pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Community radio is a good thing and student radio is a good thing but I dunno if they should be the same thing

Obv people will take what they can get from both sides, just saying in an ideal sitch

seriously, the best polka shows:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOnuSLmm_vU

Yeah but even in 2015 an FCC license can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars (at the very least). It's not something random community members can just band together to buy, hence college radio stations with community involvement.

xp @da croupier

It's precisely the specialness -- the reality even -- of an FCC license that students don't wanna accept, which I get. I was a college deejay too, just wanted to play my post punk classics for a couple hours and no one fuck with me.

i mean, what was cool for me about community DJs (at least partly) was that they were *from the community*. it was good to get a different perspective from the bubble that was a liberal arts college in the hudson valley.

I'm just wishing that more conversations on the Internet regarding either Pitchfork or SJWs would result in videos being posted about polka.

"i mean, what was cool for me about community DJs (at least partly) was that they were *from the community*. it was good to get a different perspective from the bubble that was a liberal arts college in the hudson valley."

this is the problem with the kids who run the station at Umass now. they really don't want to have anything to do with the community. and they really seem intolerant of different opinions/viewpoints. and older strange radio people. they just want to play their spotify playlists on the air and ignore the outside world. i dunno, they're young. they get paid too. the management people who are students. looks good on a resume.

reassuring to know this is a national epidemic. Repeal the Bill of Rights.

It's precisely the specialness -- the reality even -- of an FCC license that students don't wanna accept, which I get. I was a college deejay too, just wanted to play my post punk classics for a couple hours and no one fuck with me.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, October 1, 2015 4:51 PM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't even know what college radio means to students in an era of hyperabundant soundcloud mixes, itunes whatevers, etc. etc. i was in college at the very cusp of all that, when even setting up an internet stream for our station was incredibly cumbersome, and wouldn't work on half of our laptops.... nowadays i imagine that radio might seem a bit antiquated, like public-access TV...

i have to say that the worst thing about the college station here (which is neither great nor terrible on the whole) is that the kids come in and plug in their ipods or ipros or iclouds or whatever and play these lossy, fucked-up-sounding MP3s over the radio and they sound just awful. i'm tempted to write a letter to the station manager but then i will have officialy become Annoying Old Guy Audiophile.

also i once subbed for a guy on the station and every single one of their turntables and CD players was fucked up and barely worked and i was really tempted to just throw my hands up and walk off leaving a bunch of dead air.

that's normal!

our soundboard is from the Reagan administration and held together with tape and paper clips.

yeah but imagine you bring a few boxes of stuff to play on the air and then none of the turntables or CD players work and the on-duty manager is like "oh yeah, they haven't worked this week, sorry." my point is that 99% of the student DJs just plug in their digital hoohas and hit "shuffle."

/old man

what fun is being a college student if you can't plug in your digital hooha

http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/mm300/TheSurvivalist/heat-pacino-buggy.jpg

not pictured: S1mon3

i don't know what's worse, this review or this entire album concept http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21145-meow-the-jewels/

"But Meow the Jewels isn't really about music at all; instead, it's a major milestone in cats' slow-but-inevitable climb to the status of Hip-Hop's Favorite Animal."

Whoa.

one thing about this particular thread is that it's humorless as shit

at least the album was made for charity

yea bc cats are so fuckin funny right xp

jfc

we need like a whiney CATS HOLY SHIT SO FUCKING FUNNY LOL OMG LOOK AT THIS CAT WOW IM DYING thread

it's an album review............. about a cat album......................

Missed all the big talk from yesterday but:

i think it's really important to have a university employee--someone who's been around for a while--as a kind of bridge between students and longtime community DJs. you need someone from the university community who knows the station and can carry that institutional memory, since students by definition are around for a few years (at most) and then leave. even basic things like knowing when/how to fill out our FCC license-renewal application were made difficult because nobody had done it before.

KUCI, where I DJed from 1992 to 2000, was very lucky in this regard -- Kevin Stockdale, officially the broadcast media coordinator, essentially pitched for and created this job, officially part of what's called University Advancement last I checked (covering media, etc.) out of nothing back in the 1980s when he was an undergrad. He's fulfilled that role ever since, and we couldn't've been luckier -- management always changes but he never directly involves himself in that yearly process, and he just keeps a careful eye on things to make sure all the dotted lines are signed. Helps that he's one of the most quietly earnest but still very chill people around, just a steady hand on the rudder no matter where the ship's being steered. He's still there! And good thing too.

college station deejays are a reaaaaallly insular bunch.Unlike our newspaper students, the deejays actively want to withdraw from campus life and anything related to college. Hence why we had so many deejays who stayed at the station years after graduating (or never graduating). We changed our bylaws last year and it's helped clear much of the bad air

I can definitely see that. We were much luckier in that the show lifers tend to be Saturday/Sunday morning folks who wanted shifts nobody else felt like getting up for; also they tended to be more community members than former grads, though not all. Definitely a bit insular but not entirely; they almost always showed up to every staff meeting and participated in wider events.

i 100% endorse pitchfork moving away from a ratings scale to employing emojis - assuming they are never explained with a scale

like don't tell me whether a rmde is better or worse than a jerkoff motion, let me get that from the text

excellent idea

And then we could have a new thread called "pitchfork is ;_;"

I just want all the people that don't think pitchfork is dumb to start their own thread

that thread would have humor

you should start one, nose. i'm always up for some of that good ol' nose humor!

And then we could have a new thread called "pitchfork is ;_;"

― niels, Friday, October 2, 2015 1:37 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/14/Love_is.jpg

I hate humor so

Of course we all know "Ebony and Ivory", pure ground-zero Macca schmaltz tethered by a goofy yet endearing analogy to the synchronicity between the piano's keys.

get one dictionary

goofy yet endearing

these piano keys, they're all happening at the same time for no apparent reason! amazing

http://images1.mtv.com/uri/mgid:file:docroot:vh1.com:/sitewide/flipbooks/img/shows/hof/2003_police/3990.jpg?enlarge=false&matte=true&matteColor=black&quality=0.85
"Wait. Did you just say ... for no apparent reason!?"

lmao

http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/924-merch-table-the-headphone-report/

Gotta say good work changing the name of this since the first couple of columns had the worst name of any franchise in the history of online music journalism

What was it before?

"pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849493 in a series.)"

okay i cackled when i looked up the old name of the column: http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/797-consumer-goods-and-bads-laying-on-williams-recycled-plastic-sheets/

very glad I clicked on this thread and experienced this shift in branding

they should actually probably retcon it and change all the old column names to Merch Table

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/14/business/media/conde-nast-buys-pitchfork-media.html?_r=0

Condé Nast, the publisher that owns magazines like Vogue and Vanity Fair, said on Tuesday that it had acquired Pitchfork Media, the company behind the independent music website and quarterly magazine, for an undisclosed sum.

Pitchfork, founded in 1995, has long been one of music’s independent voices, known for unearthing up-and-coming artists, and for its in-depth reviews. The acquisition will take immediate effect.

It gives Condé Nast a stand-alone music publication with a strong editorial voice, said Fred Santarpia, the company’s chief digital officer, who led the acquisition. It brings “a very passionate audience of millennial males into our roster,” he said.

Pitchfork, he said, is profitable, and it boasts a thriving live events business, with events in Chicago and Paris, and robust video offerings — both vital and growing parts of the publishing business. He declined to say how much Condé Nast paid. The quarterly print magazine, The Pitchfork Review, will continue, Mr. Santarpia said.

“Pitchfork is incredibly fortunate to have found in Condé Nast a team of people who share our commitment to editorial excellence,” Ryan Schreiber, Pitchfork’s founder and chief executive, said in a statement. “Their belief in what we do, combined with their additional expertise and resources, will allow us to extend our coverage of the artists and stories that shape the music landscape on every platform.”

The site’s influence has been growing in recent years, and it has developed a reputation for being able to bolster the careers of artists with a positive review.

In an email to its staff, Condé Nast’s chief executive, Bob Sauerberg, said the deal “reinforces our commitment to building Condé Nast’s premium digital network, focusing on distinctive editorial voices and engaging high-value millennial audiences.”

Hi dere very passionate audience of millennial males.

a very passionate audience of millennial males = new board description

if only the ott cld make a video screed telling us sheeple all about corporate control of music journalism mannnnnnnnnnnn