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 significance. In one of the first extended critical discussions of the music press, Simon 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). Currently, the ‘traditional’ music press remains significant, but has been modified by the advent of online music magazines, sites such as the All Music Guide, and blogs producing a democratization of music journalism.