pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Wasn't there a plan back in '19 to put Pitchfork behind a subscription paywall? I thought I read that at least. I'm surprised they didn't try that route first to see if it could work before setting fire to everything.

it's wild bc Pitchfork felt like one of the few sites which was in a process of continuous improvement in most respects, vs something like idk AV Club, which is absolutely meritless now.

― omar little, Thursday, 18 January 2024 17:45 (twenty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i disagree about this 'continuous improvement' but it would require quite a lot of sensitive explication to defend this (it does NOT boil down to chuntering about poptimism and the wokes) and idk if i can be bothered, but let's give it a little go, bearing in mind loads of you write/wrote for it and are genuinely sad at this turn of events (which to me feels like inevitability in action, albeit yes, sad)

right so, yes, pitchfork did (does?) review a broad swathe of music (mostly if you happen to be American, and largely omitting quite a lot of admittedly quite obscure genres and artists I personally happen to really enjoy), and I have no problem with this range or the writers who often wrote lovely reviews and articles on the website - it hosted (hosts?) loads of good music writing, albeit writing where certain entertainingly (or horrifyingly, Brent) rough edges have been sanded away over the years. still massively in credit on that front obv.

but my problems with what pitchfork have become revolve largely around its editorial process, the BNM machine, the endless optimisation culture endemic to all corners of a generally worsening internet. it is no longer acceptable to give a Mansun album 9.3 on a whim, or a Fiery Furnaces album 9.6, or do a ridiculously misguided pan of Frances The Mute (you're not forgiven!) - everything has been carefully controlled to fit an acceptable editorial brand, to the extent where scores, BNMs and even EOY lists can be extremely accurately predicted. and the BNM thing has created another interesting phenomenon: when one of pitchfork's writers wants to review something obscure and musically off-brand, and really likes it - if the editors can't be convinced it's worthy of greater hype, it gets flung into the 7.8-8.3 pocket of No BNM For You. i've seen SO MANY albums i absolutely adore get this treatment, and i've heard numerous musicians i like roll metaphorical eyes at it all. throw in the fact that most other major music writing sites have fallen by the wayside and you're faced with a monolith which on one level features a broad and well-written catalogue of content, and on the other level controls with a tiresome sense of the fashionable what it really foregrounds, armed with a decimal-point scale that has given false credence to a process that was at least once upon a time not pretending to be objective. and so you have these great writers toiling away within a giant sorting mechanism. well guess what. eventually it was always going to sort its employees too. that's optimisation baby

so you're mad the site had editors?

how are the politics of BNM any different than Rolling Stone or whatever in the pre-internet days giving this or that album front page treatment? You can argue that this practice marginalizes a lot of fine music, sure, and if you also wanna argue that we should eliminate it, that's cool with me too; but none of this happens exclusively at Pitchfork.

well this particular editing style has obviously been accentuated by an ownership that is now wreaking havoc on its employees, everything's connected, as has been stated

i suppose the most interesting aspect of BNM culture has been when a writer is faced with the challenge of selling an 8.0 that they personally think is a 9.8 without the words clashing too much with the score

'this fucking album is amazing, transportative and true. but um, it's an acquired taste!'

point taken re music crit history though, some things aren't better now obvs, there has always been fashionable editorialising. it's just now there's so much music

That's not how it works. Usually the editor and writer agree with a narrow range on the score. xpost

*aren't worse now xp

That's not how it works. Usually the editor and writer agree with a narrow range on the score. xpost

― poppers fueled buttsex crescendo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 19 January 2024 13:22 (nineteen seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

Really? Hmm. But how much of that is the writer anticipating what it Should Be Given, lol

I don't lose much sleep over it.

Ive often read reviews on PF where the reviewer is clearly more enthusiastic than the 7.8 or 8 rating thats been given but its not an artist that may fit the hype parameters

"BNM culture" lmao

i'm sad that so many great writers have lost their jobs to pitchfork, and it seems like it was a great training ground for a lot of young writers.

but really agree with the BNM talk and the stupid point system for reviews. Reviews have never been my thing to learn about music, at least not since high school. would much rather read a profile on an artists and then listen to the music on streaming and then buy if i like. this is my own problem for sure--I think record reviews as presented in Pitchfork are largely outdated. That's just my opinion. If you want to know what music sounds like, you have ample ways to listen and then buy if you like it. I'm not blaming anyone who digs reviews. It's like if I didn't like poetry, I wouldn't say poetry sucked, I would just say it's not for me. The fact that Pitchfork can be so bitchy and catty though as evidenced in this thread is a huge problem. And yes I get it they have corrected and moved forward but you can't change what you were.

i totally agree with the tweet yesterday about spotify being a huge problem. this isn't really a pitchfork problem, it's a no one buys music anymore problem. so labels have less money to spend on ads, so Apple and Haagen Dazs buy ads instead on Pitchfork etc.

Would be great to start to see some more blogs popping up talking about music, I miss those days. That's part of the problem too. Pitchfork was the loudest voice in the room for this stuff, and acted like asses toward SY while championing shit like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

how are the politics of BNM any different than Rolling Stone or whatever in the pre-internet days giving this or that album front page treatment? You can argue that this practice marginalizes a lot of fine music, sure, and if you also wanna argue that we should eliminate it, that's cool with me too; but none of this happens exclusively at Pitchfork.

it's not, and it's also a problem at Rolling Stone too

there's totally a BNM culture, and if you don't realize that you might want to pull your head out of the sand

I mentioned upthread that the site has maintained a distinct editorial perspective over time. That doesn't happen without editors having conversations about which artists the site wants to get behind, how to communicate that with scores and BNM designations and year-end list placements, etc. But as far as I understand, all of that is worked out among people who love music and want to share what they're passionate about and simply need to be able to present a unified vision bc Pitchfork isn't a network of individual blogs. I doubt that Anna Wintour is sending dictates from on high to ensure that Sufjan gets BNM. I guess maybe you could say that bc Pitchfork is beholden to advertisers, it is forced to maintain an appeal with certain demographic groups (millennial males lol) and that subtly influences its editorial decisions. But I don't think the site would be improved if it were a free-for-all where writers were all just rating stuff independently.

imago and waterface otm

Condolences tho those who’ve lost their jobs

I hope the Sunday Review continues and they continue to hire the excellent writers that they’ve been hiring to write them

Pitchfork, more than any other critical institution, maintained a Draconian reign of terror over the music industry— it did not operate symbiotically with recording artists in any way, it served itself and its own power accumulation. If it is gone, then it is a good thing for recording artists.

Most recording artists these past few days have been feeling like they’ve been waking up from a decades long illness, like Margaret Thatcher just died.

Me, I’m mixed-sad about it. I’m angry that Pitchfork didn’t do any of its “accountability reporting” on Daniel Ek, just let him gut the industry the way he did; but, as I said, Pitchfork never actually gave a shit about recording artists

otm its the one thing non reg p4k readers KNOW about

xposts

"Reviews have never been my thing to learn about music, at least not since high school. would much rather read a profile on an artists and then listen to the music on streaming and then buy if i like."

Sure. Listening to the music is the best way to check something out, but how are you narrowing down what you'll listen to? Typically friends, websites, etc. (gatekeepers). Are you sifting through everything that exists to find 2 records you like. I know I don't have time for that. Who does?

I guess the thing I find/found most valuable about Pitchfork, moreso than the reviews themselves, is what they chose to review. Def helped me find great things, even if typically I'd just look briefly at the review to get a feel for whether I might be interested in the record. When 8 million records come out every minute (or something), a tusted gatekeeper is worse their crust. Without their gatekeeping, not sure I would've found great music by Nourished by Time, Lia Kohl, Bkthertula, Lingua Ignota, etc. so easily (or all in the same place).

The 10-point scale goes alongside Robert Parker creating a 100-point scale for wine and Siskel and Ebert’s two thumbs.

Pitchfork, more than any other critical institution, maintained a Draconian reign of terror over the music industry— it did not operate symbiotically with recording artists in any way, it served itself and its own power accumulation. If it is gone, then it is a good thing for recording artists.

I'm curious what you think the ideal symbiotic relationship b/w artists + a music site should be (obv you don't have to answer).

Pitchfork was the loudest voice in the room for this stuff, and acted like asses toward SY while championing shit like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

This conflates two eras of the site. The SY review was in 2000, when there were a lot of stunt reviews and extreme ratings and a general adolescent spirit. (The infamous Kid A review was the same year.) That had mostly been toned down by 2005, when they reviewed CHYSY's debut. The site had proven instrumental in breaking Broken Social Scene and Arcade Fire in 2003-04 and I think Ryan was taking their role more seriously. Marc Hogan mentioned that Pitchfork became "comparatively professionalized" in 2004 when Chris Kaskie came on board as the advertising director. So I'd say that's a good dividing line between the site's first and second eras.

The writing in early Rolling Stone was better than the writing in early Pitchfork, but I wonder if the critical perspectives hold up on any better. RS conducted its own "reign of terror," just ask Led Zeppelin.

Hendrix at first too iirc

From a critic's standpoint I can absolutely imagine being highly enthusiastic about an album that I would give a middling score to, or the reverse - and this is not about some artificial distinction between subjective/personal and objective, more an acknowledgement that any individual's feelings towards a piece of art can and should be complex. Always best to just get rid of ratings altogether tho.

to the extent where scores, BNMs and even EOY lists can be extremely accurately predicted.

fwiw I just checked the top50 for 2002 and there's at most 2 albums in the top10 that either you or I wouldn't have guessed would be on there. end year lists have always flattened the eccentricities of individual critic's tastes.

I'm curious what you think the ideal symbiotic relationship b/w artists + a music site should be (obv you don't have to answer).

I was chatting w bf last night about it, and he said this: “an ideal critical body is one that seeks to put the work into the hands of those who would best appreciate it.”

What imago posted is something I argued over email to Amy Phillips in… 2007 or 2008. The decimal system was rotten and was going to cause harm. It would favour “good music” over “interesting music”. It would create an aura of authoritative evaluation that did not accurately reflect a constructive artist-listener relationship.

Consider this: do we evaluate films or books in the same way that Pitchfork has taught us/inured us to evaluate albums? Do you ever hear anyone talking about the new Scorcese as being an 8.1 or whatever?

also they gave Murray Street 9, Sonic Nurse 8.5 BNM, Daydream reissue 10, plus a lot of other positive reviews it's not like they were negative about Sonic Youth

i knew Fire-Toolz would have or amplify some good opinions about this, to wit:

https://i.ibb.co/F0KdhPB/Screen-Shot-2024-01-19-at-14-21-07.png
https://i.ibb.co/sygqbN9/Screen-Shot-2024-01-19-at-14-21-23.png

“an ideal critical body is one that seeks to put the work into the hands of those who would best appreciate it.”

That's lovely and it's a precept I try to live by.

Consider this: do we evaluate films or books in the same way that Pitchfork has taught us/inured us to evaluate albums? Do you ever hear anyone talking about the new Scorcese as being an 8.1 or whatever?

Well, in the Siskel & Ebert days, sure! Two thumbs up, etc. Maybe I'm programmed differently, but going back to when I started reading rock journalism in the early '90s I've never given a shit about the stars, thumbs, or decimal points. I notice them but it's the review itself -- the prose, the strength of the argument -- that made me think about the object under review. *shrugs*

Consider this: do we evaluate films or books in the same way that Pitchfork has taught us/inured us to evaluate albums? Do you ever hear anyone talking about the new Scorcese as being an 8.1 or whatever?

Absolutely? Movie geeks tend to go for the 1-5 scale tho.

And Rotten Tomatoes is still massively influential.
https://www.vulture.com/article/rotten-tomatoes-movie-rating.html

Yes, but you are a golden man, Alfo

There is no decimal system with movies but there is a five star system on book and film reviewing places. I don't see how that is a massive difference here.

0-5 stars is different than a 0.0-10.0 decimal ranking; and ecumenical audience ratings read entirely differently than Pitchfork numbers— even when lone critics attempt at rating the entire canon (Maltin, Christgau), the rating system takes on a different tone and vibe and meaning. Pitchfork always felt like a panopticon

the travistan 0.0 was 2004, the peak of their power to make or break artists at will, and i always understood it as a power gesture, "we made you, we can also make you go away". i had more than one friend during that era who had careers stop on a dime bc of an ott negative pfork review. obviously that was 20 years ago now and the site evolved in many positive ways since then but i think its important not to brush all of that stuff under the rug of "ryan was just a kid back then"

Not to mention letterboxd!

Maybe I'm programmed differently, but going back to when I started reading rock journalism in the early '90s I've never given a shit about the stars, thumbs, or decimal points. I notice them but it's the review itself -- the prose, the strength of the argument -- that made me think about the object under review.

It's the tension between viewing criticism as a way to expand your thinking on a piece of art vs viewing criticism as an *ahem* consumer guide. Most ppl who care deeply about criticism view it as the former, but I'd guess most readers of any site (music, movies, whatever) tend to think of it as the latter, which is where the rot sets in (though I frankly think this was entirely established in media commodification long before Pitchfork ever came to be). And of course I'm a hypocrite because having said all this I will still sometimes check critics I trust's ratings when I'm just looking for a quick guide as to whether something's worth my time.

Best thing again would be not to have ratings at all but good look to any site trying to wrest some place in the discourse with that approach, today or at any point since I started following music!

Many xposts.

Imago bringing in the goods in '24:

it is no longer acceptable to give a Mansun album 9.3 on a whim

xp: ok, not to me. Never thought that decimals made the rating of culture worse.

xp to fgti

0-5 stars does also usually include decimal points tho.

There is no decimal system with movies but there is a five star system on book and film reviewing places.

It is true though that while current books are rated, old timey literary criticism hardly ever indulged in that. Wonder when it became default?

I was chatting w bf last night about it, and he said this: “an ideal critical body is one that seeks to put the work into the hands of those who would best appreciate it.”

fgti's bf otm x10000000000

I don't agree with that either. It says to me you need a level of musical training to appreciate music, that there is a certain skillset and a lot of my favourite writing about music, film, books have come from places with a bigger range than that.

I was chatting w bf last night about it, and he said this: “an ideal critical body is one that seeks to put the work into the hands of those who would best appreciate it.”

So no negative reviews whatsoever?

Yeah I’ve always vociferously argued against the “music training makes for better music writing” red herring

I didn’t know I’d be typing this morning about how a decimal system has a different effect on the tone of a review (and a system of reviewing) than a letter grade, or an integer system, or a “two thumbs up” system, but I’m happy to, just let me make a coffee and get off my phone

It is true though that while current books are rated, old timey literary criticism hardly ever indulged in that. Wonder when it became default?

― Daniel_Rf, Friday, 19 January 2024 bookmarkflaglink

Books works slightly differently as it's a lot older than recorded music or film. But you have a historical canon which certain critics will observe.

More recently you have things like Goodreads and Amazon ratings, which come with it's own issues.

xp

Well yes you have a canon but that is part of what I'm talking about - while it's pretty common to do a retrospective for, say, Bob Dylan or Scorsese and include numbered ratings for all of their work, you're unlikely to find an article on Jane Austen or James Joyce doing this - even when the critic is saying that certain books are superior and others lesser. The implication to some extent being I think that once you're in the Canon all your stuff is to be read, almost regardless of quality.

the travistan 0.0 was 2004, the peak of their power to make or break artists at will, and i always understood it as a power gesture, "we made you, we can also make you go away".

I actually found a 2004 NY Observer article about Pitchfork (bc I was fact-checking my claim that Chris Kaskie was hired as "advertising director"), and there was a whole thing about that:

When asked about his magazine’s ability to make or break a record, Mr. Schreiber (officially Pitchfork’s editor in chief and publisher) is a bit tongue-tied. “It’s unbelievably cool to have any kind of influence,” he says. “But I’m totally taken aback by it, and I’m torn by it. You want to be careful, because you know that if you have a really positive response, you are going to do this great thing for bands. And it’s the greatest thing in the world to see that band going around playing for 50 people and the next night, because of a good review, it’s sold out.” Mr. Schreiber paused. “But you have to keep it honest,” he continued. “And that’s why we have any impact, because people know that they’re going to get a straight answer from us. We would never trash a band that’s putting out its first record, just to kill it. Though, with something like the Travis Morrison record, I know that I would give it the same ranking no matter what.”

A 0.0? This reporter thinks that rating is grossly unfair (and, for the record, is a big fan of Travistan). Mr. Schreiber feels otherwise. “I think that a record can be so unlistenable and so terrible that it deserves that rating,” he said. “It’s totally subjective. So is it devoid of worth to me personally? Yes.”

I grew up on the Rolling Stone five-star system, Christgau's letter grades and Siskel and Ebert. But also reading Kael, e.g., so I was well aware you could do criticism without assigning a rating. I don't really have strong opinions about ratings vs. non-ratings, but if you're going to have them I thought Pitchfork's 100-point scale was a better way to do it than the flattening effect of turning things into three-star, three-and-a-half-star, four-star categories. Is there a real difference between a 7.7 and a 7.9? Sure!

Just starting to think of it, but there’s a difference between an individual critic giving a rating and a publication giving a rating (Pitchfork, heyday Rolling Stone). With Pitchfork, it never felt like “well, that’s a [critic’s name] 7.8.” Whereas Spin (I’m flashing back to scanning their numeric ratings) felt like individual opinions.