The Noise

The Noise of Music Criticism in the Age of Social Media

The digital age has transformed the way we interact with art, culture, and even ourselves. But there’s a particular collision happening today that we should pay more attention to, one that lies at the intersection of two worlds: music and social media. The age of instant, compulsive connectivity, typified by platforms like Twitter and Facebook, has bred a mode of engagement with music that is antithetical to the nature of music itself. What we see in this space is a distortion of the art form—a tendency toward shallow, uninspired criticism that can only exist within the parameters of digital feedback loops.

The problem is not simply that music criticism is shifting online. That much was inevitable. Music, like all art, has always been subject to the will of critics and commentators who shape its public reception. What is different today is the context in which that criticism happens. The ecosystems of Twitter, Facebook, and their ilk thrive on immediacy. They prioritize the hot take, the quick comment, the tweet-sized observation. These platforms are built for speed and noise, and as a result, they strip away the nuance and subtleties that are essential for meaningful engagement with music.

The nature of music itself resists this sort of truncation. At its core, music is experiential—it demands time and immersion. It invites listeners to linger, to get lost in its textures, to be moved by what’s unspoken. To engage with music in a profound way is to slow down, to let the art settle into your mind and body, to allow it to change you. A review of a record, a critique of a performance—these are opportunities to reflect on what’s being communicated, to wrestle with the ideas and emotions embedded in the sound. Yet the nature of social media discourages this. Platforms that run on algorithms optimized for brevity cannot accommodate the kind of engagement music requires.

Here’s where things start to break down. Music criticism, when transported to social media, often becomes little more than transactional. The value of a tweet or a Facebook post isn’t measured by its depth or insight, but by how quickly it can gain traction. We’re now in a space where critical thinking is secondary to virality. A review on Twitter might garner more attention if it is sharp, punchy, or even harsh. Perhaps it’s a joke about an artist’s latest release or a facile comparison to a more famous musician. These comments resonate because they’re easy, digestible, and do not require the reader to pause and think.

The result of this is a form of criticism that is lazy and superficial. Writing about music becomes an exercise in shorthand. Criticism devolves into cliches: “This album is a ‘game changer.’ This artist is ‘the future of music.’” These phrases become empty signifiers, mere placeholders that don’t carry any weight. And in the rush to be heard, critics abandon the very thing that makes music rich—its complexity. Music, like any other art, invites ambiguity and contradiction. It requires thoughtful engagement, not empty exclamations. Yet in the noise of social media, these complexities get lost. There is no time or space for subtlety.

This is not to say that social media has no value in discussing music—it’s simply that it’s become an arena where critical thought is diminished in favor of sensationalism. What we end up with is a flattened version of music, reduced to the “likes” and retweets of public opinion, a crude market economy of praise and condemnation. We see this not only in casual commentary but in the way music itself is shared. A song is no longer listened to; it is consumed—streamed, liked, shared, and forgotten within a cycle that demands constant novelty and instant gratification. The joy of discovery, of truly hearing a song for the first time, is often lost in the rush of content that’s designed to be ephemeral.

Criticism, ideally, should be a process of deepening understanding. When done well, it’s an invitation into the world of a piece of music—a guide to its themes, its textures, its innovations. But social media has turned it into something else entirely: a game of one-upmanship where the speed of your opinion is more important than the quality of it. We’re trading depth for clicks, substance for virality. Music, as an art form, deserves more than that.

The tension between music and social media is the tension between meaning and noise. To truly engage with music is to accept the challenge of its complexity, its layers, and its contradictions. It requires attention, patience, and a willingness to dive deep into something that cannot be understood in a quick tweet or an Instagram post. The question, then, is whether social media can ever provide a space for this kind of engagement—or whether it will continue to prioritize the superficial and the immediate at the expense of the profound.

At its core, the problem is one of attention. We live in an age where attention is commodified, reduced to a currency that fuels an entire industry of instant content. But music, like any art, requires true attention—the kind of focus that can’t be measured in likes or shares. Until we recognize this, until we accept that meaningful engagement with music requires time, patience, and depth, we will continue to see music criticism devolve into something hollow. The question, then, is whether we can find a way to balance the immediacy of social media with the richness of music—or if that balance is even possible in an age where instant gratification has become the norm.

In the end, music deserves better. It deserves more than the noise of the algorithmic world—it deserves the kind of engagement that only true art can inspire. And until we recognize that, we’ll continue to watch music criticism be reduced to mere soundbites—just another fleeting trend in the chaotic scroll of the digital age.

A copy of a copy of a copy

It seems that every movie is a remake of something that was better when it was first released in a foreign language, as a 60s Tv show or even as a comic book. You can’t always get what you need but if you try You get what you want. Anxiety in place of fulfilment. An addictive cycle of craving and malaise. No sooner has one experience begun that buyers remorse creeps in.

The quote “a copy of a copy of a copy” refers to a situation where a document or object has been replicated multiple times, with each subsequent version being based on the previous one, resulting in a loss of fidelity or accuracy.

We are the new serfs to the IP Kings in this iteration. Trust the crowd and the big n that removes the risks of creativity. We can only focus on one thing at the time and that there is a contest every quarter of a second as to which object gets our attention. Enter the franchise purposely designed to be hyper rewarding in such a way that they surpass the reward properties of foreign movies or books. Fast food provides a v strong reward with each swallow.

In this context, each copy is a reproduction of the previous copy, which means that the original may have been lost or altered in some way. As each new copy is made, errors or variations may be introduced, resulting in a product that is increasingly different from the original.

Franchises are designed to provide a large number of generally small rewards/Easter eggs driven by neuromodulators such as dopamine and serotonin. Rinse and repeat our subconscious associates reboots and remakes with rewards. So whenever we see hear or feel or think about a remake our subconscious remembers the potential for rewards so it is much more likely to be selected for attention.

This concept is often used to describe the degradation of information or quality over time, particularly when it comes to analog media like photographs, cassette tapes, or VHS tapes. Each subsequent copy of the original becomes a little less clear, a little less vibrant, and a little less accurate than the one before it.

As a result we’re being programmed to expect a very unnatural state of time compared to the one our ancestors had. The problem is that consumer demand remains static. There’s only so much streaming or multiplex you can enjoy and as saturation increases the big results are going to a proportionally smaller number. Only one product can mantain value as everything else is devalued. Advertising.

The statement “only one product can maintain value as everything else is devalued” refers to the idea that in a market economy where goods and services are constantly being produced and consumed, the value of most products tends to decrease over time. However, advertising is the one product that can maintain its value because it has the ability to shape consumer behavior and create demand for products.

In other words, while physical products may lose value as they become outdated or are replaced by newer models, advertising has the power to influence consumer perception and convince them that a product is still valuable and relevant.

For example, consider a smartphone that is released today. Over time, as newer and more advanced models are released, the value of this phone will decrease as it becomes outdated. However, if the company invests in advertising that highlights the phone’s unique features and benefits, it may be able to maintain or even increase its value in the eyes of consumers.

Similarly, think of a fast-food chain that introduces a new menu item. Initially, the item may be popular and in demand, but over time, as customers try it and move on to other options, the value of the item may decrease. However, through effective advertising campaigns that emphasize the item’s taste, quality, and affordability, the chain can maintain interest and demand for the product.

In essence, advertising has the power to create perceived value in the eyes of consumers, even when the intrinsic value of the product itself may be decreasing. As a result, advertising can be a valuable and effective tool for businesses looking to maintain or increase the value of their products over time.

Advertising takes its place at the center of the universe of a society that has been made legible and if money flows to advertising it does not flow to artists, musicians, writers. It flows to mechanisms of manipulation. If content is worthless then people are worthless too. A diffracted state which has universal suffrage and wide extension of the jury franchise, must qualify the people by education to rightly exercise the great powers with which they are invested

In a broader sense, the quote can also be interpreted as a metaphor for the way that ideas or cultural concepts can be passed down through generations, with each new iteration being influenced by the previous one. Over time, the original idea may become distorted or lost altogether, as it is reshaped to fit new cultural contexts or perspectives.

Up the Hill Backwards

Ticketmaster and the Fossilization of Rock ’n’ Roll: How the Music Industry Became a Bad Museum Exhibit

If you want to see what happens when art becomes embalmed, my friend, look no further than Ticketmasters—the corporate leviathan slithering under every stadium and clawing every ticket stub in America. Picture it: millions of dusty-eyed fans waiting for the big show, all gearing up to relive a moment in time that probably should have stayed there, fossilized in memory rather than encased in a $150 concert tee. Ticketmasters isn’t just a middleman; it’s an embalmer in a badly pressed suit, flashing its laminated badge while it makes sure your favorite band becomes nothing more than a stuffed artifact, a taxidermied version of its former self.

They call it “timelessness,” this nonsense of reanimating artists at their “best.” But make no mistake—Ticketmasters is peddling preservation, and what they’re serving isn’t alive. It’s amberized, a perfectly preserved corpse of rock, pop, punk—whatever corpse you’re willing to pay for. Because that’s the deal: they’ll serve up your memories as many times as you want, as long as you’re ready to sell out the future for one more round of the past. You walk into these “reunion” shows, or these tours of legends who haven’t stumble onto an exciting chord change in a decade or two, and what do you get? The golden glimmer of a memory, sure, but none of the danger, none of the thrill. It’s all the gloss and none of the grime. Like watching a butterfly pinned behind glass—you can see the wings, but they’re not going to beat.

And that’s just the beginning. See, Ticketmaster doesn’t stop at freezing the music; it freezes the musician too. These poor devils get locked into the version of themselves that Ticketmaster decided to monetize. It’s not who they are, but who they were, turned into a permanent Halloween costume. Once they’re roped in, they’re asked to keep playing it safe, just a hit parade of the songs that everyone came for. The second they try something new, something risky—something alive—they’re hit with low sales, confused fans, and maybe even a stern talking-to from the management team. And so they keep the hits rolling, shuffling out “best of” albums and slapping their faces on every streaming playlist Ticketmasters can force-feed to the masses. They get amberized just like their music, a living wax museum where “artistic evolution” means changing their stage outfit every five years.

It’s no accident. Ticketmaster knows you’re not there for the music, you’re there for the memory, the warm, fuzzy glow of something you once loved but didn’t understand was slipping away until you were already down the rabbit hole of middle age and bankrupted dreams. So they cater to that hunger, selling tickets to the past and calling it “experience.” But let’s call it what it really is: a shallow rinse of nostalgia with none of the sweat, the tension, the insane unpredictability of live music. Gone are the days when you could stumble into a grungy club and witness a miracle or a mess, because Ticketmasters has sterilized the entire experience, turning it into a paint-by-numbers festival where every note is planned, every encore is expected, and every artist is a puppet dancing to the whims of a corporate script.

And as they amberize music, they’re pulling culture down with it. Music is supposed to evolve, supposed to change with the beat of the streets, but when Ticketmasters gets hold of it, they suck out its blood and preserve it like some cursed artifact. They want you to believe the “best” music is behind us, that the real legends are already made and all that’s left is to bask in their glory, a bunch of ghosts rattling their chains for one last payday. They’re selling you a myth that rock ’n’ roll—and every other genre worth its salt—peaked in the rearview mirror. But they don’t tell you that the myth is a moneymaker, a sleight-of-hand trick that keeps you looking backward while they vacuum up your future.

It’s a damn shame. There was a time when you could go to a concert and feel something, a real, spine-shaking something, but Ticketmaster has numbed it, zombified it, turned it into a safe, market-tested simulacrum. The bands might still be sweating on stage, but it’s a pantomime—an artfully posed corpse dressed in rock-star regalia, strumming along to the hits because that’s what they’re paid to do. It’s music embalmed in amber, and you can look but you can’t touch, because what you’re seeing isn’t alive. It’s a hollow shrine, a cold museum, a mausoleum lit up with neon lights.

So, what’s left? The real question is whether we want to break the glass or keep gawking at the dead exhibit. Music was meant to be dangerous, to evolve, to catch you off guard, but as long as Ticketmasters holds the reins, it’s going to keep everything at arm’s length, safe and stale. And if we let them keep it that way, we’ll never see music for what it truly is: a living, snarling beast, not an amber-encased fossil on display. It’s time to smash the glass and let the beast out.

So, the point is, rock’n’roll used to be a line of flight.

Exactly. Rock ’n’ roll was a line of flight—a wild escape route out of the everyday, a way of breaking through the limits of convention and expectation. It was raw, unpredictable, and rebellious, a lightning bolt that carved out new spaces for people who didn’t fit into the polite structures of society. At its best, rock was a rush of freedom that opened doors into places nobody even knew existed, a mad scramble that tore down walls and dared the world to keep up.

But Ticketmasters and its ilk have taken that line of flight and pinned it to a wall, turning rock into a brand instead of an escape. Instead of challenging boundaries, rock under the Ticketmasters model enforces them. They’ve taken music that once blurred the lines between artist and audience, between life and performance, and reduced it to a static product. It’s a time capsule, meant to comfort rather than unsettle, to keep people safely in place rather than inspire them to break free.

Rock, at its core, wasn’t just a sound but a way out. It created liminal spaces, in-between zones where rules loosened and identities got messy, where something thrillingly unknown could happen. This was music as border-crossing, as a way of pushing out into unmapped territory.

Rock’s line of flight was about stepping off the neatly charted paths and into the wild—into those “no-man’s-land” spaces where anything felt possible. Think of the back alleys, the underground clubs, the DIY garage shows. These weren’t just places to hear music; they were environments where you could shed your skin, try on new ones, and feel some real sense of freedom. In those liminal zones, rock created a kind of temporary asylum from the boundaries of class, race, gender, or expectation. It was about breaking through, even if just for a night, to find some new frontier within yourself and in the world around you.

Bands onstage weren’t just performing; they were explorers, creating a sense of movement rather than structure. Every chord, every improvised riff, every wail was a kind of map-making, sketching out uncharted places for everyone in the room. Rock ’n’ roll wasn’t about certainty or control; it was about jumping into the unknown with everything you had. Each performance, in a sense, was a push deeper into that territory, where the raw, messy energy created a collective sense of discovery and transformation.

But now, Ticketmasters and its endless corporate architecture have taken these spaces and turned them into territories. They map it all out, package it, and sell it as a product—a ticketed “experience” that follows a script as rigid as any corporate blueprint. What used to be a journey into unclaimed ground has been boxed up and sold as a pre-packaged destination. Instead of creating the unknown, Ticketmasters has drawn the lines of containment, setting clear boundaries around what rock can be, defining it as a heritage piece rather than a living, dangerous thing.

If rock ’n’ roll was a line of flight, then what Ticketmasters offers is a line of containment. In doing this, Ticketmasters has forced rock out of the liminal space and into controlled territory, where nothing ever truly changes. Instead of the spontaneous frontier, we get the endless rerun—a polished museum piece, a calculated nostalgia trip. Ticketmasters has transformed rock from a line of flight that ventured into new spaces into a circuit that leads straight back to itself. What was once a journey into mystery and change is now a carefully choreographed rerun of the past, an echo chamber that freezes music, and culture along with it, into amber.

If rock ’n’ roll is going to reclaim its edge, it needs to get back to that liminal space—to escape the predictable circuits of the mainstream and push into new, uncertain places again. The real challenge is breaking free of the line of containment and letting rock re-enter those zones of creative risk and discovery where it can once more be a line of flight, pulling us somewhere new. Only then can it live up to what it was meant to be: a true escape route, a beacon toward something unknown and exciting, an invitation to come along for the ride—no map required.

Up the Hill Backwards

There’s a line of light that flickers in the dark corners of music, just there on the edge of sight. It isn’t something you can hold onto or plan around—it’s a flash, a gut feeling, a magnetic pull that calls to you without a reason. It’s the moment when a song isn’t just something you’re playing; it’s a spark catching fire, something raw and alive, barely under your control. For every musician, that line of light shows up differently, leading you somewhere only you can go, sometimes there for just a second before it slips away. But that’s where you need to go: into that light, no matter how fleeting, no matter where it leads.

Following it is risky; it’s the opposite of the safe, predictable path that everyone else is taking. It won’t make sense to the people drawing charts and managing playlists, and it won’t fit neatly into the box that the industry has waiting. But that’s the point. The line of light leads into the unknown, into those liminal spaces where you don’t know what’s waiting, but you know you’re alive because you’re creating it in real time.

Sometimes it only lasts a minute, or one song, or just the length of a single riff. But if you’re serious about making music that’s real, you follow it wherever it takes you, even if you’re the only one who can see it. Because that’s where the real music lives—in the in-between, where you’re stepping over boundaries, making something that couldn’t exist any other way. So chase that line of light, trust it, and don’t look back. You’re carving out new territory, and that’s what makes it yours.