to determine if they like the new Mogwai album, they’ll just say aloud “Hey [Dystopia Bot wake word], play the new Mogwai album”. Moments later, the album will start playing (probably on the shittiest speakers imaginable; they’ve really been cheaping out on the Dystopia Bot audio quality these days). There is no need to drive to the Hastings that closed down in 2012. No need to hand over $20 to the most bored teenager on the face of the planet. There’s no cost.

So why read reviews? It’s quite literally more effort to find and read a review than it is to just start listening to the album.

I believe the ubiquity of music is a good thing. The way streaming services and the record labels with whom they conspire treat artists is garbage. But the ease with which I can access the common musical heritage of the modern world is truly fantastic

Streaming services have also helped discoverability. For all of the reasonable critiques of The Algorithm eliding niche artists and shaping listening habits, I think modern recommendation albums have probably broadened at least the number of artists that users listen to. They no longer need to read a review of the new Pure Bathing Culture album to learn if it’s a good bet for someone who loves Depeche Mode and also quaaludes (it is), they may just be hanging out in their apartment and have “Pendulum” start playing amongst a stream of semi-curated songs.

So if the point of reviews is no longer to help people learn if they’re going to like a record and if it’s worth their hard-earned money, then what is the point?

Or is there a point in traditional reviews anymore? Have they just become “cultural snow”?

I don’t actually have an answer for this just yet. I know that I am going to change the way I write about music. Maybe I will move more into criticism. Maybe I’ll try to just incorporate my music writing more into my other writing and move away from anything like “reviews”.

The one aspect I want to lean into is writing to help people like music more. I think an under-appreciated way in which writing about art can make life better is by helping us love the art that matters to us with more specificity, more clarity, and more intensity. It can also help us understand what others love in art that doesn’t move us.

So maybe the point of reviews or something like them today is not to tell us if we will like an album, but rather how we can like them better.

While I’ve been thinking about this, I’ve put off reviewing some great records. Both new ones (the new Lucy Dacus and Soltero are both great) and new-to-me (y’all have been keeping Janie Danger secret from me and East Atlanta Sober is insanely good). I find it uniquely hard to write about albums when I’ve lost sight of why I’m writing about them in the first place.

I’m sure I’ll get back to long-form writing about specific albums or artists eventually. When I do, it’s going to be different than how I’ve treated them in the past.

This might also make it easier for me to write about other art as well. I’ve never written about books or poetry, even though I am arguably better equipped to do so. After all, I have a much stronger claim to being a writer than I do a musician. And as for visual media, I’m hopelessly lost beyond the most surface level impressions most of the time.

So while I don’t think I’ll arrive at anything like a Unified Field Theory of Criticism, I think some time thinking critically about thinking critically will do me some good.

In the meantime, let’s all just listen to Janie Danger’s “Whiskey Mule” and think about the last time we went to a real, physical record store and walked out with an artist we’d never heard of before: