pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

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!

for real

I do definitely understand this hurting from the point of view of this being one of the last outposts of the general type of journalism that used to be abundant even 20 years ago, and that for a music journalist in the 2020s Pitchfork probably provided the best opportunity to have any sort of career in that field, and that these layoffs are just another example of the entire industry crumbling before our eyes explicitly in the name of greed and no one can really do anything about it.

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

I feel the Gawker implosion was a sort of contemporaneous inflection point. In lots of ways, come to think of it, given the interference of Thiel and the rise of the pubic billionaire asshole.

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

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, January 18, 2024 12:55 PM (forty minutes ago)

this is correct but it's also goes back to the concept people need to internalize which is that there isn't an objective way to make decisions based on the data gleaned from 12 million clicks per month. by which i mean, this data only tells you so much -- it tells you how many people clicked your site, and their demographic info, and how they may have gotten to your site, though in reality these days the majority of web traffic is coming from "dark" sources i.e. group chats, DMs, discords etc that traffic companies can't actually locate. but none of this data tells you *why* people are clicking, or how they feel about your site, or whether they know it exists, or what their perception is of it based on their one visit and why or why they might not come back. so putting a value on a website does actually require gut feelings -- the ability to see the present and future of the business and how you may be able to make that work for you -- or simply the desire to protect a site because you find it intellectually/socially valuable. but all the people who are smart enough to make good gut decisions about websites or who care enough about journalism to protect it are no longer in positions of power either because they've been forced out of the industry or left to make more money doing other things. nick denton, for instance, was a dynamic thinker who cared deeply about the societal function of journalism & tried to create websites that could be as journalistically valuable as they were monetarily valuable -- none of that applies to roger lynch. these conversations make it consistently clear that people want to believe that you can simply look at a line graph of traffic and be like "well this website's business is healthy and that one's isn't" but it just is not that simple

great posts, J0rdan

More layoffs in wider media. Not much is making enough money for the people at the top.

Media news: A big round of layoffs is coming at the LA Times. A week after editor Kevin Merida quit, the newsroom union emailed members late last night saying management has notified them of a coming major round of layoffs.

Union email: "Folks, this is the Big One." pic.twitter.com/vWBROkE9on

— Will Sommer (@willsommer) January 18, 2024

Laura Snapes:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/jan/18/pitchforks-absorption-into-gq-is-a-travesty-for-music-media-and-musicians

RIP

― famous instagram dog (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, January 18, 2024 12:24 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Classic Shakey.

I don’t understand Conde’s decision, but the problems at Pitchfork didn’t start with Conde, they started when companies like Apple stopped giving Pitchfork fat checks for display ads.

— Tal Rosenberg (@talrosenberg) January 18, 2024

Advertising-supported media is a dead-end post-2008, for all but the hugest companies. It just is. And even for, like, the NYT, ad revenue has been eclipsed by subscriptions — it makes about 4x as much from digital subscriptions now as from ALL advertising (print and online).

the solution staring us all in the face: p4k crossword