pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Fuuuuuck Ted Gioia.

As you were.

ted gioia can fuck off, and no, i haven’t read what he wrote.

Fuuuuuck Ted Gioia.

As you were.

Working out for Elon

lol well it helps to not start $44 billion in debt

Bob Lefsetz + Jeff Jarvis = Ted Gioia.

Racket MN does annual reports, probably the most detail, transparent financials and metrics you could find for any subscription based website

https://racketmn.com/rackets-year-in-review-august-2022-july-2023

Marc Hogan's piece here is key

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/pitchfork-music-gq-1234949447/

Also in there with Racket is Defector's

https://defector.com/defector-annual-report-year-three

people don't sleep on dusted

https://dustedmagazine.tumblr.com/

“In 2020, Condé Nast let go then-executive editor Matthew Schnipper, who was fresh off parental leave, and then-features editor Stacey Anderson, who —coincidentally — was unit chair of the Pitchfork Union. For the rest of that awful Covid year, I approached every piece I wrote for Pitchfork as if it could be my last. One irony amidst all of this is that I now finally have my first byline in Rolling Stone — another lifelong dream come true, albeit twisted by 21st-century capitalism.”

Had no idea Dusted was still active!

me neither, and I wrote for them (very briefly a very long time ago)

It's always seemed sociopathic to me to take something that clearly had a devoted audience and then basically gut it or kill it because you couldn't make it fit whatever bullshit financial parameter you had (the right demographic, whatever). At minimum, if it could stand on its own two feet before you bought it out, the least you can do is sell it or spin it off and give it the chance to do so again.

that's why folding it into gq feels particularly stupid, that seems like the best way to destroy whatever remaining value it has as a brand which is clearly the only part they care about

xp ...paging factcheckingcuz ;)

Helluva Hogan piece. This guy is one of the good ones, one of the sweetest in the biz.

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!"

Forever ass-y.

It was that Experimental Jet Set review which started the P4k curse

— Thurston Moore (@nowjazznow) January 18, 2024

Oh, Thurston, shut the fuck up

Hah, he deleted it either from backlash or a moment of clarity/embarrassment.

paging factcheckingcuz ;)

sigh. the more things change...

both the Hogan piece and the Snapes piece are terrific. essential reading, if you haven't.

anyone else get prompted to sign in/create an account while trying to read a review?

if almost all music writing and curation is going the way of algorithmic recommendations and small snippets between clickbait, then how do you figure out how to populate music festivals? is it all a matter of who figures out how to do media stunts and juice their play counts? labels paying for playlist inclusion and we’re stuck with a combination of recycling existing acts and whoever’s popular on the “indie showgaze beats to study to” spotify micro genre?

it’s always been a battle to get past gatekeepers or get your music to tastemakers who can book shows or promote your album, but the lack of curation and writing just depresses me

Casey Newton on algorithms vs. criticism:

On one level it’s impressive that Spotify can perfectly capture my musical taste in a series of data points, and regurgitate it to me in a series of weekly playlists. But as good as it has gotten, I can’t remember the last time it pointed me to something I never expected I would like, but ultimately fell totally in love with.

For that you needed someone who could go beyond the data to tell you the story: of the artist, of the genre, of the music they made. For that you needed criticism.

For that, in other words, you needed Pitchfork. And while it may have dimmed in its power over the years, it will always loom large in my mind — as a publication that met its moment with actual, discernible taste, and shared its tastes with the world, right up until the moment that the algorithms flattening our culture washed Pitchfork away, too.

sorry to everyone here impacted by this. i'm in the 20+ year reader club too and as naive as it is to think these things will always be around, it felt like pitchfork was always going to be around

I sent a note to our writers today about how we are going to keep publishing reviews on Pitchfork like we’ve been doing. Don’t expect everyone to believe that right away, but so far it’s true and I will try to hold up my end of the deal. Cruel times, I’m sorry, thanks for reading

— Jeremy D. Larson (@jeremydlarson) January 19, 2024

xp - while I’d like to hope it was the backlash or clarity that caused Thurston to delete that tweet, I’m afraid it was because he realized he’s referring to the wrong album (he was surely thinking of the notorious NYC Ghosts & Flowers pan)

was gonna say- pfork were just a daydream in young ryan's most impure thoughts in 95.

The fact that Thurston still remembers/ cares enuff for a catty tweet speaks volumes…

thought experiment: how much did pfork cement+perpetuate sonic youth's legacy?

(in other words: jfc show some respect, thurston. i know he deleted it, but what a pab.)

what was the tweet?

The fact that Thurston still remembers/ cares enuff for a catty tweet speaks volumes…

I mean, David Berman talked about the Lookout Mountain Pitchfork review contributed to his losing faith in Silver Jews being worth the effort, and Edith F. blogged about the It's A Game review basically being hurtful as well (ridiculing the person who made the music vs. critiquing it).

*contibuting

he was surely thinking of the notorious NYC Ghosts & Flowers pan

Did Pitchfork pan that album? Because as far as I remember, the most infamous review (in which the writer advised the band to break up) was in the Village Voice. But of course, it was by Amy Phillips, who eventually spent two decades at Pitchfork.

i think pitchfork gave nyc ghosts and flowers a rare zero point zero

Correct: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/7342-nyc-ghosts-flowers/

These 40+ year olds continue to operate under the perception that they matter.

New board description

lol

seems a little harsh!

I have always liked that album more than most

Travis Morrison: https://www.instagram.com/p/C2Q-32dtcSF/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

I'm sure everyone who was laid off is glad to be part of his journey

I’ve seen Thurston talk about that review before, that it was harsh but he could understand it as the kids telling the oldsters to fuck off.

i don't really blame musicians for still being bitter about particularly harsh/cruel reviews, especially wrt reviews that had rather negative effects on their careers

Yeah and as I've mentioned a couple times Edith F. said the pitchfork review was a contributing factor to her ceasing making music. It was at the time Pitchfork was still at peak influence and that type of review could be and I guess was career destroying. Not so much the fact that they were not into it but the cruelty of it.

To say that Pitchfork has improved greatly from that era would be a vast understatement

Especially cruel given that this was the time that Pfork was practically a hype machine for Arcade Fire, whose lead singer many in the industry knew even then to be a total fucking asshole.

But yes, they definitely did improve.

DiCrescenzo later reevaluated his opinion of the album and, in 2013, remarked on the higher esteem with which he now held it: "I now love the record. It's unlike anything else; eerie and beautiful. [...] No, the lesson here is: beware the opinions of a kid right out of college."

Apparently they're still doing reporting, as "Pitchork (sic) has reached out to Del Rey’s representatives for comment."

Arcade Fire, whose lead singer many in the industry knew even then to be a total fucking asshole.

there are many many bands with asshole singers but that isn't the same as being a serial creep/predator