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How Condé Nast bought and destroyed Pitchfork

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Re: How Condé Nast bought and destroyed Pitchfork

#131

Post by drawfloat »

tptacek wrote: post #105

Pitchfork was gone long before Conde. Back in 2011, they panned Childish Gambino's 4th release††, giving it a 16%†. Here's what Donald Glover had to say, 2 years before the Conde acquisition: If I worked for Pitchfork, I wouldn't give myself a 9.0 either. They're a brand, they sell tickets to a show they put on every year. They're not going to give a 1.6 to someone who can be at their show and sell tickets. They're n…

He also said he’d knock out Ian Cohen on sight if he saw him down LA Fitness after that review, man of many opinions lmao

Re: How Condé Nast bought and destroyed Pitchfork

#132

Post by Lewton »

sangnoir wrote: post #111
Solvency wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since day one, Pitchfork (all white nerds) used to love to throttle good music but they'd always give a pass to mainstream rap, praising even the most generic mass produced hip hop, like they always secretly wanted to fit in with that crowd.

..and yet they dinged Childish Gambino's critically aclaimed album[1] - maybe the white nerds were contrarian, or just didn't "get" hip hop. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39284608

“Camp” was in no way critically acclaimed, it’s sitting at a 69/100 on metacritic which is squarely in the “eh, it’s alright” bracket

Re: How Condé Nast bought and destroyed Pitchfork

#133

Post by praisewhitey »

l33tbro wrote: post #98

Pitchfork died because it developed a problem with music itself. Prior to 2014, the site thrived because it took music at face value, and ranked new releases based upon what artists were contributing to the overall canon of progressive independent pop music. Everything changed in 2015. There was a drastic editorial shift, where the publication became repulsed by its own "unbearable whiteness" [1]. A kind of over-corr…

Can you link a particular review from before 2014 that you really like?

Re: How Condé Nast bought and destroyed Pitchfork

#134

Post by drawfloat »

jollofricepeas wrote: post #118
l33tbro wrote: post #98

Pitchfork died because it developed a problem with music itself. Prior to 2014, the site thrived because it took music at face value, and ranked new releases based upon what artists were contributing to the overall canon of progressive independent pop music. Everything changed in 2015. There was a drastic editorial shift, where the publication became repulsed by its own "unbearable whiteness" [1]. A kind of over-corr…

Wow. Yeah, that’s not what happened. I previously worked in music first at CMJ, UrbMag then Fader before working with a few indie and major labels on the digital side. Don’t try to rewrite history to make this a political or “wokeness” thing because of the view of ONE of the many contributors to Pitchfork. What happened to Pitchfork was pure economics. Pitchfork got old just like the article said. After indie, they a…

It’s a little from column a and a little column b in practice. Puja Patel (editor in chief) is fairly open about being in a mission to increase diversity and specifically covering fewer white male bands. You may spin that as “wokeness” (note: the parent never used that phrase) but it’s one and the same to covering what younger listeners were interested in over most of the last decade too. In lots of ways raging against wokeness is just the latest era of “old man shouts at cloud”.

The issue with that is it’s the same shift a lot of outlets made to try and keep pace too, which has resulted in a bunch of legacy outlets with little distinct editorial voice left. That’s not a barrier to keeping clicks, but it does feel like a failing strategy to retain cultural cache.

Though I digress, by all accounts Pitchfork had actually gone from losing money pre Puja to actually making money, so this was probably not about the outlet failing in some way. I personally agree with those noting how soon this has come after the staff unionisation vote

Re: How Condé Nast bought and destroyed Pitchfork

#135

Post by alex_young »

jollofricepeas wrote: post #118
l33tbro wrote: post #98

Pitchfork died because it developed a problem with music itself. Prior to 2014, the site thrived because it took music at face value, and ranked new releases based upon what artists were contributing to the overall canon of progressive independent pop music. Everything changed in 2015. There was a drastic editorial shift, where the publication became repulsed by its own "unbearable whiteness" [1]. A kind of over-corr…

Wow. Yeah, that’s not what happened. I previously worked in music first at CMJ, UrbMag then Fader before working with a few indie and major labels on the digital side. Don’t try to rewrite history to make this a political or “wokeness” thing because of the view of ONE of the many contributors to Pitchfork. What happened to Pitchfork was pure economics. Pitchfork got old just like the article said. After indie, they a…

Another until - the rise of buying digital singles / streaming.

A big reason for Pitchfork was a simple heuristic for "should I buy this album".

Now that no one buys albums, that problem isn't such a pressing concern.

Steve Jobs had more to do with this than Condé Nast IMO.

Re: How Condé Nast bought and destroyed Pitchfork

#136

Post by defrost »

tptacek wrote: post #123
boomboomsubban wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A year or two I was browsing the Pitchfork "best songs of the 10's" and was rather confused that "This is America" wasn't on it. A long running feud explains it. But eh, they're allowed to have "bad" opinions. Every critic I've remotely followed has strongly disagreed with me at times.

It's not that they didn't like Childish Gambino (I don't either), but rather that the idea that Pitchfork had long since sold its soul for access was already floating out there in the air years before the Conde buyout. On the other hand, "If you buy only one hip-hop album this year, I’m guessing it’ll be Camp." is a sick burn.

I circled back to the source, the italic stress on one

"If you buy only one hip-hop album this year, I’m guessing it’ll be Camp."

really sticks the landing.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16074-camp/

Meanwhile, antipodeanally https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sr3iI8gg2fo never made it to Pitchfork just NME https://www.nme.com/en_au/reviews/album/king-stingray-album-...

Re: How Condé Nast bought and destroyed Pitchfork

#137

Post by brailsafe »

defrost wrote: post #129
brailsafe wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sheesh, what an exhausting, vacuous, and frankly racist screed. If there was a point, I don't think that this would be the article to make it. Thankfully though it did introduce me to a new indie artist I hadn't heard of.

Who? Belle and Sebastian ? There are other pale UK bands if that's your thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKNt_qq6N7o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKcbSOjIzjQ

Dirty Projectors, one of probably many pale UK bands that I haven't dug into. Belle and Sebastian aren't generally my vibe for some reason, but I think do have a few songs I get on my Spotify radio from time to time

Re: How Condé Nast bought and destroyed Pitchfork

#138

Post by getoj »

vosper wrote: post #106
NikolaNovak wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of video game reviews, that's why I've focused on Rock Paper Shotgun back in the day when they didn't do "reviews" but "Wot I think". Each article was an honest and earnest, detailed description of a human experience and their genuine thoughts. You wouldn't always agree with the reviews but it'd always be an interesting and informative read.

What do you think of RPS now? I read your comment as implying you might not like RPS so much anymore, but I may have misunderstood.

RPS got bought out about five years ago and all of the old guard left. The new RPS is about 70% run-of-the-mill reporting that you can see anywhere, 10% awful promos for hardware sales, and 20% starry-eyed young journalists trying to emulate what RPS used to be.

Despite all that it’s still the best single site for gaming criticism, sadly.

Re: How Condé Nast bought and destroyed Pitchfork

#139

Post by defrost »

brailsafe wrote: post #137
defrost wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who? Belle and Sebastian ? There are other pale UK bands if that's your thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKNt_qq6N7o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKcbSOjIzjQ

Dirty Projectors, one of probably many pale UK bands that I haven't dug into. Belle and Sebastian aren't generally my vibe for some reason, but I think do have a few songs I get on my Spotify radio from time to time

Ah, cheers for clearing that up :-)

I went through The Unbearable Whiteness of Indie article trying to guess your reference - B&S got the greatest wordcount IIRC.

Can't say I've heard of Dirty Projectors and their "use of attenuated 'afro' elements" - I'll chase it up, but often I prefer to see some back wash on the culture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOValSt7YOY https://youtu.be/tvY31eN3gtE?t=41

Re: How Condé Nast bought and destroyed Pitchfork

#140

Post by rospaya »

Solvency wrote: post #96
ryanisnan wrote: post #84

Did anyone but Spotify really kill Pitchfork? Pitchfork really served a purpose before streaming services got good at recommending new music. Once they got "good enough", the friction of visiting Pitchfork just became high enough for me to stop visiting.

A very bizarre subset of the population enjoy reading reviews for some reason. Either to: tell them how to feel about something, to validate their own opinion because they lack social company in real life to do so, or because they enjoy it as a weird form of content in and of itself. But if you're just looking for new music, PF's old curated playlist on their site was obsolete the second Spotify started curating it's…

As if reviews are some obscure niche subject for weirdoes. Someone tell Letterboxd, Rolling Stone Magazine, Stereogum, IMDB.
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