This Monday from PAM (associate journalists of music), we organize the I Musical Press Congress, gathering almost a hundred musical journalists who work for media such as Radio 3, El País, El Diario, ABC, El Mundo, the EFE Agency, Rockdelux and Mondosonoro, among many others, in what could be a Guinness record of autonomous workers per square meter. Seeing all these people together for the first time was very motivating. A success of call (full capacity) that has to thank Manuel Pinazo de Muzikalia, president of PAM, and Laura Pardo de Rne and Freelance, imminent vice president. As the industry meetings that occur in Bime, Monkey Week or Spring Pro, these events are characterized by becoming a kind of collective therapy in which each one complains about theirs, only this time we did not come to talk about artists, or stamps, or hits, but of the press, according to some organisms, the most vulnerable sector. “Precariousness” was the most repeated word in the 7 organized talks, available here, and there were still those who regretted that there were not speaking enough about it.
Diego Rubio de Nuebo, who also writes for RockdeLux, spoke of something very common in the profession: the absence of real vacations, not charging when your magazine closes in summer, the need to work on weekends or early. I add that the conciliation with your partner or friends, either there either when the news of the death of Amy Winehouse jumps on a Saturday afternoon, that of Lou Reed a Sunday at the last minute, that of George Michael on Christmas Day or Avicii’s on Friday afternoon. Your life -tus children, your dependent parents, your partner- pass unexpectedly to the background when your site traffic depends on a very high percentage of the “last hour”, or when you have to deliver a piece for paper on time.
Even so, the legendary Diego Manrique will publish a book called ‘The best trade in the world’, collecting 50 -year profession anecdotes, because one tends to keep the good in perspective, I suppose. He agrees with him, two generations away, Marta Spain, who lives on communication and is an artist (Marta moved), but acknowledged that his true motivation is musical journalism. To the one who said that journalists are frustrated artists, suck that. After all, who are we going to be sorry for a job that implies interviews with first -line artists, free records and tickets and the occasional Easter Free Bar to Ramos?
Therefore, as Vice President of PAM, I interpret as a small failure that this type of congress became more a cluster of sentences than of future projects. The youngest editor of UMusic, and a former fellow (our scholarships have always been paid in pursuit of the sector’s professionalization) left there very discouraged after listening to things like Julio Ruiz himself had worked on the radio without charging for decades, surviving rather thanks to sports journalism. Or that photographer Samantha López cannot live on her work. Or that his hole in the pit of a concert is left by an influencer. Or that Fernando Íñiguez of El País recognized Mileurist with 67 years.
Another Fernando de El País, Navarro, was in my most successful opinion when he called fellowship in the sector, what a good lack, that when he repeated something like “music no longer interests anyone.” His book about the Supersubmarina career, which was by the 5th edition already last summer, certifies the opposite.
I suppose that all this tremendismo comes from the Varapalos that has received the role, and the disaster produced by the change in the Facebook and Google algorithms in the last five years. Honestly, I never bases Jenesaispop’s success in the “paratrooper” user, the one who took you to 700,000 unique users, and then never returned. I have always been aware that musical journalism is something minority: in the institute we were followed by the rarest, and I have lost all hope that my father understands what I dedicate to me or presumably my achievements with the neighbors. But what is the use of repeating that we are irrelevant in front of institutions and advertisers when some figures point to the opposite?
The end of monoculture is a factor in the traffic drop, if there is a traffic drop (seeing the figures that produce according to which artists, or according to what articles, sometimes I think it is a matter of focus). But it is true that there are no names that everyone like like the last century. In fact, there was no way to agree with each other. The great Patricia Godes said that Alejandro Sanz had had a bad press for liking, above all, women. Fernando Navarro, on the other hand, called him “mafia.” Jorge Ortega, from Route 66, asked me during the food time “what my favorite group was.” I replied that Rosalia.
Luckily, we were able to agree with the Beatles. But there the voices were definitely diverse: Elena Cabrera (the newspaper) criticized the lack of women not only in the musical press, which obviously, but also in festivals, even in spring Sound, which is one of the most joint. Santi Carrillo (Rockdelux) responded with other figures, which included non -Binarix artists and mixed groups. As supersubmarina “Hater”, Carrillo was sharing a table with a supersubmarine fan to the core. As always, voices were heard in favor of subsidies and others against. People who talked about union and people who talked about employer. Our deep differences can become stronger, because they mean that we will go to different audiences, in the same way as the K-POP, Bad Bunny, Amaia and Arctic Monkeys live together in the lists of successes.
The event held in AIE, which gently donated its headquarters, and sponsored by SGAE Foundation, which allowed the invitation to journalists from outside Madrid, left some ideas, although I think not enough. From the financing table we try to give some: the new forms of communication in networks exploited by Arturo Paniagua, the podcasts, the books and notebooks on paper as unusual lifeguards of sites such as Efe Eme, Muzikalia or ours, and -this word will never be repeated -the diversification in income through events or payment gateways, to the mondosonoro. I also proposed the generation of an agency that Nutra of “Branded Content” of quality to some media. This congress should be just the beginning of something.
Regarding “quality musical journalism” in itself, RockdeLux decided not to boast too much of yours, and I think it was Jordi Bianciotto (the newspaper) who made the most interesting intervention. He recalled that the media cannot stick to record schedules (or festivals). He praised the exciting musical moment that we live, both in terms of diversity of styles, and in terms of ticket sales, and proposed to get out of the promotional wheel to create our own agenda. Prepare our own content, more analytical, with contrasted opinions, to return to musical journalism the credibility that perhaps has lost, among other things, based on repeating at all hours, everywhere, that has lost it. On the line, Carlos Pérez de Ziriza questioned the absence of negative criticisms, but acknowledged that it was not very motivating to hear records that you do not like or go to a Melendi concert, “at 20, 30 or 40 euros” per article. Even so, he dared to speak badly of the king’s wool after an FIB, and his fans swore. “The worst thing is to write about records (or artists) that give you the same, that neither cold nor heat.” But wool seemed “very fun,” he said, the satisfied sea. That is the spirit.
