The idea that it was mostly white guys was totally true

March 22, 2024 1:45 AM

I don’t think it has anything to do with the audience for this stuff. I don’t think it has anything to do with the buzziness or the culture surrounding the site itself. I think it is just these money people coming in and making bad decisions. If they’re going to lay off people in Boeing and cut safety protocols or whatever, they’ll do it to anyone. from The Oral History of Pitchfork [Slate]
posted by chavenet (9 comments total)

I think I preferred the verge piece on the history of pitchfork - I get a little lost with these oral histories because I don’t always pay attention to names.
posted by The River Ivel at 3:32 AM on March 22 [2 favorites]

That's a fun reminder to listen to the Amps on the way home!
posted by peachfiber at 6:21 AM on March 22 [2 favorites]

yo but what happened to tinymixtapes??
posted by AlbertCalavicci at 6:25 AM on March 22 [5 favorites]

I think the 'money people making bad decisions' is not untrue but also kind of too broad - the entire Verge history focuses on the actual (sort of) facts of music losing market size in the tiktok and streaming era - (as though music videos haven't been primary promotional material since the 1960s and the very biggest bands have always used a multi-pronged approach of movies/tv/tie ins to music fame. But whatever. Don't let facts get in the way of the story.

I think pitchfork 'grew beyond it's boundaries' --indie rock by definition isn't the biggest bands - if they cross over into that they become 'pop', since pop isn't really a description of the music played [for the most part] but rather how many people like it. Pitchfork wanted to turn indie rock bands into famous bands and got too big for it's own britches, and then became subject to the market pressures mentioned in the article that effect pop bands.

I do think the Renzor bit is 'old man yells at cloud' and the bit about marketing back in the 1990s - all that stuff Bethany Cosentino discussed used to be in marketing contracts bands would sign and would only pay if they became big, but if they didn't they were anchors. Yeah it sucks you have to do it yourself now, but at least you get to own your own music. Maybe Steve Albini was wrong in a way - you can always write another song but do you always get a team of people pushing your music?

Anyways...I liked pitchfork ok back in the day just because I believe music has communal aspects to it - so I totally get 'Swiftdom' for example, and seeking out places to read about your favorite band is comforting when you think you might be the only one that likes them. My personal easter egg was always a band called Smart Brown Handbag, which I'm not sure Pitchfork ever even reviewed. But they did plenty of other bands I liked ok. So I will miss them, even though I only vaguely remember they sold to GQ, and definitely haven't read them in a while.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:45 AM on March 22 [3 favorites]

The most recent Search Engine podcast, "How do we survive the media apocalypse?" discusses the Pitchfork layoff with Ezra Klein, but places it in a wider context of VC money floods, interest rate policies and the internet disrupting several newspaper local advertising monopolies.

I never really cared about Pitchfork but it's interesting to see their perspective in the epilogue. The justification I'd always heard for reviewers was information overload: there wasn't enough time to read every book, or watch every film. So a reviewer steers you away from the biggest wastes of time. Yet the oral history suggests the main downfall was cheap music, in the form of Napster then Spotify, which should in theory make reviews and filtering more important. I suppose the way to harmonize these is that Napster made music cheap and reviewers important, and the Spotify made recommendations and reviews cheap and reviewers unimportant.

And in a world where music is a tool to drown out the Zoom call in the cube next to you while banging out YAML, or filling time on the commute to and from the office, Spotify playlists are 'good enough.'
posted by pwnguin at 9:54 AM on March 22 [2 favorites]

This and the Verge are both good reads. I have no idea what to make of the music industry anymore. I’m old and started a new band last year (weird electronic interpretations of old ballads) and we’re performing a lot and have released two CD’s. But we have zero idea how anything works anymore other than things take off on TikTok. And as mentioned, I’m old, and don’t have TikTok. What do record labels even do anymore? Other than physical distribution what’s left that hasn’t been taken over by CDBaby et al. No one I talk to knows what’s going on anymore either. No one makes any money. Everyone writes lots of emails and networks but what even is music anymore. The loss of independent music reviews is huge even if they could be extremely annoying.

And like Reznor, I’m just yelling at clouds.
posted by misterpatrick at 10:34 AM on March 22 [2 favorites]

Yet the oral history suggests the main downfall was cheap music, in the form of Napster then Spotify, which should in theory make reviews and filtering more important. I suppose the way to harmonize these is that Napster made music cheap and reviewers important, and the Spotify made recommendations and reviews cheap and reviewers unimportant.

The thing about music is - it’s not a two hour movie. If you have instantaneous access to millions of songs you can just put something on and see if you like it. The recommendation function of critics has grown less important all around, but it’s especially diminished for music. Music critics worth reading are either good writers or deeply tuned-in curators of a specific niche.
posted by atoxyl at 11:35 AM on March 22 [2 favorites]

And in a world where music is a tool to drown out the Zoom call in the cube next to you while banging out YAML, or filling time on the commute to and from the office, Spotify playlists are 'good enough.'

They're not though. They are merely what I settle for now because it feels like that is all there is.

I find myself trapped in the algorithmic flatness of just being played things I have previously liked with a light sprinkling of whatever completely irrelevant-to-me stuff has been payola'ed into my stream.

I don't miss music reviewers because I never really read them but man oh man do I miss FM radio DJ's, good college radio and CMJ monthly discs. I crave some good curation that aligns with my tastes and I can't find it now.
posted by srboisvert at 2:53 PM on March 22 [8 favorites]

hehe...I got caught parroting their reviews at parties, my roommate called them a bit fascy in the mid aughts, this guy doesn't exist anymore, nor does his paper. But we were starving for it at the time. You have to understand, I was there.

Also, I learned about a bunch of cool music from them, what of it?
posted by es_de_bah at 6:19 PM on March 22 [2 favorites]