what next for Chris ott?

i don't mind the new yorker site. they're just trying to make it look like the new yorker. whate are ya gonna do?

that qn only for chris itt

to be clear, i'm not saying it's wrong to sell your company for a lot of money. i'm merely explaining why that "big paycheck" in and of itself may not be be inspiring to all trying to follow their passion

― da croupier, Saturday, October 17, 2015 4:57 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I followed my passion for maybe 17 years and love my profession and live comfortably enough, but now the only thing I want to do MORE than that is fart around and do NOTHING, and Ryan or Yancey or whoever never has to work another day in their life and that's really a dream that I'm sure I share with Brett Guerowitz and the Squirrel Nut Zippers and maybe 95% of the population

i think the people croups is saying wouldn't be inspired by that are like, idealistic young people. which is technically true i guess

i was young once

I can think of one not young person uninspired

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/47/I_Don%27t_Like_Shit%2C_I_Don%27t_Go_Outside_An_Album_by_Earl_Sweatshirt.jpg

yeah i was trying to find net work for brett gurewitz as another likely candidate for someone who got rich off of indie rock. dexter holland is worth $65 million fwiw but they jumped to the majors earlier than i remembered. liz phair is worth $3 million but who knows what the various pathways for that income stream are.

outside of america oasis are indie, how much of noel gallagher's $60 million are due to the states idk (beyond "too much").

I followed my passion for maybe 17 years and love my profession and live comfortably enough, but now the only thing I want to do MORE than that is fart around and do NOTHING, and Ryan or Yancey or whoever never has to work another day in their life and that's really a dream that I'm sure I share with Brett Guerowitz and the Squirrel Nut Zippers and maybe 95% of the population

that's cool and fine and i don't know why you'd think I need the urge to fart around and do nothing explained to me, but if that's really brett g's dream why does he still run epitaph and stand on stage with bad religion - i mean they have TWO other guitarists

confused if people really don't understand what i'm saying ("selling control of your indie venture for $$$ isn't necessarily the goal for all") or are just defensively leaping around to pretend i'm saying something else

honestly as far as necessary checks on capitalist impulses in the music industry go i think i'm taking a relatively diplomatic tack

following your passion < bennies

i was describing the scenario in which the million-dollar sale of a brand would be inspirational. david geffen selling his stake in asylum records for millions in the 70s was certainly impressive, but it's inspirational only if your goal is to build something and then sell it for a large amount of money.

this is a narrow view imo. it's inspirational in the sense that nobody in the whole world gave a shit about ryan's opinions when pitchfork was just some dude from MN spouting off about indie rock on the internet, and most of the stuff he cared about was lol forever to most people. using your comparison, only some insiders gave a shit about David Geffen's opinions when he worked at William Morris. (Geffen, by the time he started at Asylum, was in much better shape than Ryan when he started pitchfork, obviously.) But both of them built something that a whole lot of people cared a whole lot about after a while; so much so, in fact, that people ended up paying millions of dollars for it. it is at least a little inspirational to know that people can translate "I give a shit about this and believe it's worthy of people's attention" into loads of money, and it's a little puzzling that you'd be arguing "nah bullshit this is money, money can in no way be inspiring"

otm

and it's a little puzzling that you'd be arguing "nah bullshit this is money, money can in no way be inspiring"

ffs. i'll repeat.

confused if people really don't understand what i'm saying ("selling control of your indie venture for $$$ isn't necessarily the goal for all") or are just defensively leaping around to pretend i'm saying something else

seriously embarrassed by how hard it seems to be for some people not to dramatically overstate what i'm saying into some cartoonish "money bad, indie good" stance, esp when i've underlined that i'm not engaging in that kind of kneejerk haterade.

whiney said the fact that Ryan took a fanzine from "shit, cat" to a $15m paycheck -- aka probably the most money ANY human being has made w indie rock and would wager that includes anyone involved with the Sub Pop/Geffen deal -- should actually be an inspiring story that you can do anything if you follow your passion. I pointed out that Walking Away From Indie With The Most Moolah Ever is not inherently inspiring.

if you have to bend that into "OH SORRY MR FUGAZI SOME OF US HAVE TO EAT" or "WHAT ARE YOU SAYING? BEING APPRECIATED IS BAD?", all I can see is please don't put your bullshit on me and/or read more carefully.

all i can say, rather

since i'm gonna be treated like i've jumped on a high horse anyway, i'll note that when your indie venture has struggled with diversity and representation in content over the years, and the person who spearheaded your purchase outright says they did it to acquire you're "millennial male" audience, i can see that also diminishing the inspiration potentially caused by your payday.

his indie venture hasn't struggled w/ diversity and representation nearly as much as indie rock as a whole though. also not to defend some pr flack's tossed off release but pforks readership is between 80-90% male, if they didn't acquire pfork to target that demo then why the fuck would they buy it?

his indie venture hasn't struggled w/ diversity and representation nearly as much as indie rock as a whole though.

never said otherwise.

also not to defend some pr flack's tossed off release but pforks readership is between 80-90% male, if they didn't acquire pfork to target that demo then why the fuck would they buy it?

never even hated on conde nast's motivations. merely noted it's a factor in this potentially not being An Inspirational Tale For All.

considering all it takes is what $15 on squarespace to set up a website and non-white millenial males is apparently an underserved market for music crit as is insisted upon time and time again by professionals in the field seems like some random schmuck setting up a website for an overserved market and still managing to turn that into $$$$ or even just a steady living should be professional. i could be wrong though and there could be plenty of jobs (and bennies) in music criticism in which case potentially having to face that anguish filled dilemma of 'selling out' that their gen x parents might have faced once upon a time might indeed be more a nightmare than an inspiration. i think i smell the next noah baumbach movie!

lol should be inspirational instead of professional. or maybe not.

the only person who should have beef with what i'm saying is someone who thinks there is no reason why any soul would not be lifted by a guy creating the biggest indie music culture website and then selling it to a large publishing company whose goal is cornering the market on young male readers. if you dream of sitting on a pale of money, you dont have beef with me on this. if you think the pitchfork is neat, you dont have beef with me on this. if you think there are worse things in the world, you don't have beef with me on this.

lol i meant "pile of money" and "the pitchfork story is neat" - must confess frustration doesn't improve my proofreading

arguing about what is conceivably inspirational or not is maybe not interesting

rocky I, III, IV, VI - inspirational

rocky II, V - not inspirational

that would be awesome if people are defending pfork from straw arguments out of boredom with the actual one, easily the most sympathetic explanation i can imagine

"there plausibly exists someone in the world who believes rocky V is inspirational, you do not disagree with me" - da croupier

"siri - is tommy morrison still alive?"

no btw

I wouldn't be inspired too much by Schreiber! According to twitter.com/shallowrewards, this whole thing is going to be an incredible disaster!

so basically the past three hours of ilm has been a person saying "this event in someone's life that's representative of a much larger success is inspirational" and another responding "no that specific event is only inspirational if your goal is that specific event" three hours three of them

shit, better improve this thread quick, guys, qualx is unhappy with its quality

finally

i know you're trying to be mean but in all seriousness i expect more from an ott thread

xp It's not like it was Ishtar or something

I mean it's entertaining enough even if it is the weakest in the franchise

anybody arguing with croup here is either misreading or dead inside ffs

lol come on

alright as i can see how qualx could assume i'm just making some kind of philosophical argument that the sale of pitchfork to conde nast is only inspirational if your goal is exactly the same, i'll cop that i'm really saying that i can see how the sale would be uninspiring.

but if someone thinking its a bummer (or at the very least, actively not inspiring) to see the largest indie music culture coverage site being sold to a monolith overtly interested in cultivating the indiebro audience makes you say "hey the 90s are over, albini, get off your highhorse" all i can say is as the owner of a secondary degree in accounting i'm merely albini-sympathetic, not an active anti-capitalist. and selling your indie concern to a company that openly doesn't share your professed value system is in fact very 90s.

and in case happy days wants to go down this route again, i'm not saying the filthy lucre makes everything uninspirational, or that there's nothing cool about how ryan went from "i love 12 rods" to "i got 12 million" blah blah all that shit

da croup otm throughout this thread, not sure what the rest of y'all are reading. very easy imo to see how this could be both inspiring from one angle and a little depressing from another, or if depressing is too strong a word then I guess it is just easy to see how somebody could look at this whole thing and think "yea not for me"

also have to admit I think it is lame we are talking about this on the ott thread and not the p4k one for posterity tbh but also bc ott is a dick most of the time

alright as i can see how qualx could assume i'm just making some kind of philosophical argument that the sale of pitchfork to conde nast is only inspirational if your goal is exactly the same, i'll cop that i'm really saying that i can see how the sale would be uninspiring.

but if someone thinking its a bummer (or at the very least, actively not inspiring) to see the largest indie music culture coverage site being sold to a monolith overtly interested in cultivating the indiebro audience makes you say "hey the 90s are over, albini, get off your highhorse" all i can say is as the owner of a secondary degree in accounting i'm merely albini-sympathetic, not an active anti-capitalist. and selling your indie concern to a company that openly doesn't share your professed value system is in fact very 90s.

― da croupier, Saturday, October 17, 2015 9:29 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm an idealist millennial who hates money and i think you're just being -- i guess narrow-minded is really the best word. it's possible for two different things to be true at the same time. i don't follow this thread with an eagle eye but it doesn't look like whiney was specifically talking about capital? schreiber went from being an embarrassing twerp with a terrible website that appealed to a very niche audience and garnered hate from pretty much everyone else to a respected entrepreneur whose personal choices have made huge ripples in the music industry (not just indie!) it isn't really hard to see how someone might find that inspirational -- going from nobody loser to cultural mover -- while not caring at all about the capital. whiney used the "$15m paycheck" to represent something and you took it completely literally.

i don't like schreiber but he's reached a level that can only be described as "the total fantasy end-goal of any narcissistic music critic", and people having exceptional achievements can be inspirational even if they have no desire to keep on doing it, or if they sell it all out to conde nast.

i am also just really weirded out by people who think the conde nast sale represents the corporatization of pitchfork like have you visited it at any point over the past decade

i understand this thread is going very quickly but i didn't post and in case happy days wants to go down this route again, i'm not saying the filthy lucre makes everything uninspirational, or that there's nothing cool about how ryan went from "i love 12 rods" to "i got 12 million" blah blah all that shit for someone to tell me that i'm not open-minded enough to get how this could be inspiring to someone.

like noooo shit. starting small and getting big can be inspiring. not blowing my mind here.

i am also just really weirded out by people who think the conde nast sale represents the corporatization of pitchfork like have you visited it at any point over the past decade

― qualx, Saturday, October 17, 2015 10:01 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^

you guys realize one could be nonplussed by the sale AND be aware that the site has been moving this direction for ages

i almost want to find a genuine brokenhearted indie fawn on twitter for you guys to engage with so you can have a debate with someone who won't keep pointing out you're making an ass out of u and me

lol double-checked the meaning of nonplussed and apparently it means both "confused" and "unperturbed". pretend i said uninspired.