I asked music journalists to sum up 2024. They did not hold back.

"Grim," "brutal," "a shit show," "ugh," "the worst it's ever been" ... and that's some of the nicer stuff they had to say.

Kia ora. Earlier this week, I published a report card for a dire year in music journalism. That was all me and my thoughts, but I wanted to hear from others, to check I wasn’t the only one feeling despondent. So I reached out to my fellow music journalists. Their responses were emotional, heartfelt, damning and desperate. Reading them was tough. I felt for them. It felt like finding an industry in mourning, so go easy with this one … it might get grim, but I believe it’s an important topic, one with far reaching repercussions. We need to keep talking about this if we want to find a solution. So that’s what I’m going to do…
-Chris.

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‘It feels a bit like I’m screaming into a void.’

A hole hasn’t been dug. A tombstone hasn’t been carved. A body bag isn’t being zipped shut. We’re not yet at the point where a nurse is hovering over a carcass, a finger failing to find a pulse while preparing to call time on this beautiful, elusive, increasingly rare thing we call music journalism. But it’s close.

The number of journalists left covering music in this country can barely be counted on two hands. Decent stories, interviews, deep-dives, profiles and reviews are scarce. As someone points out below, 84-year-old jazz legend Herbie Hancock toured Aotearoa in October almost certainly for the last time and no one reviewed his show.

But there’s an image I want to show you. It’s a screengrab I took from The Spinoff’s website last week. It shows there is an appetite for music journalism. It proves when you do it right, give topics the respect they deserve, unleash great writers on a subject, and present those stories properly, music journalism can still reach a large audience.

No, your eyes have not deceived you. Last Tuesday, on one of the country’s most popular news sites (that could use some help), three of the top four most-read stories were music-related: concert reviews of Coldplay and Crowded House, and an excellent interview with Fazerdaze, an indie-pop star who has channeled terrible times into her incredible new album.

See? It works. You just need to do it – and do it well.

Are music journalists getting that chance? Are they able to write about the things we care about? Do they get the time they need to give subjects the care and attention they deserve? Are those stories then treated with respect by their editors, and presented in a way that’s enticing to readers? Is that one day on The Spinoff an anomaly?

To find out, I needed to go and ask the journalists still doing the mahi. I had to hear their thoughts. I wanted to ask them how they’re feeling about the thing they love, this thing they’ve always done, in the face of what can only be described as an extinction-level threat. I wanted to ask them: how close are you to giving up?

So that’s what I did. I’m going to be honest here: going through their replies was difficult. Some were younger journalists eager to cover music but who couldn’t persuade their editors to let them. For those on the other end of the career ladder, all hope seems lost. Some seem like they’re barely hanging in there, refusing to look ahead, unable to imagine any kind of future because it doesn’t seem to exist.

One told me: “I live with the knowledge of how ludicrously precarious it all is.” Another said: “Fuck, why am I even here?” A third said their thoughts were too dark to let me publish them. I respect that. I get it.

So here we go. I’m presenting everyone’s answers as simple lists. I’m keeping them randomised and anonymous: everyone who contributed to this piece has a job to protect, a career to honour, an editor to keep happy, mouths to feed or mortgages to pay. Their dreams may be bruised, but they’re not done just yet.

How long will it last until the wheels fall off? Let’s find out…