AudioPerfecta on snark, negativity, and brutal honesty.

AudioPerfecta.com’s tagline is “Bringing good music to good people.” So, what about all the bad music? Do we just ignore that? Well, in a sense, yes….yes we do. There’s enough negativity in the world, and so many other sites willing to publish negative reviews – there’s just no reason to contribute to this “machine.” Besides, there’s so much good music out there, we just don’t have time to focus on the bad music, no matter how much we cherish brutal honesty.

We do recognize there is a time and place for bad reviews. If we had launched this site even ten years ago, we might review a lot of music we do not like. What’s changed? Well, the delivery method of choice for most music. Ten years ago, we still bought the majority of our music. We spent money on our music, so we wanted to buy the best music we could and skip over the bad. Music reviews, both good and bad, was one a major method for finding music worth buying. Now that most people stream music, we’re no longer spending money on individual albums. We now have less to lose on listening to a bad album. The new purpose of a music review is more about highlighting the good music in a sea of music, and less about telling you what to buy and what to avoid buying.

Back to negativity, snark, and especially Brutal honest. While AudioPerfecta has no desire to contribute negativity to the zeitgeist on a regular basis, there are a few instances where we might be snarky or brutally honest.

Firstly, let’s talk about snark. Snark is a fun tool to use, as long as it used sparingly. We’ve certainly “snarked” at the likes of Lars Ulrich and Gene Simmons – but really, those were out of good natured fun. Those snarks were low hanging fruits, and – well, we couldn’t resist. There’s also our “Saturday Night Snark” on Twitter. Again, low hanging fruit done out of good natured fun. In some cases, we actually changed our mind after snarking.

Secondly, if an album we’ve anticipated really didn’t live up to expectations, we might be brutally honest. If say the new U2 album was full of Bono singing off notes, The Edge playing out of tune guitars, Larry playing off beat, and Adam – well – you get the picture. If said U2 album did in fact materialize, this would make us mad enough that we will probably write a “brutally honest” review.

On the same note, sometimes brutal honesty is a matter of constructive criticism. There are times when we dislike a song or album, but we see a lot of potential. We might write a review which slams a specific aspect of the song or album – say the vocals. However, in this instance we would highlight what we really liked – say, maybe the lyrics and the instrumentation.

Thirdly, there might be times when you, the readers, really want us to review an album or song that we just don’t care for. We’re going to be brutally honest. We’re going to say we don’t like this music. We do want to listen to what our audience wants, so we’ll write the review. Just don’t expect anything from us but brutal honesty. Oh – and please don’t ask us to write these too often. Pleae, we beg you.

We hope you, our valued readers, can live with these terms. Again – we just don’t have time for the negativity unless it’s necessary, or maybe just funny. Life is too short. Besides, our hopes for this site is that we put forth good music to unite people – not divide them. Yeah – that sounds a bit Polyanna, not to mention higher aspirations than we can probably deliver – but why not shoot for the stars?

Now we must go. It is once again time to write the Saturday night snark. What is a Saturday night snark? Really? Do you not follow Audioperfecta on Twitter? You don’t? Well…maybe you should! To use a bit of the brutal honesty here, you’re missing out if you don’t. You’ll be exposed to all kinds of new music, deep cuts, and more! So much music we don’t usually post on the main site.