Worst Music Media Publication
 

I don't know if there is a thread on this yet, but there should be.

What, in your opinion, is the WORST music media publication? Not in terms of the layout/budget, but in terms of quality/bias of reviews. What ranks the highest on your shitlist? (It could range from newsmagazines to an online archives to whatever other music media you read.)

Easy option but the NME by a mile.

Even when I was it's target demographic (I.E. teenage indie kid) I could feel my brain cells melting whenever I read it.

Just a bunch of clueless morons more interested in being cool than finding any good music.

Rolling Stone
 

Rolling Stone is the worst in my opinion. All of the major releases they review are always medicore until the album gets big, then they change their tone.

They've also been doing really sh!tty articles and cover stories in the recent years, such as a nameless amount of Jonas Brothers articles and things like "Rock Band vs. Guitar Hero."

Any publication that attempts to compile a list of the "Top 100" anythings.

I can go with that.

It's a good thing Music Banter aint a magazine...

I agree. I have three main problems with Rolling Stone (oo, my first time using a numbered list):

1. They only seem to cover teenybopper crap and new music by classic rock dinosaurs. Two things I don't give a shit about.
   
2. I don't like reading a music magazine where I feel like I know more about music than the people writing the articles.
   
3. Sort of off topic, but their movie reviews suck. They give every fucking movie a good review. I appreciate the positive attitude and everything but this give me zero frame of reference for whether or not I might enjoy the movie.

RS is unfairly biased towards mainstream pop/R&B music, and it's pretty sad that they represent such a huge portion of the industry. Although their reviews are usually impartial and very well-written, it seems like they go easy on everybody and it makes for an extremely hard time to figure out whether a record's good or not.

NME easily. I blame them for a lot of the mediocre music which makes up the British rock scene today. Their excuse for journalism these days is just a complete joke too

Anyone who hates Rolling Stone mag (hopefully everyone) needs to check out Elvis Costello's liner notes for the Rhino version of Get Happy!!!

It's hilarious; he dismisses the magazine as a "rag [which] has, over the years, undergone a remarkable transformation from an organ of the supposed counterculture to a shallow pop-culture shop window for starlets and acrobats while funding their efforts with generous amounts of Big Tobacco advertising revenue and offers of penis enlargement to easily deluded teenage boys."

heh

Is there really much of a difference between music magazines? I've read a fair amount of them over the years and, outside of some slight tone differences, there doesn't seem to be a more homogenous industry than music journalism. There almost seems to be a formally approved style that music magazines (counting e-zines, like Pitchfork) adhere to and writers for them adhere to.

I found them (and still find Pitchfork) somewhat useful just as information as to what's been newly released outside the mainstream. But there's precious little insight. Their implicit goal seems to be to try and foster an elitist culture and language for their readers to feel a part of. Nothing more, nothing less. At base, it's really not to do with music, though music is certainly the theme. It's about feeling part of an exclusive society.

Music magazine culture is to being a music fan as organized religion is to being spiritual. You can be into music or spirituality through your own exploration...the organized culture is for feeling a part of a society (with the attendant us-vs-them mentality).

I agree completly. They all belong in the same place... the trash.

Let's see...that would be all of them.

NME and RS are the worst of a bad bunch.
I don't mind clash though for my fill of elitist indie rhetoric.

f*cking ign.

stick to the game reviews lads.

That's a really good point there. I think a lot of those dreaded "top 100" lists are meant to reassure people that they don't need to look past their already existing Beatles collections for music.

spin magazine is absolute garbage,
as well as sports illustrated.

NME gives us pumps up Oasis and Bloc Party. Rolling Stone puts Fall Out Boy and Panic at the Disco on their cover.

Rolling stone by a mile.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...nov02issue.jpg

/thread

Music journalism has gone into the toilet over the past decade.

I just don't see in any publication where the next Caitlyn Moran , Taylor Parkes or Danny Kelly is going to come from.

Music publications have always had questionable editorial policy due to the nature of the industry , but a good journalist made them much more readable.

Yucky... that left a bad taste in my mouth.

It must have took them forever to think of "Punk and Disorderly" and "Sugar and Spikes".

Rolling Stone is well written though, so when they do positive reviews on classic rock artists I like it is usually okay. Never heard of NME...

I don't even know if their still in print but Circus and Hit Parader was nothing more than a bunch of posters with fan boi reviews written around them.

NME is just as bad... maybe even worse.

Hit Parader was the worst. Their lists were terrible.... more appalling than Rolling Stones.

Well, its hard to pick just one when all of them express some degree of awfulness. SPIN or Rolling Stone if I had to pick just one, but meh...

Seeing that AP cover almost makes me appreciate Pitchfok though. Almost.

AP was good in their first few years, but got steadily worse:

April '89:
http://altpress.com/images/issues/cover_023oct89_lg.jpg

May '08:
http://altpress.com/images/issues/co..._1may08_lg.jpg

Yeah, AP isn't even "alternative" anymore.

Every once in awhile there will be a band I enjoy on the cover so I'll buy it, but I'm always dissapointed by everything in there other then the article about that band.

has got to be one of thee worst mags ever. How in the world are P@TD "innovative"?

Uhm...wait...I know this...hold on...I can totally answer this...uhm...wait....wait...

Actually, I think they're a decent group. I wouldn't call them innovators though.

Threads like this upset me.

Why don't we just make a Panic! At the disco sucks thread?

You all know these aren't the worst. RS and NME are in no fashion this bad.

Pssst.... :pssst: Thats not the point. The point is they are just popular music and not truly "innovative", which is why they made the cover.