pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Alphonse Pierre's The Ones column is amazing, no one is documenting new (mostly non backpacker) hip hop better

A lot of how I feel has already been said: devastated for the hardworking, talented writers and journalists who were affected.

On a personal note (and I know this will sound silly to some of you), Pitchfork has been for me what MTV was for the generation before mine. I started getting into music around the time Pitchfork became relevant, and as a Chicago kid, it was exciting to see this local shop become a nationally recognized brand that could move the needle in music. It would be hard to overstate how many artists I discovered from their reviews and lists; I have checked the site nearly every day for 20+ years. In the mp3 era, I would collect their Top 100 tracks of the year list into zip files that were widely shared in the comments of many other sites. I attended the first Intonation fest, the first official Pitchfork fest (and many since), and the winter fest they put on at the Art Institute. Ugh.

Of P4k's top 50 albums of 2023, only 11 were released by labels that are subsidiaries of the three majors (Sony, Warner, Universal).

1. Top Dawg Entertainment/RCA
2. Perpetual Novice
3. Backwoodz Studioz
4. Dead Oceans
5. Scenic Route
6. Asthmatic Kitty
7. Interscope
8. Mute
9. Secretly Canadian
10. Ninja Tune
11. Interscope
12. Mexican Summer
13. Self-released
14. Geffen
15. XL
16. Interscope
17. Warp
18. Dog Show/Atlantic
19. September
20. Fire Talk
21. Ghostly International
22. Interscope
23. Dead Oceans
24. Ninja Tune
25. Verve
26. Awe
27. Matador
28. International Anthem
29. FXHE
30. Another Dove
31. Warp
32. 10K Projects/Capitol
33. True Panther
34. Fat Possum
35. Navy Wavy LLC
36. Hessle Audio
37. Jagjaguwar
38. Matador
39. In Real Life
40. Milan
41. Open Shift Distribution/Gamma
42. Fat Possum
43. Geffen
44. Mexican Summer
45. 20 Buck Spin
46. Tonal Union
47. Poclanos/Topshelf
48. Peak Oil
49. Feel It
50. Epic

Was expecting this take:

Pitchfork Media might be the best example of a once-decent publication being ruthlessly hollowed out by woke shit. They went from breaking legitimately great bands like Animal Collective and MGMT 15 years ago to producing nothing but an endless stream of vapid thinkpieces about…

— Lo-fi Republican (@LoFiRepublican) January 17, 2024

"the bands they used to cover were important because I was the age where I was into bands" is a pretty common refrain among people who want time to stand still

As someone pointed out, Pitchfork gave Oracular Spectular a 6.8. And it looks like Congratulations got the exact same score. So kind of a weird band to choose as one that Pitchfork supposedly broke.

oh no not lo-fi republican

jaymc, add one more, since the navy wavy album was released in partnership with warner records

isn't it a perceived truth (even with all the perils implied with that) that pitchfork actually liked mgmt less than all other major music publications

haha xps got there

I distinctly remember MGMT as being a band that I didn't realize were very popular because at the time I had stopped listening to the radio and Music television and was only really checking out music via Pitchfork and music blogs.

in the UK MGMT's mainstream moment in late 08/early 2009 which was how I first knew of them. Radio 1 faves, all over the music channels, even had them on a Brit Awards compilation.

mgmt signified the big post-o.c. indie radio explosion here, see also: "young folks." pfork was very suspicious of the whole thing iirc

As someone pointed out, Pitchfork gave Oracular Spectular a 6.8. And it looks like Congratulations got the exact same score. So kind of a weird band to choose as one that Pitchfork supposedly broke.

Don't think I've seen anyone mention itt, perhaps it's too obvious, but aside from everything else making pfork a section in a men's style magazine is kind of a fuck you to female readers, no?

everyone in here talking about pitchfork's traffic is clinging onto an outmoded idea of advertising money being directly related to clicks. advertisers are paying for ads based on the perceived "value" of brands -- i.e. a site w/ smaller traffic but a higher percentage of a desired demographic may be more valuable than a site w/ more traffic. this is what the entire thing about "millennial males" goes back to... conde always intended for pitchfork to be a play for niche advertising

all of which is to say that the entire discussion about traffic numbers is looking to find objective reasoning for a decision that is entirely subjective. what is the value of the brand of pitchfork? there is no calculation that is actually going to give you that answer

otm

RIP

It's so wild to see ostensibly smart music writers who, apparently, fundamentally do not get the role Pitchfork played and the range of its coverage. I might lose my mind if I see one more critic post something along the lines of, "music criticism isn't dead, who needs Pitchfork when there's (goes on to list tiny micro-niche sites with extremely narrow focuses*)".

* - nothing wrong with micro-niche sites that cover their lane well, but it's idiotic to suggest any of those are a patch on what Pitchfork provided

j0rd otm. some union-busting seems to be involved as well

everyone in here talking about pitchfork's traffic is clinging onto an outmoded idea of advertising money being directly related to clicks. advertisers are paying for ads based on the perceived "value" of brands -- i.e. a site w/ smaller traffic but a higher percentage of a desired demographic may be more valuable than a site w/ more traffic. this is what the entire thing about "millennial males" goes back to... conde always intended for pitchfork to be a play for niche advertising

all of which is to say that the entire discussion about traffic numbers is looking to find objective reasoning for a decision that is entirely subjective. what is the value of the brand of pitchfork? there is no calculation that is actually going to give you that answer

it's spanfellers all the way down (by which i mean up)

I guess I don’t understand the overarching take here — we’re in a thread whose premise is all of the reasons Pitchfork is dumb, I’ve literally been reading all of the individual reasons why music fans “don't read” or “don’t take seriously” Pitchfork across wide reaches of internet message boards for 20+ years now, but make any changes to it and you think that the collective arm of critical music universe had just been amputated.

fuck off, asshat

having something people care enough about to complain about is a huge thing though

pitchfork has changed numerous times over 20 years..?

If you weren't able to complain about something that played a meaningful part in your life, professional sports would cease to exist in a heartbeat. Complaining does not mean you think a thing should not exist, you just want it to be better.

anyway...

conde is saying two things at once

1. this brand is not valuable enough to us for it to have a staff
2. this brand is too valuable to us for us to sell it

the conversations about whether pitchfork went too poptimist are missing the forest for the trees. if conde had an issue w/ pitchfork's editorial direction they could have fired the editor and changed the direction, this happens all the time. if pitchfork had been run completely into the ground they would have just sold it and recouped whatever money they could. instead what they're essentially saying is that the value of the work of the site -- the writing -- is reaching its endpoint and they no longer have any reason to pay people to produce it. this is a much larger commentary on the state of music writing & its value to corporations, that transcends any decisions made within pitchfork about its editorial direction

i think the thread title manifests itself in posts at this point as nitpicking, or occasionally a bad review, vs the old pitchfork which really was contemptuous of quite a lot of music which didn't fit a certain narrow worldview, and had a lot of reviews which revealed a bit of misogyny and racism and homophobia. PF has been a LOT better for years now. the writer turnover helped a lot, the ones who stuck around either were excellent in the first place or simply evolved into better reviewers.

I have some friends who freelance for other Conde Naste magazines and this is unsurprising given what I've been hearing from them (lots of layoffs, don't write anything 'philosophical' or 'academic' sounding, they want poppy topics that pop).

I got out of the habit of checking Pfork years ago, but whenever I did check back in I was happy to see that they were still reviewing fairly underground albums on the regular (even the reviews were down the page, and even if they're the kind of underground albums that hired a PR firm, etc).

JOrdan S. otm, great posts

Those bad takes (about "woke" or pop coverage or anything content-based) are just variations on what people who have no idea how media economics work have been saying for years about the declining fortunes of legacy print media in general — big announcement of newspaper layoffs followed by online dummkopfs saying "It's cuz they went so liberal!"

No, it's FIRST about advertising revenue and the way the internet broke it, and SECOND about the atomized media environment overall. The problems are structural, not content-based. But that's not exciting for non-media people to opine about.

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.

maybe not "wild" as much as "sad"

The second decimation of music journalism as gainful employment after alt-weeklies had to stop publishing escort ads that paid the bills.

That is actually true. Classifieds killed alt-weeklies.

as in, the elimination of classifieds

conde is saying two things at once

1. this brand is not valuable enough to us for it to have a staff
2. this brand is too valuable to us for us to sell it

the conversations about whether pitchfork went too poptimist are missing the forest for the trees. if conde had an issue w/ pitchfork's editorial direction they could have fired the editor and changed the direction, this happens all the time. if pitchfork had been run completely into the ground they would have just sold it and recouped whatever money they could. instead what they're essentially saying is that the value of the work of the site -- the writing -- is reaching its endpoint and they no longer have any reason to pay people to produce it. this is a much larger commentary on the state of music writing & its value to corporations, that transcends any decisions made within pitchfork about its editorial direction

― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Thursday, January 18, 2024 12:40 PM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

My guess is they see pitchfork as having strong brand equity through its reputation but don't seem to believe that it currently functions in a way that produces the best ROI, which is something they would judge by measuring the operating costs versus the engagement with their weekly content.

one of the signs of the death of alt-weeklies: LA Weekly running car accident fatality news stories as advertisements for local ambulance chasing attorney "Sweet James".

you'd also probably not be surprised how many executive vice presidents of digital content or whatever the fuck fake titles are idiots and know nothing about content or editorial or anything about websites and are just making bullshit gut decisions based on nothing but their own inflated sense of their own brilliance

That's how public universities are run these days.

AV Club's current "uselessness" is the direct result of corporate decisions like the one made yesterday, btw. (Fucking Spanfeller... although he's obviously just a symptom of a larger problem.)

Yeah I was gonna say, AV Club is just farther along the corporate destruction path than Pitchfork.

Yeah, what G/O Media did to the former Gawker Media properties was a glimpse of that kind of executive incompetence. I'd like to think that Conde Nast has a better idea of how to manage a portfolio of websites, but...

yeah AV Club at present is a direct result of all that obv, it even has some AI "articles"

I guess I don’t understand the overarching take here — we’re in a thread whose premise is all of the reasons Pitchfork is dumb, I’ve literally been reading all of the individual reasons why music fans “don't read” or “don’t take seriously” Pitchfork across wide reaches of internet message boards for 20+ years now, but make any changes to it and you think that the collective arm of critical music universe had just been amputated.
― Slim is an Alien, Thursday, January 18, 2024 12:36 PM (twenty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Does the aphorism “a rising tide lifts all boats” have an opposite? Maybe “a storm at sea sinks ‘em all?” I’d bet half of this board have at one time or another been music writers, musicians, label owners, DJs, booking agents, what have you. However one feels about Pitchfork, it served a vital role in keeping the engine running, even if it was occasionally the site we all loved to hate. This move will have disastrous consequences beyond Pitchfork.

instead what they're essentially saying is that the value of the work of the site -- the writing -- is reaching its endpoint and they no longer have any reason to pay people to produce it. this is a much larger commentary on the state of music writing & its value to corporations, that transcends any decisions made within pitchfork about its editorial direction
― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Thursday, January 18, 2024 12:40 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

in other words, exactly this

not mentioned here yet, as far as i can tell, is that condé nast is currently being run by a ceo with absolutely no experience or demonstrated interest in the publishing business. he does, however, play guitar in a classic rock cover band, so yay.

of course he does

instead what they're essentially saying is that the value of the work of the site -- the writing -- is reaching its endpoint and they no longer have any reason to pay people to produce it. this is a much larger commentary on the state of music writing & its value to corporations, that transcends any decisions made within pitchfork about its editorial direction

Just bolding for emphasis here, because this is where so much public misunderstanding about media comes from. They hear about cuts and layoffs and profit struggles and assume that it means there's just no audience interest or the quality of the content has declined or whatever. But none of that is necessarily true. For big media companies, especially publicly traded ones but even private ones like CN (which is possibly trying to make itself more attractive for acquisition), value is almost always related to growth potential. We made this much this year, how do we make this + 10 percent next year?

The idea of a sustainable product with niche appeal that can basically pay its expenses and salaries while producing something good for a dedicated audience is just not interesting. But that doesn't mean it can't work for people who are not trying to build an empire or start something with the goal of selling it and cashing out in 5-10 years. It just takes a different model.

off topic nice to see you maura and shakey!