This change of perspective means that the relationship between criticism and readers can be characterized as equal, and that the musical public sphere has been intimatized. Following the extension of modernism, the aesthetic tradition stressing the spirituality and sublimity of music is secularized and transformed into a materialist view of music. However, this does not mean that music is freed from emotional expressivity merely that criticism is freed from the problem of evaluating this expressivity. In 1995, criticism is differentiated into several genres, where the most prominent are the record review and the artist interview. This indicates a strong commercialization of the musical public life, a commercialization too far-reaching to be used as a criterium for separating between 'serious' and popular music.
Commercialization stands out as an inevitable element in modern culture.
Judging by the concert reviews, criticism has a relatively unproblematic relationship to the concert audience. The interest in audience figures merges with the commercial definition of public success, which means that audience figures can be used as a short cut to the formulation of aesthetical values. In 1995, good music is equivalent to the music 'everybody' listens to, a pragmatic definition that completely ignores the crucial moment of evaluation. Potential antagonism between criticism and audience is eliminated by constructing a mutual 'us', supposed to challenge the traditional aesthetic discourse. Newspaper readers are primarily regarded as consumers of culture, and therefore presumed to support this challenge and join the common value-system of criticism and audience.