To educated professionals in the business, these trade magazines offer the illusion of integrity and honesty and nothing more. Mr. Atkinson’s blatant censorship policy with respect to an unknown who has no industry affiliations - a person like Archimago - is a shining example of just how corrupt the "audiophile trade press" really is. Sadly, this pay to play game has helped decimate what was at one time a much larger market segment. The focus shift to ever more costly "audio jewelry" in recent years has accelerated the demise - to the extent that there really no longer is a presence at the CES. This year was a disaster. And the trade press have no one else to blame. With their greed, they brought it on themselves.
I’ve been posting, ie paying attention in a myriad of ways..... since before the internet existed [’93-’94, approx], with about 30k pages of self written data out there. I’ve been watching this since before it began.
Portable digital audio, cell phones and ipods, is what killed the audio market. Changing demographics. $500-1000 cell phones... where the money would have went toward a modest audio system in a prior era of electronics and communication. Cellphones, portable audio, computers, and the internet, four things that were not there in the heyday of audio. People will 'get off' in whatever way they can, so it is no surprise that audio (full size gear) was so successful for that period of about 30-40 years, and no surprise that it declined as the 4 mentioned horsemen of the 'home audio/stereo' apocalypse came on line, over time.
Anything else (that has happened) is almost purely minor and incidental to the situation. Almost zero of it can be laid at the feet of an audio magazine, no matter how it is run. MQA is an attempt at explicit and overt control of a shrinking market.
The market went in the direction it could as it is about profit, not saving music for ..someone..(sacrificing themselves on an altar, for who, specifically?), it’s about keeping the doors open and the given audio enterprises. They simply went to where the customers were, in a shrinking and changing demographic. No hidden agenda there, just common sense as applied to business structuring in a largely insurmountable scenario.
MQA is the same, it’s just good business sense for members of the RIAA and so on. Limited views they may all be, in my thinking, but they are what they are. And they (as business ideals and as open acts) are not automatically sacrificial to the ideals I may personally hold, they simply are. I happen to think MQA is a very bad idea and that much music will be lost to it, for a decade or more, if it goes mainstream.