>We’ve recently had to strip back what the Quietus does, closing down our film and arts sections and have reluctantly put our books section on ice. In order to protect our music coverage we need at least another 350 people to subscribe to the site...

I used to read music reviews in order to discover new music. Then I read them to confirm that I had good taste and pick up talking points that would make me insufferable at parties. I was stumbling into enough music I liked on my own. Now I just like what I like and mostly don't read about it.

This personal trend is not just a loss of anxiety over liking "cool" music or gaining confidence in my own opinions. Getting access to new music used to involve a trip to a niche music store and a significant outlay of cash on a CD that you might have only read about. Reviews were an imperfect guide to finding new music. You just had to hope you'd like it as much as the reviewer.

You don't need to do that anymore. This is a key function of music reviews that has been rendered completely obsolete.

I still read reviews for movies and books because these require a larger investment of time. I want some assurance that my time won't be wasted. For music, I just listen and make up my own mind.

Reading a music review today (I just tried it) is actually a somewhat frustrating and unrewarding affair. If the reviewer talks about a specific part of a specific track, sometimes I have to seek back and forward trying to figure out what the heck they're talking about. Perhaps, in a world of instant multimedia content delivery, print is no longer a good medium for music reviews.

Take a look at this guy (Alex Moukala):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w80WSIBASzU

Almost half a million subscribers. He seems to be doing okay. His thing is to take music people already love, mainly video game music, and break down how and why it works. You learn something about composition when listening to him, and large part of it is because he'll play a passage and then immediately talk about it. This is next-level stuff when compared to print music reviews, even if the function it serves is almost backwards in comparison. You're not listening to this guy to discover new music, but to learn about what you already enjoy.

I'm not suggesting that print music reviews are utterly dead. You can write about almost anything and make it compelling. There will no doubt be gems of music criticism written in the coming decades that will be a joy to read. The question is, will there be enough of them for a site specializing in music criticism to stay afloat?