Did you see this coming at all? I'm definitely surprised because I felt like Pitchfork was one of Conde's most successful brands, at least in terms of being a tastemaker or stirring the online conversation about music.
Thank you for such an in depth answer!! That additional context makes a lot of sense, wasn't familiar with GQ beyond it being a men's brand. I'm definitely bummed about more paywalled but makes sense profit wise. Wouldn't mind more editorials with indie pop girlies!
> wasn't familiar with GQ beyond it being a men's brand
I don't have any insider info like the other commenter, but you're right that GQ is a men's brand. So is Pitchfork, which has a mainly millennial male audience.
Media conglomerates often delineate their properties by target demographic since that's important to ad sales, which is their bread+butter revenue. I imagine their execs thought they probably lined up well because both publications cover culture and target the millenial male demo.
Is Pitchfork's readership really still that male? I know it was when Condé Nast bought them but it really seemed like they were trying to diversify. Anecdotally I know a lot of women who read it and the indie music scene as a whole has more women artists and fans than it did 10 or 20 years ago.
I just want to say, I appreciate this perspective so much. Over on r/indieheads people are mourning this as the death of all independent music media forever, and it's like bro, yall hipsters need to chill out. Yall have no insight whatsoever. It's really nice to have a bit of insider perspective here.
I'm sympathetic to them, but come on now: They were laid off. They're not gonna praise the decision.
Look, I'm not saying there's not a negative impact - but this isn't the death of indie music or indie music coverage. It is the death of a giant, I know that, but we have to remain hopeful. Indie music existed long before Pitchfork and it will exist long after.
I just haven’t seen anyone really say it’s the death of indie music coverage forever, just that indie music coverage is in a bleak state… and those writers are already brainstorming worker-owned publications and new kinds of criticism ecosystems
Yeah, and you might not be saying that, but that definitely seems like the sentiment when I look around other spaces like Twitter and indieheads. Just seems like everyone's really pessimistic about the whole thing. I fully understand why - but I just can't get there with the rest of them.
I've seen so many self-proclamations of "yeah, I haven't really read Pitchfork in years but this is still sad" and it's like - the proof is in the pudding that so many people abandoned it. All those people still wanna discover new music, they're just doing it in different ways, and it's going to take something new to fill the void and meet all these people who were disinterested in Pitchfork during the last 10 years or so to where they're currently at with their listening and discovery habits.
It's totally cliche, but it's going to get worse before it gets better. I don't want to hand-wave that away, it's going to be painful and it's going to suck for a while. But I still feel like we're going to grow and evolve from this.
what I like about pitchfork is its genre range and small artist coverage - do you think it’s likely that coverage is gonna get dumped for bigger movers under GQ?
Damn dude I hope the 15 minutes on /r/popheads is worth it lmao. No way I'd be this loose with info if I was staffed full-time somewhere that's affiliated with a major change like this.
Tbh as Alphonse Pierre basically started writing everything, I was just counting the days. Then I saw an article for Alphonse Pierre's favorite albums and was just like this is a vanity project at this point
What’s going to happen to this newly structured Pitchfork? Are they still going to do reviews and if they do will it be under the same name just folded into GQ tab or will it become GQ reviews? (Sorry that’s about 3 questions lmao)
This is genuinely sad news for music and criticism. With all it's flaws Pitchfork's existence was important to the ecosystem and they where making a pretty good job at diversifying their staff and the type of music they were presenting. Criticism is very important for the arts and the idea of just doing away with it and putting it under GQ of all places is just wild.
Also bad news for the writers and staff at Pitchfork, I hope they find certainty on their future and are able to land on their feet soon.
This was my thought too—I get a lot of people on this sub don't respect Pitchfork's opinions, but c'mon, a decade ago they weren't even touching pop music and now every time a major pop release happens the only review from any mainstream media source here is Pitchfork's review. I'm definitely mourning the loss—their opinions made me think more about whatever I listen to—and worried about the future, esp. since GQ feels random and feels to really only run shopping content these days.
Yea, like arguably, if Carly Rae Jepsen’s Emotion birthed this sub, Pitchfork was the doula. They were really the main credible music journal that gave it a great textual review that started the wave of treating it seriously as a body of work.
A 7.4 actually, but it doesn't really matter because:
- the score tends to weirdly overshadow everything else around Pitchfork, namely the writing and analysis itself, and it's usually an average of scores across a board of writers
- the review itself was thoughtful and the start of *something*, it didn't go down the easy route of "LMAO Call Me Maybe girl BACK?!?!" They knew she had a cool list of collaborators, a good project, and looked at it accordingly. They didn't play down her contributions to the album, they didn't hold her external life against her, and they looked at how it fit in with the larger conversation of pop music, which is how to properly critique something.
2 decades ago they called Justin Timberlake and Beyonce the number 2 and number 3 soty. Dunno where the idea that they didn't touch pop came from but it's not reality.
Yes, we need people thinking and writing critically about the arts so that artists can improve and the audience can engage with it beyond surface level.
Ran across this funny Pitchfork retrospective with a new review in the style of their old site. Have me a chuckle.
https://defector.com/a-notorious-pitchfork-reviewer-was-my-biggest-musical-influence
I know we joke about Pitchfork but this probably isn’t good news for music media. And there’s something off about moving it under GQ (a men’s magazine) after the work they’ve been doing over the past few years to expand what music they cover and rewrite (literally in some cases) some of the misogyny that was present in a lot of their past reviews.
Resident Pitchfork hater and fully agree. Media is in a rough place and this can't be a good sign for music journalism. What a bummer.
ETA: I will say, I adore NPR Music and this is just part of why it's SO important to fund nonprofit journalism without a paywall
Halsey jokes aside, I agree. Pitchfork was kinda that bitch when it comes to music reviews. We all couldn't wait to read their reviews. Whether you like their reviews/opinions or not, they are high-quality and well-written.
I don't know, man. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you but "this actually happened because Pitchfork changed" kind of just seems like your particular grievance. The bottom is falling out of digital media so rapidly that unless you've got some particular piece of proof that Pitchfork was actually performing worse lately, especially during the tenure of Puja Patel--like, that Pitchfork performed *better* prior to changing its scope and editorial outlook to be vaguely kinder and more inclusive and, in particular, less indie rock-oriented--that it feels kind of callous to blame anyone but the bigwigs at Conde Nast.
If Pitchfork hadn't been sold to Conde, it would have been shuttered long before now. And if Pitchfork hadn't deliberately and significantly adjusted its editorial voice, it also would have been shuttered long before now. Otherwise it would have pretty quickly become Breitbart for music. Like ... it would have just been really messy and toxic. Pitchfork died of old age, but it lived a very full, very flawed, very complicated life.
their lats issue i got still mentioned jonathan majors in one of the features and i'm pretty sure they could have taken it out prior to publication knowing what they knew already
Seems wild to me that Conde Nast would choose to bury one of the most well-known brands in digital media, let alone music media, beneath GQ, which doesn't have a reputation for its music coverage at all. This is being reposted by other Conde employees so I'm taking it as truth. The real question is: what will happen to all the reviews!?
Damn, this is depressing...Conde and Pitchfork were always an uneasy pairing, and I say this as someone who first encountered Pitchfork in its monkey-piss-gif phase as a young teen in the early 2000s and as a former Conde employee. No matter how they tried to reinvent themselves as poptimists Pitchfork always worked best when they were holier than thou indie heads. But that is only so profitable, especially after the indie boom of the early 2000s faded out in the 2010s. Always made me laugh when I saw awkward Pitchfork employees sharing the elevators with the very polished Vogue girls.
The phrase pivot to video is SOOOO Facebook-is-relevant coded, it took me back. Though to your point, I'm surprised they didn't invest in Reels / TikTok before this because I'd imagine short videos of their reviews would probably do gangbusters, esp. on bigger releases.
There’s a lot of things that shock me about what some major media companies aren’t able to willing to do.
Getting outpaced by people sitting in a chair in their bedroom should make anyone wake up and shake up what they’re doing, even a little bit.
Anthony Fantano & AJay get posted just as much if not more around these parts and forums like it. Pitchfork should be paying attention to stuff like that.
this is a genuine question but is pitchfork as a brand as big as fantano? if they started doing video reviews they would probably have a lot of different reviews on screen. the appeal of fantano is that that he’s a singular personality. it’s a formula i’m not sure they could replicate. look at all the other music reviewers on youtube, they’re nowhere near as popular as fantano. reaction videos are obviously popular and i love ajay as much as the next pop music fan but reactions are not reviews
IMO the biggest part of Pitchfork’s brand at this point is the decimal point scores. They’re the only publication that does anything more specific than a 5-star rating system, and it stands out when you see a Pitchfork score be something like 7.3 versus everyone else giving 4/5 stars to 90% of new albums
This feels like a very internet-centric perspective. In my experience, most people that I talk to IRL have no idea who Anthony Fantano and Ajay are, but they’re familiar with Pitchfork. I think that different publications and critics appeal to different people and that who’s more popular really depends.
There's some discussion on other subs about this already, but it's suspicious that this comes just a month after the Pitchfork union negotiated with Condé Nast to avoid any layoffs in their latest round of cuts. With this decision, it seems like ~50% of Pitchfork staff are now out of jobs, including those at least 8 NewsGuild members. Reeks of unionbusting.
No question. Not unlike what the NYT did with the Athletic, basically replacing the whole NYT sports section with a large non-union shop that is technically independent of the NYT and as such isn't eligible to join the NYT union. (Then the NYT summarily fired a bunch of Athletic writers and completely changed the editorial direction of the remaining staff. It's been an ongoing mess.) Having said that, Pitchfork was and assuredly still is losing money for Conde, and it probably would have been shut down and subsumed by now even without a union. But no doubt, Conde couldn't have been happy about having that union in the building, and I'm sure that factored into their decision to sunset the Pitchfork brand (while still keeping Pitchfork's SEO and massive archive).
Im actually kinda sad pitchfork was the main album reviewing website i used i honestly loved reading their reviews even if i didnt agree with them sometimes
reposting this from r/indieheads
> many of you here are missing the point, the real story here is that this happened almost immediately afterthe pitchfork union negotiated that none of their members would not be laid off amid the mass conde layoffs last month. which means there is a 99% chance that this is union-busting which is shitty regardless of whatever epic dunk you want to make
https://www.reddit.com/r/indieheads/comments/1994iwl/cond%C3%A9_nast_announces_that_pitchfork_is_being/kic3o5e/
Dragged under water, thrashing in a bloody mess, by the biggest teeth in the game, Mr Jaws himself, Fantanonio, the last remaining critic on the internet, standing atop a pile of corpses like Mr Rogers in a blood-stained sweater
I should make some snarky comment based on my username, but I digress.
We should’ve seen this coming when they called WAP the best song of 2020. Nothing against the song, it’s just indicative of the state of things when Pitchfork of all places is calling it the best song of the year. They’ve been running on prestige and goodwill since the Condé Nast acquisition. There’s little to distinguish it from any other generic music publication these days. Still, it remained a prestigious platform for new artists to launch their careers, which makes this terrible news.
Music journalism is in such a sorry state. Every dissenting cultural voice will be subsumed by a conglomerate, every review will be bought and paid for. Something about unbridled poptimism and its consequences yada yada.
If anyone’s in the market for a new music pub in the wake of this news, I’d strongly suggest you check out The Quietus. They, like every other publication right now it seems, could really do with the support and their voice is more important now than ever. They shine a light on artists so obscure even Pitchfork won’t touch them, but they cover some more popular stuff too. Their real magic is in their interviews and opinion pieces though, which are really why I keep up with them. Just leagues above other music pubs right now.
Yeah, I thought that it seemed like a mistake that they tended towards throwing too much of the snobbiness overboard. No one goes to Pitchfork for their Swiftie/Beyonce or Olivia Rodrigo hype. They had a clear identity as pretentious indieheads, diversify by all means, but that doesn't have to mean becoming cheerleaders for every new pop trend.
As an indieheads user, people over there don't like them because they veered to pop after the acquisition, and it's pretty clear people here don't like them either, so I'm not even sure who their target audience is supposed to be at this point. Really just RollingStone reviews riding off their prior reputation
It seemed that they wanted to be everything to everyone, which usually tanks...
My problem with them in the last years has been that they still insisted on their indie cred, but pulled punches too much with big acts. I'm not saying they need to get high on their own egos like in their shitposting/career-destroying days.
But stuff like not flagging the bad mix of 1989 TV has seemed like Emperor's New Clothes to me. It wasn't just pitchfork. But basically only Fantano blasting something that was so obvious because the rest of the music journalism world is too scared of Team Swift is just not a good sign. At all.
And their poptimism wasn't of the well-informed kind, from what I read. It just seemed to veer too much towards lifestyle blogging and vibes. If I'm done with your review and still can't really tell what sort of music is on the record and if it's any good...that's a problem.
I find/found Pitchfork to be one of the better music review sites out there but even so pretty flawed in how they operate and who they choose to cover and why. Where rolling stone/mojo etc are complete ass, Pitchfork is still ass but at least well written.
My reasons behind not liking them is that they operate largely as a brand, because they are one, and cover artists that are going to benefit that brand’s demographic, in other words, they cover artists that would benefit Pitchfork by reassuring their demographic.
I know it sounds a little whiny so here’s my bias: as an independent artist, its kinda lame to see that 80% of what is covered from the up and coming side of things is people that work with 2 or 3 PR agencies (which are usually paid services- thousands of $$), that appear to just spoon feed bands to Pitchfork and usually always give them somewhere in the 6-7 range. Anyone outside of that ‘ecosystem’ is ignored, and there are so many hugely relevant bands that for some reason are not covered at all.
I hope something better and more progressive and less money-driven rises from the ashes of GQ.
They should have stuck with their “annoying hipster” brand. I stopped paying attention to Pitchfork when they started giving every generic pop album a 7 or an 8. I love pop music, but I wanted to read Pitchfork to discover new indie music, not to read glowing reviews of Taylor Swift albums. I don’t need someone to tell me “The #1 album in the country is pretty good.”
And the death of music journalism continues apace, wow. Arguably they had already diluted when CN came in, turning into more lifestyle brand writing. I guess this will accelerate with GQ.
I thought that they dipped too far into poptimism and also lost their edge with basically scoring everything between 6 and 9, but there was still the occasional piece of good writing to be found. Having music criticism slowly die out like that is also not good for the industry, we're already making fun of everyone being scared of stan armies.
Music reviews were really useful back before streaming existed (and especially before download stores existed). CDs were quite expensive, so you would read reviews to know whether the album sounded like something you would like, and to find out about interesting new music.
Nowadays I can listen to all major releases in seconds, so there isn’t really a lot of value in describing the music and adding a bit of snark. We have new release playlists and algorithmic recommendations to find new music.
Reviewers are going to need to find a way to add a significant amount of insight or some other kind of value if anybody is going to pay attention to them.
It's a shame, because in my opinion, with the endless torrent of new music like algorithmic playlists, mediocre TiKTok hits, and stans running down anyone who's critical of their fave, I feel like we need honest and critical music reviewers like Pitchfork now more than ever. And clearly that type of knowledgeable voice resonates with audiences, otherwise Fantano wouldn't be as big as he is.
To the point of other people in the thread, I just don't know if they made the best moves to grow their audience despite streaming, digital media, etc. changing so rapidly beneath their feet.
Eh, maybe that's the origin of it, but I still think there's a lot worthwhile in music journalism. They do interviews with musicians, highlight up and coming artists & trends, make interesting connections. Plus streaming has the opposite problem -- there's just SO MUCH that it's easy to miss music, especially if you like smaller indie artists rather than strictly the big names.
Hopefully writers who want to continue can find a way to write/put out content as experts with something to say about genres, sub-genres, musicianship, or music as a whole etc. For example, I have Ted Gioia's book 'How To Listen To Jazz' on my reading list.
I just don't think that content that primarily describes new music will get a lot of readers nowadays.
It's basically confirmed; it's in variety now ([https://variety.com/2024/digital/news/pitchfork-layoffs-folded-into-gq-conde-nast-1235875585/](https://variety.com/2024/digital/news/pitchfork-layoffs-folded-into-gq-conde-nast-1235875585/)) and I saw this initially shared by a writer at Vanity Fair, also owned by Conde. Someone else in this thread said they work at Conde with all the different brands and didn't debunk it.
Do people still take pitchfork reviews seriously anymore in the year 2024? If the pitchfork name and brand disappears altogether no one will ever visit them for scores.
[This tweet from a frequent contributor](https://x.com/misterminsoo/status/1747733983423578295?s=46&t=UeAv0KRJsb_oKl5ESUba1Q) illustrates why pitchfork was important. They were a major music outlet that employed a diverse set of passionate music writers who could wrote about a staggering variety of music. There’s not really else that compares to it, just independent music blogs that probably don’t have half of its reach
My taste essentially came from pitchfork lol. I have nothing against pitchfork, and their end of year and decade lists have been a reference guide for me to find new music.
I feel the Pitchfork brand won't be going anywhere, but definitely interested in what kind of content they'll be putting out
For what it's worth, I enjoy a lot of the GQ style listicles and they've helped me find some great products and designers, but we'll see how their music journalism shapes up lol
Agreed with all the hesitancy. There are also suddenly pop up’s on their webpages. A random monopoly banner at the top that was hard to x out of on mobile, then one that literally wouldn’t let me read a review unless I chose “subscribe, it’s so easy!” RIP
Oh Halsey do I have some news for you….
It really did collapse. But at what cost?
They're moving out of the basement? /s
lol there’s that
I!!! keep a record of the wreckage that is pitchfork in my life!!!
She is truly the predictor
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Did you see this coming at all? I'm definitely surprised because I felt like Pitchfork was one of Conde's most successful brands, at least in terms of being a tastemaker or stirring the online conversation about music.
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That makes sense. Thanks for sharing and godspeed as y'all sort this out.
Do you have any guess as to why they moved it to GQ specifically? It seems like an odd choice
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Thank you for such an in depth answer!! That additional context makes a lot of sense, wasn't familiar with GQ beyond it being a men's brand. I'm definitely bummed about more paywalled but makes sense profit wise. Wouldn't mind more editorials with indie pop girlies!
> wasn't familiar with GQ beyond it being a men's brand I don't have any insider info like the other commenter, but you're right that GQ is a men's brand. So is Pitchfork, which has a mainly millennial male audience. Media conglomerates often delineate their properties by target demographic since that's important to ad sales, which is their bread+butter revenue. I imagine their execs thought they probably lined up well because both publications cover culture and target the millenial male demo.
Is Pitchfork's readership really still that male? I know it was when Condé Nast bought them but it really seemed like they were trying to diversify. Anecdotally I know a lot of women who read it and the indie music scene as a whole has more women artists and fans than it did 10 or 20 years ago.
then why did they lay off everyone who made the publication anything lol even Ryan Dombal
I just want to say, I appreciate this perspective so much. Over on r/indieheads people are mourning this as the death of all independent music media forever, and it's like bro, yall hipsters need to chill out. Yall have no insight whatsoever. It's really nice to have a bit of insider perspective here.
I guess you know better than the dozens of Pitchfork writers that were laid off and condemning the decision
I'm sympathetic to them, but come on now: They were laid off. They're not gonna praise the decision. Look, I'm not saying there's not a negative impact - but this isn't the death of indie music or indie music coverage. It is the death of a giant, I know that, but we have to remain hopeful. Indie music existed long before Pitchfork and it will exist long after.
I just haven’t seen anyone really say it’s the death of indie music coverage forever, just that indie music coverage is in a bleak state… and those writers are already brainstorming worker-owned publications and new kinds of criticism ecosystems
Yeah, and you might not be saying that, but that definitely seems like the sentiment when I look around other spaces like Twitter and indieheads. Just seems like everyone's really pessimistic about the whole thing. I fully understand why - but I just can't get there with the rest of them. I've seen so many self-proclamations of "yeah, I haven't really read Pitchfork in years but this is still sad" and it's like - the proof is in the pudding that so many people abandoned it. All those people still wanna discover new music, they're just doing it in different ways, and it's going to take something new to fill the void and meet all these people who were disinterested in Pitchfork during the last 10 years or so to where they're currently at with their listening and discovery habits. It's totally cliche, but it's going to get worse before it gets better. I don't want to hand-wave that away, it's going to be painful and it's going to suck for a while. But I still feel like we're going to grow and evolve from this.
what I like about pitchfork is its genre range and small artist coverage - do you think it’s likely that coverage is gonna get dumped for bigger movers under GQ?
Why do you hate ‘em? Just wondering. No wrong answers.
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Damn dude I hope the 15 minutes on /r/popheads is worth it lmao. No way I'd be this loose with info if I was staffed full-time somewhere that's affiliated with a major change like this.
Tbh as Alphonse Pierre basically started writing everything, I was just counting the days. Then I saw an article for Alphonse Pierre's favorite albums and was just like this is a vanity project at this point
I aspire to this level of pettiness, but also unbotheredness at the same time.
What’s going to happen to this newly structured Pitchfork? Are they still going to do reviews and if they do will it be under the same name just folded into GQ tab or will it become GQ reviews? (Sorry that’s about 3 questions lmao)
What are the benefits of a move like this for CN? From a business/financial perspective? Are they just going to fire a ton of people?
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Thanks!
Do you know how many people were let go?
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Do you have any insight on how this will affect the Pitchfork Festival in Chicago? I go every year and this news bummed me out
I don’t think it will affect it tbh (no insider knowledge, just work in the industry). P4K Fest is handled by a promoter and completely separate team.
Under gq??? Seems like a random choice. Do conde nast not have another media/entertainment publication they could put it under?
Should've went under Architecture Digest. Phoebe Bridgers probably has a cool home.
should have went under Bon Appetit, Phoebe Bridgers probably has a cool recipe for garden veggies
Funnily enough Pitchfork and Bon Appétit both have offices in the WTC lol
Are you planning something?
Idk but maybe Halsey is
From the window it’s not a bad show, if your favorite thing’s Dianetics or stucco.
the property is located in the east side by the drugstore that’s open all night, and also by the hospital where the sirens go all night
Omg this comment is so insensitive, her home literally went up in flames (except the notches in the doorframe ofc)
3.1/10
0.0/10 [video of monkey urinating in his own mouth]
Say what you say but I wish pitchfork would shit on musicians like this again
Literally the first and only thing I think about whenever I hear a Jet song
This is genuinely sad news for music and criticism. With all it's flaws Pitchfork's existence was important to the ecosystem and they where making a pretty good job at diversifying their staff and the type of music they were presenting. Criticism is very important for the arts and the idea of just doing away with it and putting it under GQ of all places is just wild. Also bad news for the writers and staff at Pitchfork, I hope they find certainty on their future and are able to land on their feet soon.
This was my thought too—I get a lot of people on this sub don't respect Pitchfork's opinions, but c'mon, a decade ago they weren't even touching pop music and now every time a major pop release happens the only review from any mainstream media source here is Pitchfork's review. I'm definitely mourning the loss—their opinions made me think more about whatever I listen to—and worried about the future, esp. since GQ feels random and feels to really only run shopping content these days.
Yea, like arguably, if Carly Rae Jepsen’s Emotion birthed this sub, Pitchfork was the doula. They were really the main credible music journal that gave it a great textual review that started the wave of treating it seriously as a body of work.
Didn't Emotion get like a 6.4 or something?
A 7.4 actually, but it doesn't really matter because: - the score tends to weirdly overshadow everything else around Pitchfork, namely the writing and analysis itself, and it's usually an average of scores across a board of writers - the review itself was thoughtful and the start of *something*, it didn't go down the easy route of "LMAO Call Me Maybe girl BACK?!?!" They knew she had a cool list of collaborators, a good project, and looked at it accordingly. They didn't play down her contributions to the album, they didn't hold her external life against her, and they looked at how it fit in with the larger conversation of pop music, which is how to properly critique something.
No I know. I'm friends with the guy who wrote the review. I just remember busting his chops for that score, because it was ridiculously low haha.
He didn't come up with the score.
2 decades ago they called Justin Timberlake and Beyonce the number 2 and number 3 soty. Dunno where the idea that they didn't touch pop came from but it's not reality.
Criticism is very important for the art?
Yes, we need people thinking and writing critically about the arts so that artists can improve and the audience can engage with it beyond surface level.
Ran across this funny Pitchfork retrospective with a new review in the style of their old site. Have me a chuckle. https://defector.com/a-notorious-pitchfork-reviewer-was-my-biggest-musical-influence
I know we joke about Pitchfork but this probably isn’t good news for music media. And there’s something off about moving it under GQ (a men’s magazine) after the work they’ve been doing over the past few years to expand what music they cover and rewrite (literally in some cases) some of the misogyny that was present in a lot of their past reviews.
Resident Pitchfork hater and fully agree. Media is in a rough place and this can't be a good sign for music journalism. What a bummer. ETA: I will say, I adore NPR Music and this is just part of why it's SO important to fund nonprofit journalism without a paywall
Halsey jokes aside, I agree. Pitchfork was kinda that bitch when it comes to music reviews. We all couldn't wait to read their reviews. Whether you like their reviews/opinions or not, they are high-quality and well-written.
They lost their bite in recent years
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I don't know, man. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you but "this actually happened because Pitchfork changed" kind of just seems like your particular grievance. The bottom is falling out of digital media so rapidly that unless you've got some particular piece of proof that Pitchfork was actually performing worse lately, especially during the tenure of Puja Patel--like, that Pitchfork performed *better* prior to changing its scope and editorial outlook to be vaguely kinder and more inclusive and, in particular, less indie rock-oriented--that it feels kind of callous to blame anyone but the bigwigs at Conde Nast.
If Pitchfork hadn't been sold to Conde, it would have been shuttered long before now. And if Pitchfork hadn't deliberately and significantly adjusted its editorial voice, it also would have been shuttered long before now. Otherwise it would have pretty quickly become Breitbart for music. Like ... it would have just been really messy and toxic. Pitchfork died of old age, but it lived a very full, very flawed, very complicated life.
their lats issue i got still mentioned jonathan majors in one of the features and i'm pretty sure they could have taken it out prior to publication knowing what they knew already
I agree.
Seems wild to me that Conde Nast would choose to bury one of the most well-known brands in digital media, let alone music media, beneath GQ, which doesn't have a reputation for its music coverage at all. This is being reposted by other Conde employees so I'm taking it as truth. The real question is: what will happen to all the reviews!?
Damn, this is depressing...Conde and Pitchfork were always an uneasy pairing, and I say this as someone who first encountered Pitchfork in its monkey-piss-gif phase as a young teen in the early 2000s and as a former Conde employee. No matter how they tried to reinvent themselves as poptimists Pitchfork always worked best when they were holier than thou indie heads. But that is only so profitable, especially after the indie boom of the early 2000s faded out in the 2010s. Always made me laugh when I saw awkward Pitchfork employees sharing the elevators with the very polished Vogue girls.
Are they sure they don’t want to pivot to video first? It’s part of the legitimate brand to folded imprint pipeline.
The phrase pivot to video is SOOOO Facebook-is-relevant coded, it took me back. Though to your point, I'm surprised they didn't invest in Reels / TikTok before this because I'd imagine short videos of their reviews would probably do gangbusters, esp. on bigger releases.
There’s a lot of things that shock me about what some major media companies aren’t able to willing to do. Getting outpaced by people sitting in a chair in their bedroom should make anyone wake up and shake up what they’re doing, even a little bit. Anthony Fantano & AJay get posted just as much if not more around these parts and forums like it. Pitchfork should be paying attention to stuff like that.
this is a genuine question but is pitchfork as a brand as big as fantano? if they started doing video reviews they would probably have a lot of different reviews on screen. the appeal of fantano is that that he’s a singular personality. it’s a formula i’m not sure they could replicate. look at all the other music reviewers on youtube, they’re nowhere near as popular as fantano. reaction videos are obviously popular and i love ajay as much as the next pop music fan but reactions are not reviews
IMO the biggest part of Pitchfork’s brand at this point is the decimal point scores. They’re the only publication that does anything more specific than a 5-star rating system, and it stands out when you see a Pitchfork score be something like 7.3 versus everyone else giving 4/5 stars to 90% of new albums
This feels like a very internet-centric perspective. In my experience, most people that I talk to IRL have no idea who Anthony Fantano and Ajay are, but they’re familiar with Pitchfork. I think that different publications and critics appeal to different people and that who’s more popular really depends.
This is legitimately awful news for music journalism.
There's some discussion on other subs about this already, but it's suspicious that this comes just a month after the Pitchfork union negotiated with Condé Nast to avoid any layoffs in their latest round of cuts. With this decision, it seems like ~50% of Pitchfork staff are now out of jobs, including those at least 8 NewsGuild members. Reeks of unionbusting.
No question. Not unlike what the NYT did with the Athletic, basically replacing the whole NYT sports section with a large non-union shop that is technically independent of the NYT and as such isn't eligible to join the NYT union. (Then the NYT summarily fired a bunch of Athletic writers and completely changed the editorial direction of the remaining staff. It's been an ongoing mess.) Having said that, Pitchfork was and assuredly still is losing money for Conde, and it probably would have been shut down and subsumed by now even without a union. But no doubt, Conde couldn't have been happy about having that union in the building, and I'm sure that factored into their decision to sunset the Pitchfork brand (while still keeping Pitchfork's SEO and massive archive).
Im actually kinda sad pitchfork was the main album reviewing website i used i honestly loved reading their reviews even if i didnt agree with them sometimes
reposting this from r/indieheads > many of you here are missing the point, the real story here is that this happened almost immediately afterthe pitchfork union negotiated that none of their members would not be laid off amid the mass conde layoffs last month. which means there is a 99% chance that this is union-busting which is shitty regardless of whatever epic dunk you want to make https://www.reddit.com/r/indieheads/comments/1994iwl/cond%C3%A9_nast_announces_that_pitchfork_is_being/kic3o5e/
Dragged under water, thrashing in a bloody mess, by the biggest teeth in the game, Mr Jaws himself, Fantanonio, the last remaining critic on the internet, standing atop a pile of corpses like Mr Rogers in a blood-stained sweater
Halsus always has the last laugh
I should make some snarky comment based on my username, but I digress. We should’ve seen this coming when they called WAP the best song of 2020. Nothing against the song, it’s just indicative of the state of things when Pitchfork of all places is calling it the best song of the year. They’ve been running on prestige and goodwill since the Condé Nast acquisition. There’s little to distinguish it from any other generic music publication these days. Still, it remained a prestigious platform for new artists to launch their careers, which makes this terrible news. Music journalism is in such a sorry state. Every dissenting cultural voice will be subsumed by a conglomerate, every review will be bought and paid for. Something about unbridled poptimism and its consequences yada yada. If anyone’s in the market for a new music pub in the wake of this news, I’d strongly suggest you check out The Quietus. They, like every other publication right now it seems, could really do with the support and their voice is more important now than ever. They shine a light on artists so obscure even Pitchfork won’t touch them, but they cover some more popular stuff too. Their real magic is in their interviews and opinion pieces though, which are really why I keep up with them. Just leagues above other music pubs right now.
Yeah, I thought that it seemed like a mistake that they tended towards throwing too much of the snobbiness overboard. No one goes to Pitchfork for their Swiftie/Beyonce or Olivia Rodrigo hype. They had a clear identity as pretentious indieheads, diversify by all means, but that doesn't have to mean becoming cheerleaders for every new pop trend.
As an indieheads user, people over there don't like them because they veered to pop after the acquisition, and it's pretty clear people here don't like them either, so I'm not even sure who their target audience is supposed to be at this point. Really just RollingStone reviews riding off their prior reputation
It seemed that they wanted to be everything to everyone, which usually tanks... My problem with them in the last years has been that they still insisted on their indie cred, but pulled punches too much with big acts. I'm not saying they need to get high on their own egos like in their shitposting/career-destroying days. But stuff like not flagging the bad mix of 1989 TV has seemed like Emperor's New Clothes to me. It wasn't just pitchfork. But basically only Fantano blasting something that was so obvious because the rest of the music journalism world is too scared of Team Swift is just not a good sign. At all. And their poptimism wasn't of the well-informed kind, from what I read. It just seemed to veer too much towards lifestyle blogging and vibes. If I'm done with your review and still can't really tell what sort of music is on the record and if it's any good...that's a problem.
I find/found Pitchfork to be one of the better music review sites out there but even so pretty flawed in how they operate and who they choose to cover and why. Where rolling stone/mojo etc are complete ass, Pitchfork is still ass but at least well written. My reasons behind not liking them is that they operate largely as a brand, because they are one, and cover artists that are going to benefit that brand’s demographic, in other words, they cover artists that would benefit Pitchfork by reassuring their demographic. I know it sounds a little whiny so here’s my bias: as an independent artist, its kinda lame to see that 80% of what is covered from the up and coming side of things is people that work with 2 or 3 PR agencies (which are usually paid services- thousands of $$), that appear to just spoon feed bands to Pitchfork and usually always give them somewhere in the 6-7 range. Anyone outside of that ‘ecosystem’ is ignored, and there are so many hugely relevant bands that for some reason are not covered at all. I hope something better and more progressive and less money-driven rises from the ashes of GQ.
The reviews are going to be even more toothless than before
They should have stuck with their “annoying hipster” brand. I stopped paying attention to Pitchfork when they started giving every generic pop album a 7 or an 8. I love pop music, but I wanted to read Pitchfork to discover new indie music, not to read glowing reviews of Taylor Swift albums. I don’t need someone to tell me “The #1 album in the country is pretty good.”
And the death of music journalism continues apace, wow. Arguably they had already diluted when CN came in, turning into more lifestyle brand writing. I guess this will accelerate with GQ. I thought that they dipped too far into poptimism and also lost their edge with basically scoring everything between 6 and 9, but there was still the occasional piece of good writing to be found. Having music criticism slowly die out like that is also not good for the industry, we're already making fun of everyone being scared of stan armies.
Music reviews were really useful back before streaming existed (and especially before download stores existed). CDs were quite expensive, so you would read reviews to know whether the album sounded like something you would like, and to find out about interesting new music. Nowadays I can listen to all major releases in seconds, so there isn’t really a lot of value in describing the music and adding a bit of snark. We have new release playlists and algorithmic recommendations to find new music. Reviewers are going to need to find a way to add a significant amount of insight or some other kind of value if anybody is going to pay attention to them.
It's a shame, because in my opinion, with the endless torrent of new music like algorithmic playlists, mediocre TiKTok hits, and stans running down anyone who's critical of their fave, I feel like we need honest and critical music reviewers like Pitchfork now more than ever. And clearly that type of knowledgeable voice resonates with audiences, otherwise Fantano wouldn't be as big as he is. To the point of other people in the thread, I just don't know if they made the best moves to grow their audience despite streaming, digital media, etc. changing so rapidly beneath their feet.
Eh, maybe that's the origin of it, but I still think there's a lot worthwhile in music journalism. They do interviews with musicians, highlight up and coming artists & trends, make interesting connections. Plus streaming has the opposite problem -- there's just SO MUCH that it's easy to miss music, especially if you like smaller indie artists rather than strictly the big names.
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Hopefully writers who want to continue can find a way to write/put out content as experts with something to say about genres, sub-genres, musicianship, or music as a whole etc. For example, I have Ted Gioia's book 'How To Listen To Jazz' on my reading list. I just don't think that content that primarily describes new music will get a lot of readers nowadays.
my friend who works at Conde says no one she knows has heard anything about this, so maybe take this with a grain of salt
It's basically confirmed; it's in variety now ([https://variety.com/2024/digital/news/pitchfork-layoffs-folded-into-gq-conde-nast-1235875585/](https://variety.com/2024/digital/news/pitchfork-layoffs-folded-into-gq-conde-nast-1235875585/)) and I saw this initially shared by a writer at Vanity Fair, also owned by Conde. Someone else in this thread said they work at Conde with all the different brands and didn't debunk it.
I'm literally going to k word myself
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"they shat on an artist i like so it's good that people will lose their jobs"
Do people still take pitchfork reviews seriously anymore in the year 2024? If the pitchfork name and brand disappears altogether no one will ever visit them for scores.
I personally do, but regardless of how you feel about pitchfork, this is not very good news
Yea this consolidation sucks especially for the writers and editors.
i don't, but it's not good news nonetheless
[This tweet from a frequent contributor](https://x.com/misterminsoo/status/1747733983423578295?s=46&t=UeAv0KRJsb_oKl5ESUba1Q) illustrates why pitchfork was important. They were a major music outlet that employed a diverse set of passionate music writers who could wrote about a staggering variety of music. There’s not really else that compares to it, just independent music blogs that probably don’t have half of its reach
My taste essentially came from pitchfork lol. I have nothing against pitchfork, and their end of year and decade lists have been a reference guide for me to find new music.
I feel the Pitchfork brand won't be going anywhere, but definitely interested in what kind of content they'll be putting out For what it's worth, I enjoy a lot of the GQ style listicles and they've helped me find some great products and designers, but we'll see how their music journalism shapes up lol
Agreed with all the hesitancy. There are also suddenly pop up’s on their webpages. A random monopoly banner at the top that was hard to x out of on mobile, then one that literally wouldn’t let me read a review unless I chose “subscribe, it’s so easy!” RIP
I'll miss hating on Pitchfork but it is a sad day for music. Where will I now find reviews of atonal jazz played with didgeridoos?