i feel like its moved to video, maybe video killed the literature star. the video essay is a pretty popular journalistic format nowadays. maybe music critique is stuck behind the world that Anthony Fantano has established for himself as the internet music critic. and all the other roadblocks presented by video hosting services.
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Not really well versed in the YouTube world, maybe itās worth exploring, but I find that format tiresome. I will investigate. Thatās a valid point you are making.
Are you really suggesting that everything that has been written in the history of music journalism is insignificant ?
i dont know who i would mention in that realm other than Anthony Fantano tho. im pretty neutral on him, some people hate him, idk. but if i was looking to find art critique, iād be looking for videos and podcasts. not that either of those are ideal vehicles for critique, its just what everyones driving
On what topic? The overall history of art criticism and aesthetics? I donāt know, if youāre actually interested I would just start on wikipedia and see if you want to explore it more. I have a degree in critical studies from a film program so I was made to read all kinds of postmoderist stuff that I wouldnāt recommend. 
As for music, I tend to just read any and every book I can about artists or genres that I like. The 33 1/3 series is interesting although they can be all over the place. Some are more analytical, some are kind of personal, and some more diving into studio nuts and bolts stuff but if thereās an album you like I would give it a shot. Looks like there are 200 of them now!
Itās been a long time but I used to really like the books of David Toop and of course the Wire (which Toop wrote for) has been mentioned multiple times as having really good writing.
I guess the line between criticism and history/biography is blurry but if youāre interested in dance music or DJing, I really enjoyed the book āLast Night a DJ Saved My Lifeā.
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I always thought the AllMusic crew (Stephen Thoman Erlewine, Ned Raggett, etc.) did a good job describing what made a band exciting to the people who find them exciting, and why a particular album might or might not appeal to someone who wants more from that sound.
I liked Paste a lot back before it basically disolved. I still read Stereogum. I used to like Gaylord Fieldsā writing a lot when I was a kid. Also Simon Reynolds. Dick Hebdige. David Katzā¦
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To me, music is just so much more subjective than other forms of commercial art/entertainment like films and video games. What is a review for? You can basically listen to any song or album for free and decide if you like it. Thereās no risk of wasting money on something you may not like. If youāre reading criticism for the perspective, I can see the value in that if you enjoy reading a particular personās opinions. I talk about these things with people I know personally because I like to know their opinions, but Iām not really interested in what strangers on the internet have to say about music, particularly if itās negative.
The algorithms on YouTube and social media platforms are already a bit of nightmare in the way they reward negativity, drama, and exaggeration. I find myself more and more staying offline and trying to focus on positive things because of that. Music should be a positive thing. Yes, there are artists that I think make shitty music, especially ones who come across as sellouts who chase trends because a big record label told them to. Yes, I sometimes talk about these things with my friends. However, thereās nothing wrong with people liking music I think is generic and bland, because itās all subjective, and I will never tell someone that I think the music they like is bad.
Iāve known people who thought any music without vocals āsucksā (even immediately after telling them that I make electronic music) which, to any of us, is obviously narrow-minded. I donāt see a difference between that and someone whoās paid to write long thinkpieces about music that they think is bad.
Yes, I think āprofessionalā (or platformed) negative music criticism is entirely unnecessary.
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yes I think the closest I come to in relating to your idea of āif theyāre goodā is when I referred to the critique of methodologies, skill sets etcā¦, I donāt know how close it might just be semantics or could be what Iām talking about is not what youāre talking about at all but for further example using the reggae album analogy I would pay close attention to someone who knows what they are talking about pontificating on the techniques used on an particular reggae album, or by a particular artist and I do, so if said ācriticā was talking about how Toots Hibbert, joe higgs, or in how in dub music thereās particular interest in how king tubby did what he did I never get tired of thatā¦ I just wouldnāt have the attention span for hearing whether or not a record was good art or bad art from that same critic, and another key point of what Iām trying to articulate here is that itās not about how Iām missing out on the conversation between the critic and the audience, itās just that outside of the discourse regarding the methodologies based on the expertise that would make me think of any critic as a good critic, there would only be the opinion left for me which is far less useful and more in line with the same value of those opinions in the rest of the audienceā¦
so youāre the critic, you know what king tubbyās doing with his methodology and you think he made a great record, I would give that critique a listenā¦ where as your the critic and you love dub but youāre not versed in the methodology or reasons why what is done is what was doneā¦ and you think that same record was a great recordā¦ in that case I probably wouldnāt pay much attention because itās not the āopinion muscleā that we all have that would have grabbed my attention in the first place if that makes sense (it does to me)ā¦ if iām way off base thatās ok too I love narrowing down what makes all of this tickā¦ I just donāt put much stock in opinion when it comes to artistic endeavors unless itās between myself and someone whom I share the same opinion with, and then in that case itās not even about opinion itself but about the fact that we share the same opinion and will do something actionable about it, maybe weāll study it, discourse about it, try to learn from it etcā¦
I think I would say as long as āopinionā itself is not construed as a critique then Iām likely to pay more attention to it.
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Iām not dismissing it, but how many centuries have we handed down the concept that art is in the eye of the beholder, in my opinion there are few truths truer than thatā¦ 
as long as weāve been reading each other on here you already know that I donāt dismiss the idea of learning new things and perspectives thatās all we do here and one of the things I like most about this placeā¦ I donāt even dismiss opinions i just donāt take opinions about art as anything else but opinionā¦ thatās not a dismissalā¦ btw Iāve sounded far more ignorant than this on the forum 
I donāt let ego or pride get in the way
maybe this is why I can have just as long a conversation about a piece of gear that I donāt use or a musical artist that I donāt like because the opinion part at least in the way that i define it never comes into for me, Iām never talking about is an artist/or art good or bad, for me if art really exist at all, then it just isā¦ it canāt be good or bad art if thatās based on the guy on my left saying itās good art and the guy on my right saying itās bad artā¦ that just doesnāt register in any meaningful way for me.
Maybe this is why I prefer youtubers who lean toward video referencing in their gear videos than those that focus on their own music cause Iām just not there for thatā¦ no matter how much I like or dislike someoneās tune itās not going to tell me what I wanna know about the gear. When I see people in the comment section making comments like i wonāt trust this guy/gal cause they didnāt make a track with the gear I always think wtf has got to do with the gear, somebody is gonna make a track that sucks on the gear and someone is gonna make a track that people love with the same gear
Constructive criticism is what I say of you. Destructive criticism is what you say of me
I attended an opera festival over the weekend and saw three different productions. I also attended pre-concert lectures for each of the operas. The speaker (same for all three) was well-informed and engaging. He covered a variety of angles: the personal lives of the composers, the time periods in which they lived, the background of the stories on which the operas were based, the musical styles used by and reacted to by the composers, helpful clues for following the narrative (such as costuming), etc.
These pre-concert lectures were not criticism in the way I understand the word. But they did have a lot in common with much music criticism, which covers the the same related aspects music.
On a side note, I havenāt read a lot of music reviews in my life. I read the music reviews in The Guardian, whose music critics cover a lot of the ancillary stuff surrounding the music. It seems to me that, instead of directly maligning the music (in the case of a low-star review), the critics will rather take aim at the culture surrounding the music (which kind of has the effect of impugning the music). Perhaps the critics are too clever to take direct aim at the music, as it might be too easy to dismiss them as being subjective.
Opera is programmatic music. Thereās a lot to talk about regarding opera. The opposite of that is sometimes called āabsoluteā music. Maybe there is less to say about absolute music (without diving into music theory esoterica). I think a lot of the music made by members of this forum falls more in the direction of āabsoluteā music. And there are many on this thread (and in the other threads Iāve read on this forum) whose attitude seems to be you just have to experience it. Because maybe that is the kind of music they are producing and listening to.
The expression Bug or feature? sums up, for me, the inscrutability of music criticism. A few years ago I got piled upon by multiple members of this community for pointing out the lack of melody (or maybe it was lack of form, I canāt remember) in almost all EDM. What I regarded as bug, it turned out, was, according to others, a feature.
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thatās why I said earlier who makes the rules, cause itās not that all critics are wrong, itās that all critics are right even the oneās with starkly opposing views if they are being honest about their opinionā¦
but if we leave the opinion behind and get into the discourse surrounding which ever art is in question at any given moment then I agree with what most has been said in the thread if thatās what we are calling a critique
something I heard about Eminem resonates with me in this context, itās said that heās a bit indifferent to those of his own fan-ship who think heās one of the greatest of all time but donāt comprehend the greatness of the rappers he molded and inspired himself with, as if they think heās the greatest but donāt really know whyā¦ it resonates with me but at the same time I still donāt agree with it fully because even when talking about people who do understand those variables itās still one persons opinion against another so itās impossible for one to be more valid than the otherā¦ a more honest opinion than someone elseās for sure can exist but never a more validā¦ in my opinion.
In todays discourse surrounding critics not just here on the forum but I mean in general in the world today, there are many celebrated art critics and there are art critics who are despised, and then there are a lot of people at any given moment willing to ask another person āwho do they think they are some kind of critic?ā
I donāt doubt that we are an interesting species, again I just wonder who makes the rules, who decides what a critic is, who decides what art isā¦
The field of criticism figured this out almost 60 years ago. The Death of the Author - Wikipedia
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ahh, my first time hearing of this albeit I wasnāt thereā¦ I think today is the day I spent the most time in my life considering the whims of a critic or value of a critique but I didnāt end the day empty handed , it kind of feels like actually paying attention when you hear someone yelling in traffic, or reminds me of the time when I first ate cottage cheese and enjoyed it in my adulthood after very much disliking it as one of my earliest childhood memories and not having eaten it since until that moment when I I thought oh this pine apple makes this taste good.
I used to sample siskel and ebert a lot, not for their critiques but for how the awkward silences landed in the banter between them, you could always find some great stuff to freak over a beatā¦
Read an article which suggests combining prior influences in order to create something new might also result in something thatās impotent or sterile, much like how genetic crossbreeding created the mule.
Applying that thought to the context of this thread, if criticism is itself a product of culture but that culture has become seemingly sterile then it makes sense that criticism wouldnāt flourish either.
So I suspect the critics have been pushed to the edges by a dominant but somewhat sterile culture, but still might be found in corners where far more exciting things are happening than Malibu Staceyās new hat.
This suggests to me there is room for a new Karl Kraus, often referred to as the āGreat Haterā of turn of the century Vienna, for his takedowns not only of art and literature, but of society itself.
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Ever since I was young, Iāve loved reading reviews of albums, films and books. They add value to the sensory experience itself. They provide food for thought in terms of ethical and aesthetic positioning. But above all, they nurtured my curiosity by taking me out of my comfort zone and giving me clues to look out for in these works. And when these texts have raised disappointed expectations in me, they may have spurred me on to create my own musical worlds worthy of these descriptions.
EDIT: Iām not talking about ācustomer reviewsā here, but about specialist press such as music and film magazines and newspapers.
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We live in a metacritic and rotten tomatoes world. I used to seek out specific music and film reviewers. Not that I always agreed with them, but I understood their preferences and could make sense of their opinions.
Now? Not so much. All thatās been replaced by aggregated nonsense or hot takes to drive engagement. Cāest la vie.
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it should always be ok to hate on fred again.
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I donāt hate him, I just think his music is shit.
By all accounts heās a lovely young man.