The Evolution of Music Journalism

 The Evolution of Music Journalism

    The idea of Music Journalism revolves around covering concerts, new song releases, Artist profiles, and reporting on the whole music industry as a whole. Music Journalism was founded by and was first published by journalists Breitkopf and Hartel in 1798.They both created the first ever music periodical in Germany called "Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung" which is "General Music Newspaper" in English. This exclusively set the template for the future of Music Journalism as a whole all over the world. 

    As the years went by, music journalism grew with it. In the 1960's, it brought a great variety of new music like Jazz, Rock, and Pop  especially with the popularity of The Beatles. This new era brought more and more music news writers like Robert Shelton, Richard Goldstein, and Chris Welch who lead the way. Lester Bangs covered underground music and grew to be a major influence for Rock music .With the expansion of music genres,  many different music journalists completed  within the niches of different sub-genres of music. 

    Popular magazines like Time, Rolling Stone, and Sunday New York Times gave way and opportunity for rock writers to express their passion for rock music and inform the readers about the newest releases from the rock genre.With the growth of Rock as a genre, numerous rock books were made exclusively for public fancy and the use of a new sub section of music journalism; Rock Journalism.

 First introduced by Paul Williams in 1966, with his short- term newspaper "Crawdaddy!" It paved a pathway for numerous other Rock music journalists to write their own stories regarding different varieties of Rock. This sub genre of journalism grew to become a pop- culture phenomenon and grew to be the most well known and popular genre of music journalism as Rock evolved. Famous journalist Lester Bangs revolutionized the entire sub genre by studying underground rock music and writing about lesser known rock bands until he was given the opportunity to write for Rolling Stone.

    Heading into the 70's and 80's , music journalists focused even more upon pop, R&B, and other music  genres featured within more and more magazines as they got more popular. Artists like Stevie Wonder, Bob Marley, ABBA, Marvin Gaye, and Michael Jackson were seen on the covers of different music magazines like Rolling Stone, Crawdaddy, Billboard, and Mojo. With this, music was starting to rise and grow into a new era sparking more ideas for music journalists to write about. Rock was still a popular genre during the 70's and 80's and popular artists were still featured in numerous magazines, but they were getting less and less recognition because rock was getting less and less popular.

    When the 21st century dawned, Technology provided a huge leg up for music journalists everywhere now being able to spread their newspaper stories about music online. As technology advanced to where it is now, more and more Music Journalists could spread all of their informative articles and news across social media platforms to music fans that are eager to know about new artists, song releases, or music genres as a whole.