An Oral History of Pitchfork
canopic jug writes:
Two months ago, Conde Nast bought and folded the music site Pitchfork. For many music fans that marked the end of an era of music criticism and pop culture. Slate magazine has an oral history of the late, great Pitchfork and how it started, what made it unique, and about its demise.
In January, Conde Nast announced that it was folding Pitchfork into GQ, laying off much of the staff of the influential, independent-minded music publication. The outcry was immediate. Why was one album-review website, founded nearly three decades ago in a suburban Minnesota bedroom, loved by so many music fans-and hated by so many others? Pitchfork transformed indie rock, but did pop transform Pitchfork? And does the Conde news really mean that Pitchfork is dead?
Over the past two months, Slate spoke to more than 30 Pitchfork writers, editors, and executives, past and present-as well as critics, industry luminaries, and some of the musicians whose careers Pitchfork made and destroyed-to tell the story behind the raves, the pans, the festivals, the fights, the indie spirit, the corporate takeover, and, of course, the scores. This is the complete oral history of Pitchfork.
[...] The gutting of Pitchfork is not just a loss for writers and editors, but all music fans. Spotify's algorithm can introduce you to new music but it can't contextualise it or tell its stories. Replacing media "gatekeepers" with AI ones has not enriched the culture. There are new formats for music journalism - the YouTuber Anthony Fantano is perhaps the world's most influential music critic, while Cole Cuchna's podcast Dissect is a masterclass in analysis - but like any art form, popular music deserves a thriving critical culture in the written word. While some music websites survive, notably the defiantly left-field digital magazine, the Quietus, it is striking that the alleged dinosaurs of print, led in the UK by Mojo and Uncut, have outlasted most of their supposed successors.
Conde Nast is the media company which owns one of the highly censorious, anti-FOSS "orange sites".
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