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Why are music reviews so positive?
The perspicacious Peter Suderman writes:
...the critical medium that suffers most [from overly positive reviews] is pop music criticism, which skews toward generally positive reviews of most everything, no matter how bland or terrible. Scan the sidebar of Metacritic’s music page. Nearly all of the review averages are positive or very positive, and almost none of them are straightforward pans. In fact, right now I don’t see a single album with a review average that gets a score categorized "generally negative reviews." Contrast this with the movies page, which contains more than a dozen films with low averages. Even the limited release indies — the "artsy" films — are often given low marks.
But why? When it comes to a movie, you might actually go see the movie if you read a good review. Therefore the newspaper must be careful not to mislead you too many times and that implies a certain amount of criticism. But even a well-reviewed CD you are unlikely to buy, if only because there are so many CDs out there and there are so many well-defined genre preferences. So the MSM source courts many good music reviews, to give readers a sense that they are learning about "interesting product"; in any case only the fans will buy the stuff.
One testable prediction of this hypothesis is the following: when musical taste was less fragmented, and a review was more likely to influence buying decisions, music reviews would have been more critical. Similarly, if the outlet is pure niche, and thus being read by potential buyers only, the reviews should be more critical as well.
In the comments on Suderman, William Brafford comes close to this view.
I might add that Washington Post restaurant reviews are far too positive. If WP readers were simply told "There are hardly any good restaurants in your crummy little city," this wouldn't do much for WP circulation or advertising revenue.
The less that people buy books, the more positive book reviews should become.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on November 23, 2008 at 07:13 AM in Books, Music | Permalink
Comments
I might add that Washington Post restaurant reviews are far too positive. If WP readers were simply told "There are hardly any good restaurants in your crummy little city," this wouldn't do much for WP circulation or advertising revenue.
Well, it also wouldn't be of any use for readers, who have little choice but to make distinctions between the ghastly and the mediocre. "They all suck" wouldn't be useful information.
Posted by: Slocum at Nov 23, 2008 7:56:09 AM
What constitutes a bad review may vary according to the culture of the medium. If overt criticism is common in film reviews but not music reviews, than any overt criticism in a music review would be much more telling than the same language used in a film review. Faint praise may be weakly positive in a film review and damning in a music review.
If a consumer of popular music is interested in hearing only the 90th percentile and beyond, it really doesn't matter what the overall tone of the reviews are, just that very strong reviews are distinguishable from merely strong ones. The consumer is grading on a curve, and the absolute scores are irrelevant.
Posted by: Cyrus at Nov 23, 2008 8:50:20 AM
The market in which nothing but positive reviews is most glaring is in sports.
Listen to any game on TV or radio and the commentators gush over every player. By sportscaster math, every league has 2,000 MVPs.
Posted by: meter at Nov 23, 2008 10:05:04 AM
See for example the most famous rock writer working, taking on a new, almost-mythic(al) album:
http://www.avclub.com/content/feature/chuck_klosterman_reviews
Klosterman admits in the review that the grade he gives it is different than the grade it warrants and skips such pertinent details as which 3 songs he considers transcendent, (a frequent Tyler Cowen ploy).
Posted by: burger flipper at Nov 23, 2008 10:09:06 AM
Book reviews are generally positive because reviewers frequently have a choice of which book of several to review, and choose to read books they expect to like, and then to give publicity to ones they enjoyed (knowing that there's no such thing as bad publicity). It seems like there is a three-step process:
1. Is this book likely to be worth my time?
2. Read it. Is this book worth writing about?
3. Write a review.
(Witness - my impression is that children's books (short) are generally even more positively reviewed)
Movie reviews basically have to cover all releases in a week, so there is no such filtering out of bad products.
I would guess music reviews would come under the book review model.
Posted by: tom s. at Nov 23, 2008 10:15:06 AM
I might add that Washington Post restaurant reviews are far too positive. If WP readers were simply told "There are hardly any good restaurants in your crummy little city," this wouldn't do much for WP circulation or advertising revenue.
That's why I like Tyler Cowen's Ethnic Dining Guide for the greater DC area. But it needs more pictures. And how about some reviews by Tyrone?
Posted by: at Nov 23, 2008 10:45:15 AM
I agree that it has to do with how many CDs there are, but I disagree with Tyler's explanation of why that matters. Arguably, pans are even more interesting to read than good reviews -- why not just pan some album that nobody is going to buy anyway? I think the real reason is this: there are not that many movies in wide release, and a large portion of them get reviewed by any outlet that reviews movies. On the other hand, there are so many CDs that even pitchfork can only cover a small fraction of them. Therefore, an album has to make a "splash" of some kind to even get reviewed. Often, that "splash" has to do with the album being good.
Posted by: Alex P at Nov 23, 2008 11:38:17 AM
Is this post by any chance inspired by the reviews of Chinese Democracy?
Posted by: Juan at Nov 23, 2008 11:59:53 AM
Interesting topic. Music critics who write about pop music (meaning top 40 music) are far less common and certainly less influential than those (e.g. Alex Ross, Sasha Frere Jones, Nate Chinen) who write about music that sells poorly. The latter are effectively mapping out subcultures and music is really incidental, or only one component. They are writing a different type of review than the ones designed to answer the question "should I buy it?" and I suppose this has a long history (see Adorno, Samuel Lipman, etc). It's culturally prescriptive, top-down stuff. Are movie reviewers more likely to keep their jobs if their reviews conform to the opinions of most people? That's a different ballgame.
Posted by: at Nov 23, 2008 12:24:40 PM
What tom s. said. I probably wouldn't give the new Cradle of Filth album a good review, but I also wouldn't review it, because I don't have the expertise in their genre to speak knowledgeably about what they're doing. I certainly don't have as much knowledge as CoF's fanbase, who will be the ones buying the album. This is the big difference: the vast majority of movies are aiming for the widest possible audience, and so have to be accessible and broad. Most albums, in contrast, are going for a very particular audience, even pop albums, and so as long as they work within the dictates of that audience's expectations, they should be fine, and as long as that's the context in which they're reviewed, they should be fine, too. The albums most likely to get bad reviews from genre reviewers are the ones that cross over into another genre, and those are likely to get very positive reviews from the pop reviewer, and it all balances out. None of this is dishonest, I think; it's just the reviewer taking the album in the context in which it will be received. And because music now aims for particular audiences rather than a mass audience, it would be unfair to assess it under some sort of "objective" umbrella that will be different for everyone. I think the Arcade Fire are objectively bad, but I know that's not really an objective opinion, since lots and lots of other people think they're not. So I'm still going to say that, but I probably won't be the reviewer, and even if I am, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.
As to the anonymous comment above, Sasha does lots and lots of pop stuff--Usher, Timbaland, Coldplay, Lil Wayne, etc.
Posted by: Mike B. at Nov 23, 2008 12:41:43 PM
Music reviews are like restaurant reviews in that they serve to get you interested in something with which you are unfamiliar. A pan is useful only in situations where there is some preexisting interest in the album, and reading a pan of a completely unknown band is about as exciting as hearing somebody complain about a teriyaki joint two towns over.
Movie reviews serve to inform your decisions about something with which you are likely familiar already. Whereas a music review usually tells me that if I like X then I should check out Y, a movie review usually tells me whether or not my interest in Y is warranted.
Posted by: Sean at Nov 23, 2008 12:53:44 PM
Music reviewers have huge disincentives against negative reviews. The film critic who pans a film suffers no great consequences. The music reviewer who does so opens themselves up because both their career and their social life are likely to depend heavily on others in the industry like promoters and club managers.
Posted by: jonm at Nov 23, 2008 12:56:19 PM
jonm nails it: music reviewers are generally trying to be part of the scene, even if not actually in a band, and you don't get far dissing the people you're trying to hang with. but DC had one of the best examples of a music critic who generally pulled no punches (even if he had no objectivity as to dischord bands (that was his scene)) and would seriously pan bands (mark jenkins).
Posted by: dj superflat at Nov 23, 2008 1:51:55 PM
shouldn't it be the case that the less well-known the thing being reviewed is, the more likely that the review is positive? there's no point in telling people not to buy something they've never heard of anyway. but if it's something well known, it's worth commenting on either way.
of course, that's assuming the reviewer's goal is to optimally inform the audience, which, as some have pointed out, is an iffy assumption. it's the way I review things for my friends in my blog, anyway.
Posted by: Mike at Nov 23, 2008 3:26:47 PM
Do you think this is the case with wine reviews as well? Not all are highly positive, but they are dominant. And there are so many different wine, that the odds of finding and buying a particular one seems somewhat low.
Posted by: Steve at Nov 23, 2008 5:25:47 PM
Another idea for why there are so many more negative reviews of films compared to music is that there are so many more bad films. If someone handcuffs me to a post and makes me listen to the 10th percentile album in almost any genre, I will at worst be a little bored. If someone handcuffs me to a post and makes me watch the 10th percentile Hollywood film, I may have to chew my arm off to survive.
Why does anyone release a bad music album? It happens, but there's really no excuse. But the bureaucracies that make decisions about films - actors, directors, scripts, editing, etc. - have the traditional failings of bureaucracies.
Posted by: anon/portly at Nov 23, 2008 5:40:48 PM
Isn't it just that music reviewers are likely to only review music they think they'll like, while movie reviewers review almost every movie that comes out?
Another thought: most of my amazon.com reviews are positive, partly because if I don't like a book, I won't bother to finish reading it. So the only books I'm competent to review are the ones I like.
Posted by: Phil at Nov 23, 2008 5:51:18 PM
The simple answer is music is easy. You can go to a bar and they'll have some people playing original music and it probably won't be anything special but it probably won't be offensively bad. But if you did the equivalent test with movies you would come up with absolute dregs. Some art forms are just harder than others. You can see elementary school choirs and they aren't going to be terrible but school plays are going to be awful.
Posted by: Michael Foody at Nov 23, 2008 5:59:09 PM
video games
Posted by: at Nov 23, 2008 7:53:43 PM
"Listen to any game on TV or radio and the commentators gush over every player. "
Um, no, they don't.
Posted by: Gene Callahan at Nov 23, 2008 9:29:43 PM
"The simple answer is music is easy."
Yes, simple... and ridiculous.
Posted by: Gene Callahan at Nov 23, 2008 9:36:43 PM
This happened to be the first sports story I looked at today -- yes, it's print, not radio or TV, but it would not be unusual there, either:
"The UConn football team fell behind on this night because its kickoff coverage was lousy. The Huskies put half the nation to sleep by halftime because their offense gave new definition to plodding.
"South Florida coach Jim Leavitt invited UConn back into the game by getting too cocky for his own good, and the Huskies barged all the way back with, ah, the most vaudevillian of trickerations."
Lousy, plodding, too cocky? Wow, that's some gushing!
Posted by: Gene Callahan at Nov 24, 2008 10:12:05 AM
Funny - I was reading Metacritic and was thinking about the exact same thing.
"anon/portly" is on it: it's a bureaucracy and budgetary thing.
Films have big budgets and big expectations, and thus, big suits making big decisions. Suits don't make good films.
Bands have smaller budgets and more freedom. What's the start-up cost for a band: $100000? $50,000? You won't have David Geffen playing guitar for that price.
Actually, there is correlation between the industries: the "big budget" musical acts generally are poop. Same with film. Which films have consistently high ratings? lower budget indies. (And, kids' flicks, which is a whole other story...)
Posted by: antipode at Nov 24, 2008 6:30:16 PM
5 or 6 years ago I wrote a number of reviews for two online publications. I learned very quickly that writing a negative review -- or even a generally positive review with a few negative comments buried in the middle -- was something to think twice about. Yes, I received threats of physical harm from both fans and the musicians themselves, and in one case a promise from a semi-well-known NY musician that if I ever visited NYC I would have my ass kicked. And I'd actually *liked* that album, and said as much in the review! Crazy.
However, when I wrote positive reviews I was overwhelmed with thank-you emails from band managers offering me free CDs and comp tickets to the next gig. Music scenes are fairly small in any given city and even international bands may tour through the same venues a number of times each year. The difference between music and movie reviews is simple: if you review an indie band or less well-known artist, you may indeed run into them at some point. It is unlikely that anyone but the most famous movie reviewer has to worry about coming face-to-face with Woody Allen or Tom Hanks after dissing their films.
For the record, I quickly became disillusioned in my belief that music reviews are a place for honest commentary. They're not. They're just a part of the hype machine, glorified ad copy, and anyone who doesn't play along is viewed as a traitor to the cause. I stopped writing reviews and sadly, also stopped listening to a lot of music at that point. Some things are best left at arm's length.
Posted by: GaryO at Nov 24, 2008 6:57:22 PM
Sorry inform you but I disagree with this topic. Not all pop music receives reasonably high reviews. If you go back to the website originally posted in this blog, “Playing with Fire” by Kevin Federline only received a pathetic (yet well-deserved) score of 15 on a 100 scale. Anyways, if there were to be a skewed number in the averages I would have to guess that this would be due to the fact that music critics have many more reasons to be discouraged from bashing on a music artist. When a critic give a movie a bad review, he sees far less consequences than if he were to give an individual a bad review, which I could see deriving an ungodly amount of law-suits.
Posted by: Marley at Nov 25, 2008 6:58:12 PM
