The digital age has had a significant impact on many types of Journalism careers, but the music journalism career seems to have been the most affected.Has a career in music journalism become obsolete or has it simply evolved into something new.I would like to make this the focus of my research. How has music journalism evolved in the last 20/25 years?What is the significance of these changes for music journalists today?How has this evolutionaffected the artists?
The study of the evolution of music journalism is important because music journalists used to be vital in the music industry. Artists relied from the music journalist for promotion and awareness. However, with the introduction of social media, this dynamic has changed. Artists can now promote themselves and communicate with their audience via their own social media platforms, resulting in the decline in print music magazines and cancellation of most music TV channels.
I would like to investigate this topic by using a comparison of qualitative content analysis. I would pick the top 5 most popular artists in each era who had released music and see how the music was promoted by the media. For example, was the music promoted though magazines articles, interviews on music channels or did the artist promote themselves via Instagram or radio shows.
An article from ‘Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism’ (Forde, 2001) investigates the transformation of music journalism from 1970 to 2000. This article illustrated how music journalism had evolved in 30 years; from diverse, passionate and emotion driven work to brand-driven and safe marketable content. This reflects that there are significant changes to be looked at in the last 25 years since the digital age began.
Through the Sage archives I also found a study which looked at how journalists use social media, specifically ‘X’ to keep their influence when reporting on music festivals. (Bastin and Bert-Erboul, 2024). Their methodology was a quantitative content analysis of different hashtags, mentions and tweets relating to the festivals. They found that whilst journalists were active on social media, artists posting their own content had much more engagement than the journalists. This reflects how artists don’t necessarily need the media to promote themselves now that they have social media.
The digital age and social media aresuch hugely vast topics, making it very difficult to analyse. I believe it is evident that the digital age has transformed music journalism, but has a music journalism become obsolete? It would seem like it has but we can only be sure by carrying out a thorough analysis.
Bibliography:
- Forde, E. (2001). From polyglotism to branding. Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism, 2(1), pp.23-43. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/146488490100200108.
- Bastin, G. and Bert-Erboul, C. (2024). Journalists’ authority and its bounded trade; Twitter, journalists, and boundary work in contemporary France’s music scene. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/14648849241255941.