Critics. Vital or irrelevant? Discuss.

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Vital if you're unknown

Irrelevant if you're already popular

>>72543287
As vital/irrelevant as any other kind of
E N T E R T A I N E R

I hate them but they're probably vital.

They still should be better though.

Somewhere in the middle. Critics decide whether or not something is "good" in the artistic sense. If artistic merit means a lot to you, then critical reviews serve an important purpose.

However, they shouldn't change what you listen to. Don't stop listening to an album you like just because critics shit on it.

>>72543287
THE CRITIC IS THE REAL ARTIST
*masturbates to facebook 12yos while singing Dachau Blues*

I'd like to think that critics drive artists to improve, but I'd be wrong.

>>72543287
i think critics try to be too exact. there's a certain individual appeal to music, so i feel if you're going to try to score an album objectively it should just be for personal reference. too many people try to think they have the "best taste" in music, but i feel like the ambiguous nature of musical quality is part of what makes it unique.

>>72543287
Why would I care what someone else thinks subjectively about an album I am going to listen to. I'll make up my own mind thanks.

>>72543287
All music is opinionated. A critic just shares his opinion and people will like or dislike the music based off what they say instead of determining it for themselves.

>>72543287
i think music critics are important but music is more subjective than other forms of media such as film. i think most music critics do a pretty good job of analyzing what makes an album objectively good or bad. the thing is i don't really listen to music reviews like i do movie reviews.

>>72543287
Idk if they're vital, but they're certainly not irrelevant. Their entire job revolves around digesting art and making sense of it, which a lot of regular people can't do, and in that sense they're quite helpful. Especially art critics. If you're interested in this I definitely recommend you take an aesthetics (philosophy of art) course. There's a lot of readings on critics/"true judge" (Hume) and their place in society. Hume for example believes that we all have sentiments (opinions) and that none is wrong, but there are some (those of a true judge) that are better and bear more fruit.

>>72544487
i think the problem with critics is they usually don't even do that.
instead their assessments are based on weighing various pieces of rhetoric against each other, whatever they feel is plausible for a certain album no matter if it's actually rooted in any of their personal feelings. those criteria may originate from someone's honest reaction to an album (i mean criticisms like "contrived", "twee", "cheesy"), but get perpetuated memetically, or they're just purely made up standards of ideological purity, of what an album "should" represent if you can assign it to this and that genre, i.e. is it trve punk or sellout crap?
this is convenient because it eliminates the need to engage with music on a personal level, and on its own terms, which they call "objective"

>>72543287
Should be irrelevant but are vital to an albums success or failure

>>72543292
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