ABSTRACT
The music press plays a major part in the process of selling music as an economic commodity, while at the same time investing it with cultural signifi cance. In one of the fi rst extended critical discussions of the music press, Frith correctly argued for its central role in ‘Making Meaning’: ‘the importance of the professional rock fans – the rock writers’, and the music papers, whose readers ‘act as the opinion leaders, the rock interpreters, the ideological gatekeepers for everyone else’ (Frith, 1983: 165). In spite of this signifi cance, until recently, the music press has received little critical attention.
