When ‘music media’ becomes ‘men’s media,’ what’s lost?

LOS ANGELES – Nearly 3 many years after it was once established, Pitchfork, essentially the most influential song newsletter of the web age with the facility to make or ruin an artist, is being absorbed by way of some other entity — a males’s model and elegance mag.

The web page, loved for being one in all fashionable song’s true facilities of gravity and famend for its day by day file critiques scored 0.0 to ten.0, will likely be folded into GQ, mum or dad corporate Condé Nast introduced Wednesday.

At least 12 staffers had been laid off, 3 other folks concerned within the state of affairs informed The Associated Press on situation of anonymity as a result of they stated the location was once nonetheless fluid. Ten of the ones had been editorial layoffs, leaving an everlasting editorial personnel of 8.

The determination was once made after what Anna Wintour, leader content material officer for Condé Nast, referred to as “a careful evaluation of Pitchfork’s performance.” Wintour referred to as the transfer “the best path forward for the brand so that our coverage of music can continue to thrive within the company.”

As Pitchfork strikes into its new configuration, it’s value asking: If many view music discovery as song journalism’s number one serve as, what’s the function of insightful tradition writing about song when other folks can to find their favourite artists by way of following tips about social media or by way of taking part in 15 seconds of a music on a well-liked playlist?

FROM MUSIC TO MEN’S MEDIA

Record retailer clerk Ryan Schreiber based Pitchfork in 1996 as an indie song weblog impressed by way of fan zines and grew it into “the most trusted voice in music,” as its tagline reads.

Pitchfork started within the generation of CDs and — with discerning tastes and unmatched curation — shepherded voracious song enthusiasts into the mp3 and peer-to-peer file-sharing age of Napster and into the streaming generation past. In that point, its voice moved from snarky to incisive (regularly each directly) and the scope of its protection tailored to satisfy the present second. Schreiber offered Pitchfork to Condé Nast in 2015.

“In the late 2000s, alternative culture was going overground and an artisanal, small-batch approach to life was taking over from the sheeny mass-production of the previous decade,” says Laura Snapes, The Guardian’s deputy song editor and an established Pitchfork contributor.

“Pitchfork was well placed to lead and mirror that shift,” Snapes says. “They became the go-to chroniclers of this moment and had legitimacy … you could see the long roots of this culture in the site.”

Ann Powers, NPR’s song critic, says Pitchfork performs a the most important function in Twenty first-century media as a result of this can be a music-specific newsletter and no longer merely a generalist website online with a song segment. That manner its skilled writers had been ready to head deeper in protection and complaint, highlighting “intelligent and engaged, truly passionate music writing for the music fan,” as an alternative of focusing only on what would attraction to a basic pastime target audience — specifically at a time the place music-specific press is atomizing.

“Pitchfork also became a beautiful space for diversity,” Powers says. “It grew into a space where there were a lot of amazing women writers, people of color, covering pop, R&B, experimental and global music with the same passion and dedication that it was covering the kind of indie rock from which it was born.”

The selection to transport the newsletter underneath GQ, she says, reminds her of ’90s song mag tradition, the place advertisers labeled publications like SPIN, Rolling Stone, Vibe, and Blender as males’s pastime. “It truly feels like a setback,” Powers says.

Says Snapes: “Music is so much more than a ‘men’s interest’ or leisure pursuit. Pitchfork paid close, longform critical attention to so many different types of music, and so many different niches. I’m not sure how that will live alongside ecommerce pieces on stick vacuums.”

THE MOMENT PITCHFORK CHANGED

Early Wednesday afternoon, many of the Pitchfork personnel had been despatched a link to a compulsory, 15 minute all-hands with Wintour at 1:30 p.m., 3 other folks with concerned within the state of affairs informed AP. That activate a series of occasions wherein most influenced had been informed their ultimate day could be Friday.

In a screenshots of a public Slack channel obtainable by way of Condé Nast personnel, got by way of AP, Melissa Consorte, a Condé Nast vp, wrote on Wednesday, “Pitchfork is not going away as a brand.”

“This is not a terrible thing for us — GQ and P4K were getting in each other’s lanes and this makes it easier for us to use them in a complementary fashion,” she stated, the use of the preferred shorthand for Pitchfork. “I think this will only help P4K feel bigger and more recognizable in the long term.”

On Thursday, Consorte adopted up: “Pitchfork is not being shut down or rebranded as GQ — from a client and user perspective, everything will look the same.” And in some other public Slack channel, Joanna Melissakis, Head of Sales, Beauty at Condé Nast, wrote that “Pitchfork will remain a standalone brand but the internal reporting structure is changing.”

A consultant for Condé Nast didn’t agree to talk to The Associated Press at the file. However, one Condé Nast target audience construction editor shared on X that “by volume, Pitchfork has the highest daily site visitors of any of our titles … despite scant resourcing, esp from corporate.”

AN EVOLVING MUSIC MEDIA LANDSCAPE

Gareth Paisey, singer of the Welsh indie band Los Campesinos!, is one of the musicians who posted about Pitchfork following the layoff news. His band has gained favorable critiques from the newsletter, however even those with low scores discovered themselves eulogizing the entity.

“There was a period of time where if Pitchfork said something was good, I thought it was good. And if they panned something, I probably wouldn’t bother listening to it,” he says. “I think that speaks to its power — how it was able to push the needle and single-handedly make something seem relevant.”

In 2021, guitarist Yasmin Williams says she was once virtually in a position to surrender her occupation interests when a good assessment from Pitchfork reignited her hope. “I was ready for the next level and it wasn’t happening,” she recollects. Then Pitchfork’s Sam Sodomsky reviewed her album, “Urban Driftwood.”

“Then there’s a flood of press. I really think it’s because of Sam’s review,” Williams says. She says musicians are concerned about the future of the site because “people trust Pitchfork more than other outlets.”

When it comes to his band, Paisey says Pitchfork informed how they were regarded by the public. “We’ve never been a cool band,” he says. “And then for Pitchfork to back us from the start, I think it really did reframe how people thought about us.”

He theorizes independent musicians will lose out on coverage in this new editorial shift.

“This sounds trite, but Taylor Swift isn’t tweeting her disappointment that Pitchfork is closing, right? It’s 5,000-follower emo bands that got a 7.6 review and has been proud of that for the past two years,” he says. “It’s the independent, experimental artists that are going to suffer.”

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Maria Sherman writes about music for The Associated Press. She wrote four freelance articles for Pitchfork between 2016 and 2021.