pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

It's true that many of Pitchfork's early reviews were badly written, but some of the more "creative" efforts also felt kind of fresh and audacious to me as a college kid looking for intel on new indie-rock records. I remember excitedly showing someone the 3.4 review of Stereolab's Cobra and Phases Group... -- I loved that album and thus disagreed with the score, but I found the writing funny and clever. (It barely talked about the music.)

I think I've met Schreiber a couple of times, though I only remember the first encounter, which I believe was in 2001:

My brother briefly interned for the site, and one night Ryan Schreiber came over to drop something off and ended up drinking a beer on our porch and enthusing about how Dismemberment Plan was like the Future of Indie Rock, like in the wake of Pavement's break-up, this is what was next.

― Zsa Zsa Gay Bar (jaymc), Wednesday, January 12, 2011 11:09 AM (seven years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it was an era in which consistently publishing on trustworthy servers honestly went a long way

From 2000-02, I worked for a (now long-defunct) site that published new reviews every weekday, in multiple genres, largely by professional reviewers (I don't know if those writers were happy with what they were paid, but that's a different story!). Whenever I would land on Pfork, I thought it was weird little site with bad reviews. But clearly it was built for the long haul, and had the right "business model."

What site was that? As I remember it, in the early 00's there weren't many indie rock music review websites around that updated with the same frequency and featured multiple contributors who had different styles but with a shared enthusiasm and something like a sensibility.

I think Ryan probably deserves credit for realizing his limitations and hiring the right people to take the site where it needed to go.

xp - Sonicnet.com (it wasn't indie-rock focused, and it didn't have anything like the Pfork "sensibility" -- it was more in the vein of a "professional" music news & reviews site -- which is probably why it wasn't built to last past the dot-com era. MTV bought it and ran it a few years before shutting it down. We did early Internet radio, too.)

I think you are right and I agree, but it doesn't exactly make for a glowing epitaph.

xp

i was calling phil's reason boring

I was making a joke, ftr. I may dislike individual articles Pitchfork publishes but overall I think the site's existence has been a very good thing. Many others disagree, obviously, and view Schreiber as an Enemy of the People for ever even starting the thing.

Sonicnet.com (it wasn't indie-rock focused, and it didn't have anything like the Pfork "sensibility" -- it was more in the vein of a "professional" music news & reviews site

launched in 1994, for what it's worth, as was addicted to noise, the news/magazine site with which sonicnet merged a couple years later. both had indie-rockish sensibilities, though they covered more than that. by 2000, they were already mtv properties.

(i worked there both pre- and post-mtv.)

it was an era in which consistently publishing on trustworthy servers honestly went a long way

this is still true.

who are you, fcc? I probably know you irl

(yes, the MTV buyout happened shortly before I joined)

As I remember it, in the early 00's there weren't many indie rock music review websites around that updated with the same frequency and featured multiple contributors who had different styles but with a shared enthusiasm and something like a sensibility.

― o. nate, Tuesday, January 8, 2019 4:11 PM (thirty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i actively sought them out so i remember there being many. of course they weren't good but neither was pfork at the time

my only interaction with ryan schreiber was on twitter, when i was like 20 or something and i suggested a game changer for his company would be to randomly give an album the score of 10.1 to dispense with the toxic idea that an album could be "perfect" or that "perfection" was even a noble goal. he responded with something like "..."

anyway, rest in hell, monster

who are you, fcc? I probably know you irl

we most definitely crossed paths back then. real names'd be proof but i do treasure my relative anonymity here :)

lol xp

this schreiber BS has been on my facebook feed all day and frankly i'm shocked than anyone gives a shit.

btw thank u flops it occurred to me after i posted that that my enmity might be misdirected and i'm sorry

i am probably being *too* mad itt and projecting a lot, i've just felt a lot of... discouragement in the past year, from various sources

some of it probably more perceived than real! etc.

we most definitely crossed paths back then. real names'd be proof but i do treasure my relative anonymity here :)

ok, I'll assume you're M1chael Snyd3r! ;)

lol

It's definitely strange that Pitchfork became what it is now partially based on the "strength" of those horrible '90s reviews.

― billstevejim, Tuesday, January 8, 2019 5:04 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he can reduce the scores on my album reviews in hell
― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Tuesday, January 8, 2019 1:42 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I just wanted to hear some stories about him getting drunk and turning everyone's submitted 8+ scores into 6.5s or something
― Evan, Tuesday, January 8, 2019 3:45 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've always wondered about this. If every writer is pitching albums that they're into, isn't there gonna be some score inflation happening naturally, because every album is reviewed by the person who would give it the highest possible score.
isn't part of the editor's job to re-establish the bell curve?

No offense to sonicnet.com or Addicted to Noise, but looking at random captures from 2001 or so via the Wayback Machine, it's not hard to see why Pitchfork survived and they didn't. For one thing, Addicted to Noise is still sticking to the concept of "issues" with a periodic (less than daily) release cycle. I think one thing that Schreiber "got" earlier than most was that "issues" don't make sense in the always-on Internet media landscape, and that the way to build a habit is by offering readers something new every day. Also, it looks like sonicnet.com was trying to cover everything under the sun whereas early Pitchfork was relentlessly "underground" focused. It was the sense of a community apart from the mainstream that was a big draw. Also, the graphic design is better.

I've always wondered about this. If every writer is pitching albums that they're into, isn't there gonna be some score inflation happening naturally, because every album is reviewed by the person who would give it the highest possible score.
isn't part of the editor's job to re-establish the bell curve?

― enochroot, Tuesday, January 8, 2019 5:36 PM (twelve minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i know i brought it up but can we not talk about this

xp - That's kind of what I meant by why Pfork's "narrowcasting" model was probably best suited for survival in the long run. I don't know how Sonicnet may have fared if MTV hadn't bought it and then, after the dot-com crash, decided it wasn't worth keeping the lights on... but I don't know of any equivalent now for what Sonicnet was at its peak (a wide-ranging, multi-genre music hub), so I assume it wouldn't have survived in that form, and certainly not at that scale. I miss having a site like that to visit, where you can be informed of what's happening in other parts of the music world beyond your particular niche, and maybe get turned on to other stuff too. But "niche" turned out to be key to online success, I guess.

also this is probably an unpopular opinion but i don't give a shit about bell curves or brands which are largely incoherent to me to begin with, i care about enthusiasm and craft, my priorities are not other ppl's priorites, plus the scoring system is a shitty system to begin with xp

I don't know of any equivalent now for what Sonicnet was at its peak (a wide-ranging, multi-genre music hub), so I assume it wouldn't have survived in that form, and certainly not at that scale

I think in the early days of the internet no one quite new what the new media landscape would look like, and there were some ambitious visions of things like that. Not too many people worried about where the money was going to come from (witness the dot-com boom). Then it turned out that people wouldn't pay for content on the internet, and the brave new world of high-quality, internet-supported content never materialized. People who expected to make a living producing content gradually realized the internet wasn't going to provide that, and the big professionally-managed companies moved on. What was left was sites run by lifers and true believers (in the best case) or politically-motivated cranks (in the worst case). I think Schreiber falls into the first camp.

That seems to sum it up well. I def respect Pfork as a "labor of love" (even if, initially, just a love of getting free CDs!) that stayed the course and found a path to improvement and profitability, etc. Like a hardworking indie rock band, man... :P

I'm not an objective witness, but the writing improved around 2008 when it expanded its purview beyond indie.

The interesting thing is that I never realized how bad the writing was back in the beginning, because that was still the era where every city had one or two free weeklies which were heavily music-focused, and it was no worse than most of the writing in those.
It was only once they starting purging the old review that I realized how much better that writing had become over the years.
(although the recent Greta Van Fleet review did make me a bit nostalgic for the old style)

No offense to sonicnet.com or Addicted to Noise, but looking at random captures from 2001 or so via the Wayback Machine, it's not hard to see why Pitchfork survived and they didn't. For one thing, Addicted to Noise is still sticking to the concept of "issues" with a periodic (less than daily) release cycle.

yes and no. atn started as a monthly webzine, quickly added a daily music news feed, and in its last few years was updating the news throughout the day while stubbornly hanging on to that monthly zine, which is where the reviews had their home. 2001 was the bitter end for all of it. if atn/sonicnet has an editorial legacy, it's the very idea of daily, reported music news, which no one else was doing except for the much cheesier allstar music news, which was owned by cdnow, and which i'm guessing no one here has heard of.

Also, it looks like sonicnet.com was trying to cover everything under the sun whereas early Pitchfork was relentlessly "underground" focused. It was the sense of a community apart from the mainstream that was a big draw.

that's basically true, though that happened in stages, too. sonicnet was "underground" "community." atn brought in a classic rockist flavor, determined to cover the daily comings and goings of guided by voices, the wu-tang clan and stone temple pilots with equal zeal. the literally-everything-under-the-sun concept was mtv's idea, an attempt to extend the mtv brand to a hundred new frontiers simultaneously. they hired a zillion people to do it and it was, yeah, a terrible idea. sonicnet/atn had basically signed to a major label way too early. and they picked the wrong major label.

o. nate otm.

treesh, I found yr tweet

https://www.twitter.com/Stacey_Blyth89/status/572888844355436544

they hired a zillion people to do it

Like yours truly, lol! It was a fun time for a little while (until the layoffs started).

yep, that's me. stacey blyth

This will probably be dismissed as conspiracy shit, maybe rightly so, but anyone else get the feeling that with Mark R and Ryan gone in fairly quick succession that something probably went wrong with the relationship with Conde? Idk, feels like there’s more to this than just ‘it was time to move on.’

MTV.com was itself doing daily, reported music news in the late '90s which made ATN redundant

it's not "conspiracy shit." at conde nast, everyday is a new adventure to put it mildly

xp Yeah my understanding/impression was that MTV bought Sonicnet (and used the same content for MTV.com and VH1.com), because it was a “better mousetrap” version of what they were already trying to do; but sounds like fcc has deeper roots and knows more.

yes mtv.com was doing daily music news and d'oh for overlooking that in my last post. sonicnet was a way better mousetrap, and we taught mtv a lot of stuff and they taught us some stuff too, two very different worlds, and in the end we were indeed redundant because their name was on the door and they weren't all that interested in extending their brand; they liked it just where it was.

(i wound up elsewhere at mtv networks and i'm a big fan of the company in general, for reasons having little to do with that particular experiment. and i still will maintain that sonicnet/atn's late-'90s news model was influential in a number of ways. now back to your regularly scheduled pitchfork thread.)

I’m gonna take you the matt- y es I will, fcc - and I’m gonna figure out who you are! and I’m not gonna handle with care-as the traveling wilburys might say!

(sorry for typos, I’ve had a few beerz, lol)

Treeship's mom has got it going on

*i* might be stacey blyth, you never know.

xp love that crazy gal

7.5 ref

Schreiber has quit? Shit, cat.

― Position Position

new board description. please. it's only right and natural.

my only interaction with ryan schreiber was on twitter, when i was like 20 or something and i suggested a game changer for his company would be to randomly give an album the score of 10.1 to dispense with the toxic idea that an album could be "perfect" or that "perfection" was even a noble goal. he responded with something like "..."

anyway, rest in hell, monster

― Trϵϵship

lmfao

ikr

The reality of my childhood was that I always connected with music more than [I connected with] people.

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