How Condé Nast bought and destroyed Pitchfork

Post by samirillian » Wed, Feb 07, 2024, 5:29 PM UTC

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…

Post by sybercecurity » Wed, Feb 07, 2024, 5:58 PM UTC

rsingel wrote: post #19

sybercecurity wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Partially, but can't go back in time and prove otherwise. When Conde Nast started buying up specialty like Bicycling, Outdoors, and Wired they transformed them into generic "lifestyle" magazines (10-15 years ago). I remember flipping through Bicycling and seeing 3 car advertisements before getting to the first that had anything to do with cycling and all the columns and editorials contained product pitches for person…

Conde Nast has never bought specialty mags, and doesn't own Outdoors or Bicycling. It bought Wired mag (but not the online site) in like 1998. The closest Conde Nast has now to a specialist site is Ars Technica, which it bought almost 20 years ago

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Feb 07, 2024, 6:24 PM UTC

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…

Post by mrguyorama » Wed, Feb 07, 2024, 6:34 PM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #34

xbar wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My small-sample research into Spotify user satisfaction with new music discovery is that it is a mixed bag. I have not tried it, but the common Spotify dissatisfaction was enough for several of us to investigate novel new music discovery ideas. Nothing forthcoming.

Spotify's algo for discover weekly can be incredible but you have to give it a fuckton of data to work with. My liked songs is >8k I follow probably 1000 artists (the UI doesn't give me a count). It will surface bands with For small sample sizes Pandora is still king.

Post by throwawaaarrgh » Wed, Feb 07, 2024, 8:01 PM UTC

lmm wrote: post #94

throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #77

Actually sounds like a good thing to me. Any organization that styles itself an industry taste maker is simultaneously repressing the organic creation of culture by the disorganized masses. Culture is best discovered by accident, and considered on its merits by the individual. When some critic tells you what's good and what isn't, you'll never know if you actually like it, or you just like it because someone told you…

> It's like with movies: you can watch whatever trends on Rotten Tomatoes, or you can watch a whole bunch of random stuff at a film festival. Guaranteed you will find something at the festival that will never trend on RT but that you'll enjoy thoroughly. Not my experience at all. Turns out critics are actually decent at judging stuff, and good movies really are better than bad ones.