I will say that while you can pick Whiney's argument and his personal style apart, he was well spoken and interesting - not easy to do.

totally agree

in fact, i would love to see him fill the obnerian podcast void left by you and bloor

fucking washington post mentions and consulting websites had to go and ruin our beloved POGBLASK

no, it's the kids.

I was on local radio this morning, bloviating and filling the air with general FAAAAAAT

Mick seems to be making a concerted effort to be as wrong as possible in as many topics as possible.

Agreed. I chuckled several times. Very good at what he does.

Well said, almost exactly what I was going to post. He's also pandering to an audience that wants his cake. And, good on him for giving it and better for his enthusiastic delivery.

I mostly agree with him. There are good magazines out there (eg Mojo, Uncut, Wax Poetics). But he described most of the indie rags well.

He contradicts himself in two consecutive posts.

There's no point reading about music (and music writers are inherent failures), and yet printed music magazines have a future?

Music magazines are already transient and throwaway.

There may be some good articles written in Rolling Stone or maybe even Spin from time to time, but they're more general culture commentary than music-centered. And I'd bet most of the writers responsible for those have or will soon find more relevent venues to publish their opinions and reach more people.

Magazines in general may have a future (they've got to put something on the table at doctor's offices), but I don't see printed magazines devoted solely to music having much of a market. Rolling Stone is barely even about music anymore anyway, right?

Makes MTV look downright visionary, doesn't it?

You guys sure like to generalize.

Everyone likes to crap on the publishing industry and say it's a dying industry. I disagree that everything goes to the web.

I can't ever see myself reading a book via a Kindle and I'd rather not sit in front of a computer for hours on end reading in depth articles either. I still subscribe to close to ten magazines and I pick more up at book stores and newstands on occasion.

I used to subscribe to about 5 music magazines but I'm down to Wax Poetics. I dropped Songlines because exchange rates drove the price up, not because of a change in quality or an ability to replace it with internet fare. I'd think about subscribing to Uncut and/or Mojo and Stop Smiling but the price differential between buying at the newstand vs subscribing is not enough to justify subscribing to me. There's a big difference to me between these magazines and your typical indie rag. They do in-depth and well researched articles of a much greater quality than you'll easily find on the web for free. In addition, because of the article lengths and the general consistency and quality, they take me hours to read which makes the portability of a magazine valuable and the idea of staring at computer screen less than ideal. Your CMJ's, Magnets and their ilk are nothing like that. I could read what i was interested in a CMJ or Magnet in 15 - 20 minutes, their samplers mostly sucked, and the quality of writing and length/nature/focus of their copy was easily found on the web for free. Its no suprise that magazines like that are disappearing. That doesn't mean though that there isn't a demand for better journalism on music.

I don't see the inconsistency you do if you assume he's talking about the throwaway mags one minute and the quality ones the next.

Well, for contradiction, there's this:



Followed by this:



followed by this:



And I can't figure out if he really thinks music magazines have a future or not.

He quoted Chad's "a paperless world" comment in calling bullshit on it and saying quality print publications will always be around. I didn't read that as being contradictory to the idea that people might not want to read about music. He might be talking WSJ, Wine Spectator, etc and not any of the better music publications.

When I go back and reread his comments, I'm not sure whether he'd defend Uncut, Wax Poetics, Mojo, etc. He might not. I will though. I think there's a market for print publications of their ilk.

I think i'm done deciphering Mick's statements. I didn't intend to go this far in doing it.