The phrase indie has misplaced quite a lot of its credibility over time. A time period that’s presupposed to sign nonconformity is now a bland aesthetic label, evoking microbrews and mason jars. Many supposedly indie establishments have allied with companies, akin to when Pitchfork, the music-reviewing web site identified for catapulting obscure bands and tearing down large ones, was purchased by Condé Nast, the shiny media firm, in 2015.
Nonetheless, this week’s information that Condé Nast is making drastic adjustments at Pitchfork highlights that “indie” continues to signify one thing essential—and one thing frighteningly endangered, particularly within the music world.
Yesterday, Condé Nast’s chief content material officer, Anna Wintour, introduced plans to merge Pitchfork into the boys’s journal GQ. “This resolution was made after a cautious analysis of Pitchfork’s efficiency and what we imagine is the most effective path ahead for the model in order that our protection of music can proceed to thrive throughout the firm,” she wrote in a workers memo. On social media, lots of the website’s key writers and editors, a few of whom had been on workers for greater than a decade, introduced they’d been laid off. A lot remains to be unknown about Pitchfork’s future, however music followers have cause to fret we’re dropping an important tradition publication of the twenty first century.
I’ve been checking Pitchfork roughly every day for the reason that early 2000s, when it caught my consideration by bashing my favourite album. The heavy-metal band Software had melted my high-school mind with Lateralus, which Pitchfork rated a 1.9 on the location’s 10-point scale. The assessment was largely written within the satirical mode, from the perspective of a fictional 14-year-old mall employee who thought angrily of his boss whereas listening to Software’s darkish riffs. In different phrases, Pitchfork was straight attacking teenage fanboys like me. However the critic’s descriptions of every track confirmed he had listened carefully. I used to be offended—but additionally intrigued that somebody may hear what I heard and have such a unique take.
Numerous my era’s music followers have an analogous story to inform, about being drawn to the location for its voice, rigor, and at-times-brutal candor. Based by the record-store clerk Ryan Schreiber in 1996, Pitchfork sought to be Rolling Stone or Spin for the dawning web period—and a few mixture of timing and tone made it stand out amid a crop of comparable internet zines. Quickly it was synonymous with a bigger cultural wave, “indie,” outlined by heartfelt, idiosyncratic acts akin to Sufjan Stevens, Joanna Newsom, and Bon Iver. These artists got here to be hip symbols, however Pitchfork’s painstakingly written critiques centered on music as artwork, not trend. Its integrity was demonstrated by its willingness to trash its former darlings—or, one way or the other extra damningly, give them a lukewarm, low-7 assessment.
[Read: Pitchfork, the reluctant men’s magazine]
The Millennial indie wave receded within the 2010s, partly due to mainstream absorption (all these microbreweries), partly due to political critique (did indie simply imply “white”?), and largely due to expertise. Streaming platforms akin to Spotify rendered out of date one of many basic goals of document reviewing: describing music that listeners couldn’t simply hear for themselves. However as tastes and consumption strategies shifted, Pitchfork developed whereas sustaining its core proposition, even after Condé Nast’s takeover. It expanded to additional cowl hip-hop, metallic, pop, dance, new classical, and jazz. This diversification introduced backlash—however most readers, confronted with unfamiliar artist names each time they open the location, know that the accusation that Pitchfork offered out to pop is nonsense.
The irony of Pitchfork is that though it has lengthy been considered a keeper of cool, the location itself has by no means been significantly cool; one admits sheepishly to studying it. This isn’t simply due to its popularity for snobbery and its typically exasperating prose. It’s additionally as a result of to soak up the logic of Pitchfork is to imagine within the authority of every particular person’s ears and mind. Saying you’re a Pitchfork individual might be mistaken for saying you are taking its opinions as your individual, when ideally it simply means that you really want a discerning companion for making your individual discoveries and judgments.
Recently, the location’s beliefs have come to look extra radical. The streaming ecosystem tends to advertise music primarily based on notions of utility (is that this track good to work out to?) and identification (does this band signify you?). However music critics argue that songs matter for causes—originality, magnificence, that means—that aren’t so simply categorizable. Maybe because of this stans (followers who present cultlike loyalty to their artists) deal with Pitchfork like a referee, stacking their artist’s Pitchfork scores towards these of rivals’ throughout social-media flame wars. Such stans will typically rail towards Pitchfork as being elitist, however it’s clear that they, and plenty of different listeners, crave an clever arbiter in an period when music tradition is so deeply formed by algorithms, tribalism, and superstar.
How Pitchfork’s independence can survive a merger with GQ is hard to think about. Although a storied writer of nice journalism, GQ is basically allied with the mainstream cultural trade. Celebrities have proven a skinny pores and skin for criticism within the web period, and so {a magazine} that depends on touchdown artists as cowl stars is hardly incentivized to publish hard-hitting critiques. Plus, will a males’s journal help Pitchfork’s latest diversification, which has refreshingly upended the boys’ membership that dominated music criticism for many years? Maybe Condé Nast’s reshuffling is only a behind-the-scenes organizational change—however then once more, a variety of the writers and editors who made Pitchfork what it was have now been dismissed.
The music trade’s future actually appears a little bit drearier. Day-after-day, my e-mail inbox is full of pitches from publicists for gifted, under-covered musicians who would profit from media consideration. Nobody outlet may hope to guage all of the songs that come out each week—however Pitchfork has made an unimaginable effort to hear broadly, hear severely, and champion the underdog. Music advice will fall, ever extra, to software program constructed with opaque motives. Or it would fall to particular person influencers (on TikTok, Substack, and elsewhere) constrained by sources and attain. Right now there are extra songs to take heed to than ever earlier than. Why does it really feel like there are fewer and fewer locations to speak neatly about them?
