Writing about music in the mainstream press is in a bad way. So, Rob Young writes, the best music writers are now to be found webside – in blogs. “What they add up to is a fertile breeding ground for a new style of music writing – just when the trade needs it most. The ludic quality of music criticism merges with a serious approach to the subject rarely found in a mainstream that treats music as entertainment rather than art. Add encyclopaedic knowledge, genre-crossing frames of reference and a disregard for celebrity, and you have the key traits of the music blog.”