attracts people whose primary interest in it isn't necessarily in the 'writing' part

It's as hard to do good profiles and reviews and Q&As about musicians as it is to write it well about anything else. Even a good celebrity puff piece isn't something anyone can do. Anyway, if you're going to treat music and the music industry like it's worth writing about, you should apply the same standards as you do to "real" journalism.

The problem is that the standards across that sector of the publishing industry are low, so a lot of bad shit gets published in a way that looks legit (nice graphics, glossy paper, and now good web design) and looking legit makes it legit.

My experience with music writers (extensive: I was the music editor at the [Ed: well known alt weekly in bigger city] for [Ed: a number larger than 5] years) is that a lot of them read nothing but other music writing, which is bad because the only way to learn to write is to read good writing. But because it's a field that requires some specialized knowledge (and therefore requires you to decipher a lot of badly written reviews and profiles to get info you need), music writing is like travel writing or food writing--when it's done well it can be transcendent, but it attracts people whose primary interest in it isn't necessarily in the "writing" part.