pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

inventory something where they clearly exhausted the premise for the feature many many many years ago. that homestar runner thing is kinda hilarious, that sort of feature can be worthwhile if you're treating whatever you're examining as a model organism and saying something larger about the medium or the time or ascribing some sort of historic import to it but, again, none of the above occurring here. like you could very easily come up w/ a thinkpiece on jennicam or whatever and then use jennicam as a means of examining the internet then, the internet now, the internet in general, hey maybe even something larger than the internet, but this avclub approach has generally been to not go beyond 'man, remember jennicam' and maybe you stretch that out but you certainly don't develop it. and now post-phipps they can't even be bothered to come up w/ an idea, however trivial or whatever, for a feature, they just have 'watch this' or 'listen to this', makes buzzfeed look like harpers.

i don't like the angle that the new Tim Hecker album was "recorded live". from that Spin article (and from listening to it) it sounds like it was labored over in the computer as much as anything else, even if it uses more identifiable instruments as a starting point.

the press material for it says something to that effect so (w/o having read the review of which you speak) I suspect someone has taken that as gospel. it struck me as perhaps a liberal use of the term as well

its pr bs yeah, hecker labored over live orchestral sessions w/ a computer

Though it's rarely noticed, the publicity one-sheets for his albums read like Andy Kaufman-esque pranks lobbed at lazy music writers: The promo material for 2004's Mirages reads, "Hecker solves the Rubik's cube and penetrates the liquid magma, revealing the truths of dirty sodium light pollution, love on the rocks, and toothhunting in the garden of evil."

its pr bs yeah, hecker labored over live orchestral sessions w/ a computer

― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Tuesday, October 15, 2013 11:36 AM (50 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sometimes fictional food is a pleasant pause in the action; sometimes it’s crucial platform for exposition. And sometimes it’s Uma Thurman’s $5 milkshake—a telling detail about a person. Sitting down to do what pretty much everybody does at least a couple times a day can advance the plot of a movie, show, novel, or serialized streaming dramedy—and occasionally the food itself takes center stage. Possibly because we’re kind of hungry at the moment, The A.V. Club has decided to spend time looking at some memorable foods in storytelling.

For the record:

http://no-trivia.tumblr.com/post/64660558089/wondering-what-happens-behind-the-scenes-at-p4k-i-knew

I also thought it was weird how album scores were delivered to HQ by Andrew Fastow in a wax sealed envelope with prominent Masonic square and compass. Just being real about my time at p'fork.

...BREAKING...

http://thedissolve.com/features/performance-review/231-reassessing-the-best-actress-of-2001/

scott p left?? remember fondly when he'd show up to defend p4k in ilm best of 20xx threads

I like that No Trivia piece a lot. One thing though - in my experience music publications don't micromanage reviews to remotely the same extent as P4K seems to. Q, for example, has given even its cover stars 3/5 reviews on occasion.

are people surprised that pitchfork manages scores on big albums? what year is it right now

also if you're reviewing a niche album that's in your wheelhouse -- i.e. basically every time i reviewed a rap mixtape -- no one questions your score

don't follow it closely anymore but scottpl must have a claim to having molded P4K's current ~aesthetic~, at least the more ILM-acceptable pts of it

that old skool P4K best of the 1990s someone posted in another thread, which ws presumably mostly ll cool schreibs, was laughable

Brandon is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

lol https://twitter.com/nickminichino/status/392700551265533952

I like the "I'm not as valuable as animal collective" realization. It must be torture to view every company expenditure as an insult.

hahahaha

headshot

The main damning thing in that post is his assertion that Pitchfork pays its writers a quarter of what equivalent sites pay. Anyone know if there's any truth to that?

no but my friend at tiny mixtapes showed me his brand new rolex submariner the other day

sounds pretty dope

have asked this on ilm before but whats the going rate for a record review?

xpost think he said sites with equivalent traffic

a review copy of the album in question or alternatively a link to a torrent that contains said record xp

haha tbh i have never really envied pitchfork writers much of anything except for the pitchfork ftp that supposedly exists

the pitchfork advance layout & interface is really weird

The main damning thing in that post is his assertion that Pitchfork pays its writers a quarter of what equivalent sites pay. Anyone know if there's any truth to that?

No, but it seems more damning on those other sites if true. WTF are they doing paying so much at this state in the game?

how is that damning

(I'm not going to get into this for obvious reasons, but the "quarter of what equivalent sites pay" bit can be debunked pretty quickly by going on Who Pays Writers or asking around.)

I assume he's talking about Grantland or Slate, where an individual writer's byline can be more of draw.

someone just spill it how much do they pay, what are you gonna get sued or something

http://whopays.tumblr.com/tagged/pitchfork

also, today (this is more "what people pay in general" but: http://scratchmag.net/free-preview-issue/web-editors-roundtable/ )

Yeah, "damning" was probably overstating it. It just seemed like the most legit grievance in the piece, moreso than "PItchfork editors get defensive when criticized!" or "They paid a performer their asking price for a festival concert!" or "They favor strong editorial control, and sometimes that trumps the opinions of individual writers, even when the writers are experts!"

Of course, now I know that 1/4 figure is a gross exaggeration, so basically nothing "damning" at all in the piece.

as a freelancer i always found the raw dollar amount to be a bit overrated anyway. pitchfork pays on time every month without fail and has a lot of work available if you're proactive. both of those things are as important + sometimes more important than the fee itself.

also the platform is important! as a music critic, pitchfork is pretty much the quickest way for people to become familiar with your writing. everyone grab your barf bag, but it's undeniably very good for your Personal Brand. you get twitter followers, you get more work etc etc. this is how it works now. so yes maybe you take a little less than you could get somewhere else because you want a specific piece to be seen. these are the things that you weigh as a freelancer. pitchfork isn't victimizing anyone.

also an important point -- talk to any writer and you will hear at least one and probably multiple horror stories of people who got very impressive commissions that they're still waiting (after years!) to be paid a cent for

NOOOOO NOT THE EXPOSURE ARGUMENT AGAIN

well pitchfork didn't make me sign a non-exposure agreement

'do this for low pay because it's good for your career' is a skeezy proposition, but of course PF never proposed that to anybody, they just pay what they pay and people take it or leave, so it's a moot point. i wrote for Pitchfork when there was NO pay but choosing to do something knowing the terms and then complaining about it later is pointless. nobody can determine your price but you.

Because apparently there is some confusion on this point, I went through all 28 pages, pulled out the outlets that could conceivably be running music reviews (these are straight from the site, I'm not including any personal anecdotes here).

The piece I linked: $150-250, generally, for online posts; if a piece deviates from this it's more likely to be on the lower end unless you are, like, Teju Cole.
Village Voice Media: $50-75 for a blog post. (One report from SF Weekly has as low as $35.)
The Atlantic: $125.
Complex: $200 for a listicle of 750 words.
The Awl: $50-ish.
Washington Post (Outlook section / opinion): $250. (Probably not music reviews, but I'm including this just as a benchmark of the amount of money vis-a-vis traffic we are talking.)
The New York Times (same): $150, plus $50 for blog posts. (Again, not music reviews, but this is as close to the upper tier of traffic as you can get.)

I could go on, but I think you get the idea. About the only way to even approach the 4x figure is outlets that pay at least 50 cents per word, which are fairly uncommon.

The pitchfork pay rates aren't bad.

"nobody can determine your price but you."

as much as it would be good if this were true, the economy means it is not.

well i mean this more in the freelancer sense of 'at the end of the day it's your decision to work for a rate that's offered or not.' in most other senses, no, doesn't work that way.

Thanks for the clarifications! You were right; asking around did lead to this being debunked pretty quickly.

to anyone directed here via twitter: hi, sorry I said anything, I will shut up now like a good person

hi brandon!

lawl