We treat our music press bad

Ben Myers blogs on the Guardian to ask why we're so hard on our music press. (Because much of it is very poor, probably, Ben, but do go on):

[T]he UK has the best music press in the world. For me, US music magazines such as Rolling Stone or Spin just don't compare. They may occasionally offer heftier features, but they also seem to exist more in fear of the advertising clients whose accounts keep them afloat.

UK magazines offer some of the free-spirited, funniest, most informed, unflinching, passionate and comprehensive writing around. We should remind ourselves of that from time to time.

This is simultaneously unfair to the US music magazines - if something like Clash is meant to be "unflinching" then Maximum Rock & Roll must be like a botoxed statue - and over-generous to the UK music shelf:

An established weekly like NME, or one of the weightier monthlies? The likes of Word, Q and Uncut all offer different takes on recent music, while Mojo (my personal favourite) appears to me to be the most informed and least trend-driven.

There are bright spots - The Word, Plan B, Artrocker's heart is in the right place - but to suggest that the UK outclasses a nation that offers Paste, for example, is a little curious, and it's arguable that there are very few people writing for music publications who are either allowed to, or have the talent to, produce interesting material you'd want to read regardless of whether you're interested in the bands featured, which surely is what you want from music journalism.

Ben points to the overcrowded market:

Indie music, in particular, has permeated mainstream culture to such an extent that no lifestyle, arts-based magazine, broadsheet and tabloid newspaper would be seen dead without at least some music coverage, even if it is just a 50-word review of Mark Ronson in Cosmopolitan.

To be honest, we suspect part of the problem would lay with the belief that Mark Ronson constitutes 'indie' in any meaningful sense of the word - which isn't a dig at Ben, more at the new consensus that some very, very lightweight material constitutes alternative listening. It's worrying that the NME is up against Cosmopolitan for Mark Ronson scoops - but it's probably not Cosmopolitan which is looking in the wrong place.