Recommended Reading: Critique in the Age of Spotification

Christopher William Wilke, “Cain v. Abel, Ad Nauseam”

At Shortstack Records, we hear lots of thoughtful insights into music from our customers. Luckily, Jordy Cummings, also writes his analysis for public consumption.

Cummings previously wrote about David Byrne’s Utopia for Red Wedge, an arts and culture publication that is “dedicated to rekindling the revolutionary imagination”. In the latest issue, however, he writes about the state of music critique itself, in an essay entitled, ‘In its Right Place: Critique in the age of Spotification’:

I’ve searched high, I’ve searched low, I’ve even searched to and fro, but I just can’t find, I just can’t find critique. … I submit that there is insufficient critique as the form under analysis – the golden age of popular music in general, “classic rock” in particular – seems to have reached its end point. Yet in a sense, while it has, it can and is revisited in the age of Spotification, of the absolute annihilation of genre, of form.