Ah, I assume this is part of your response to the thread about Pitchfork's Weak Tea Top Fif-tea for the year. Good call! Lots of innovative music, all over the road, and lots more female musicians. Sweet!

When I want to know the good music coming up in a few months, I listen to Triple J. KCRW and KCSN will play that stuff a couple months later, along with KEXP and WXPN. Soon enough I'll hear it in the pharmacy.

In contrast, I'll listen to college radio if I want to hear something I never heard before or never conceived existed. KALX Berkeley, KSPC Claremont, my old home at the Harpur Radio Workshop, WZBC from Boston College, or the giant of the whelps and weirdos -- WFMU.

Perhaps I shouldn't point out the giant elephant in the room: why do we need a replacement for Rolling Stone? Oh sure, RS is now the Tiger Beat for people that can't admit they're closer to retirement than rebellion. However it stopped writing interesting music reviews long before Lester Bangs died: it was the zine that funded research pieces for great journalism.

Pitchfork is busy talking about increasingly mainstream music. However the NPR article you provided cut to the chase: here's a paragraph about a neat band, now listen here. Here's another few. Have a great day!

Do we need album reviews longer than 100 words now that we can stream the good stuff right away? Not really. They're fun to write, but so are amazing regex tests. The links are more valuable than a second paragraph.

We no longer read articles to build a list of purchases for a future trip to the record shop. No one needs to sell the sizzle as hard when the steak is already on the plate. Music journalism can focus on band interviews, studies in trends, and making weekly compilations instead of hard-fought annual ones.