The only critics that ever wrote something interesting were the ones who actually bought the fucking albums themlselves with their own money.

YOUR MONEY <=> YOUR MOUTH

I think "incredibly-powerful tastemakers, with immeasurable influence over music culture" might be a bit of a stretch. I found this blog post with the U.S. album sales for Pitchfork's top 50 albums quite enlightening: http://perpetua.tumblr.com/post/14873014757/u-s-sales-figures-for-pitchforks-top-50-albums-of

5 estrellas.

Whoops,

http://www.clipstop.com/videos/Cool/Indie_Marketing_Guru

I guess it was just too good for youtube....or pulled down immediately after Aziz's show was pulled...

Genius.

It plays now. 

I still read most reviews!?

Hark! HARK!

what about Bob Lefsetz??

Still relevant (to over-50 record execs)

...who hate themselves but love skiiing

Ha!

http://twitter.com/fakeboblefsetz

Album reviews have become less of a determinant and more of an advertising tool. There is so much music out there that music reviewers are more tour guides of a scene rather than judges.

I like what one guy said about reviewers being like "musical tour guides", I elaborate a bit on this here: http://iamtunedup.com/2012/01/11/do-reviews-matter/

SPIN just responded to this article via email with this:

"I'm emailing in light of your recent post on music critics with some relevant news that I thought might be of interest. Starting today, SPIN is reinventing the traditional music review -- essentially taking them out of the print magazine for the first time in 26 years and onto Twitter. 

The @SPINreviews Twitter feed is a massive undertaking, aiming to be an exhaustively definitive listener's guide and argument-starter for virtually every album or EP or mixtape that matters in 2012. Within the confines of a 140-character tweet, we're hoping to take on more than 1,500 new records this calendar year alone, all reviewed by our eight in-house editors and a team of a dozen valued freelancers. More than 1,500 reviews means more bands, more records and more opportunities to explore under-covered genres like hip-hop, heavy metal, dance music, chart pop, world music, and the outsider avant-garde.

Spearheaded by Chris Weingarten, the voice behind @1000timesyes, album reviews will be shortened so they'll fit onto a Twitter feed and posted online alongside select longer reviews that will be much more opinionated. We will still be posting about 20 longform reviews a month on SPIN.com. 

Julia"

Sounds like a last gasp. 

In the end, I feel like people just need to be pointed in a direction now, the access is there and they have ears (what's between them, well that differs) and can then judge for themselves . The amount of listeners that will actually sit through an even moderately put together, barely verbose review are not the majority of the music consuming population, and even then it's just as easy to go find it and listen rather than sit through the rest of even a well crafted piece.

I think many times an interview will sway someone more than a review.

In the past critics had personality, knowledge, experience and style that was a part of why we trusted them or didn't. There was something tangible to the process and the person. Whether you liked those things, or them was subjective, but compared to the cacophony of blogs and reviews now there was something charming to it. 

Let's not forget that these publications survive on big ticket adspace, that many times come from the companies providing the content being reviewed. They are not about to bite a hand that feeds them, so I will always take reviews with a grain of salt, and attempt to put things into context. 

Every artist usually learns to ignore reviews, or to manage their expectations regarding them, when they don't can be catastrophic in either direction. 

Malcolm Gladwell did a great talk about consumerism, marketing and the nature of choice. Psychopshysicists have found a lot of interesting things regarding the brain, and what we think we want...compared to we want, or are told to want. 

http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce.html

Kind of made me wonder if Pitchfork would be as remotely successful as it is if it didn't have it's very specific numerical rating scale...

I don't accept the premise: did critics ever "matter"?

Yes, when it was impossible to hear the track before you purchased and the review in NME/Melody Maker was the only guide you had to what it might be like. I certainly bought a few duff singles based on reviews (Campag Velocet?) but it was all part of the fun, and I probably listened to a slightly wider range of music as a result.

Album reviews: who needs 'em?

Clearly, the trust in the critic is worth more.

The only thing worse than a music critic is a music business critic.  The only thing worse than that is the quality of comments from self proclaimed "industry experts".