Who Will Tell Your Story? On the Disappearing Music Press

The Silent Crisis: Why We Need to Save Music Journalism

Four years ago I had the esteemed honour of being made album of the year by the team at Prog Magazine, even pipping the legend that is Steven Wilson to the post. The album also received end-of-year accolades across the broadsheets and music monthlies, with The Sunday Times, Mail on Sunday, Record Collector, Classic Rock, Line of Best Fit and many more naming it as one of their records of the year.

It was like a dream.

After the release of The Art Of Losing, I got to talk to thoughtful journalists about what it meant to make a record that navigated so much loss and darkness. Apart from one very bizarre encounter with a guitar website, everyone treated the themes that the album touched upon with sensitivity and curiosity. While some musicians might moan about having to “do press”, I have always adored this part of the job. Getting to talk to intelligent and like-minded folk about the work you have made and even, sometimes, making some dear friends along the way - as I did with this interview with Marc Burrows for The Quietus back in 2016 - is certainly nothing to grumble about.

Now that this new studio album is almost in the bag—not counting Versions that came out in 2023—I can only hope to achieve half of the acclaim that The Art of Losing did. But so many publications have closed since then or have so drastically reduced their culture coverage that they are now only covering one or two albums a week, rather than the healthy handful every weekend that might have just introduced you to your new favourite band or artist in the past.

I grew up devouring the music press and I’ll always be incredibly grateful for the journalists that take the time to really listen and absorb what it is you’ve spent such a long time trying to make and do. I have always been and will always be a huge fan of writing about music, as much as I am of listening to it and creating it. It’s sad to see that so much of the music press has been decimated by the changing times and I’m still such a huge advocate of subscribing to print magazines and really savouring reading them cover to cover every month.

And it matters far more than from a vanity perspective of having your musical output deemed worthy of national press coverage. It matters because it sends an insidious message that the arts are not as important as they once were. A message echoed by the closing of music departments at universities and the deafening silence from the recent budget that failed to address the ongoing crisis for grassroots music venues.

We see more and more coverage—quite rightly—about the crisis in the industry faced by musicians squeezed by exponential touring costs and diminishing income in the age of streaming. The Music Venues Trust has also done an excellent job in drawing attention to the existential threat to our grassroots music venues. But we often forget to talk about another corner of the industry that is just as vital to the fragile ecosystem, and that is the amazing publications, writers, and journalists that give a platform to and amplify the music we make to new audiences and beyond.

Often working for very little economic compensation, or none at all, these highly knowledgeable and passionate folk are as crucial to the alternative music scene as any independent venue. In a world where approximately 120,000 new songs are released every single day on Spotify, how can you hope to cut through and build a fanbase as a new artist without these curators to amplify what you have been slaving over in the studio?

And yet so much money in music marketing campaigns is now funnelled to the tech giants such as Meta and Google and away from these specialist publications that are guaranteed to reach genuine music fanatics.

From sitting on funding panels over the past few years, I cannot tell you the number of applications I’ve seen from young bands/artists where the bulk of the advertising spend is planned to go back into the coffers of these tech giants. The dominance of Facebook ads and the presumption of this strategy as “best practice” has already led to the death knell for many brilliant online music publications, and left the rest struggling to survive, where once advertising revenues had meant they could cover their server costs and pay at least a small pittance to their writers and contributors.

Is it any wonder that specialist music publications suffer when now it’s often not even a consideration to place a print ad in Mojo, or Prog or Uncut as part of a campaign? In my opinion, they’re far more likely to be seen by the eyeballs of a genuine music fan than the wild stab in the dark and low conversion rates seen these days on Facebook and Instagram adverts. I’ve long suggested that we might consider a clause wherein a percentage of funding received by musicians getting grants from Arts Council, Help Musicians and the PRS Foundation et al. —who all do great work filling the huge gap in financing alternative music creation—should be ring-fenced to be spent on advertising in some of our great specialist music publications, both in print and online.

It’s always made me a little uneasy that so much of this money goes straight into the pockets of tax-dodging entities like Meta and Google, with no thought for how it might be more efficiently used AND benefit the wider ecosystem that props up the British Music Industry. Because without the music press and the incredible writers that are able to bring the music to life, we only have half the conversation with the listener.

When we talk about saving the industry, we must also always think about supporting the magazines, newspapers and journalists that deeply enrich and give more meaning to the music that we slave over. It’s an ecosystem.

We are all a part of it.