If the People Like It,It Must Be Good: Criticism,Democracy and the Culture of Consensus

Abstract

What is the role, if any, of professional music criticism in the age of the internet, and what are the potential consequences of its likely demise? How do we evaluate the claim that the erosion of traditional forms of cultural authority, including professional criticism, is inherently democratic? To address these questions, this paper compares professional music criticism with the technologically-mediated forms of cultural judgment that have increasingly replaced it, analyzing the shift from aesthetics to consensus as the basis for cultural judgment. Rather than signaling the end of cultural authority, the recent transformations of the music world are marked by the emergence of authority of a different kind.