Preston over at KISSATLanta.com and I are friends, but like most friends, don’t completely see eye to eye on everything. He recently quoted a post by hipsterrunoff.blogspot.com, which officially makes this a blog quoting a blog quoting a blog. God I’m such a dork. In any case, here is the quote:
“I guess the problem with Pitchfork as it relates to 80% of Generation Y is that it is trying to preserve integrity and quality in both music and journalism. However, good journalism and good music aren’t terribly important to a significant sect of young internet users these days. Music should be fresh and free. Online content is usually just a picture, and an easy-to-consume blurb.
Maybe the entire problem with Pitchfork is that they mismanaged their perception. I remember I found out about Pitchfork because it was ‘a place that wrote really pretentious reviews.’ Maybe that worked in the days when it was cool to network with indie record labels by becoming Programming Director at your college radio station, but I’m not so sure about today’s zany landscape. It’s also interesting to think that Pitchfork was probably one of the first places to be universally known as ‘having an American Apparel ad.’ How seriously did you ever take Pitchfork, and when did you give up the desire to have an ultimate authority on ‘music worth listening to’?
Preston’s take on this was, well, he completely agreed with it. Me, not so much. I am in the strange position of being a blogger as well as a journalist for print publications so I have a bit of a different take. Firstly, I have an issue with the last sentence of that quote. We never gave up on the desire to have an ultimate authority on music worth listening to, that focused simply shifted. Pitchfork may not be the end all be all now, it’s the kid with screen name justiceroxmysox that somehow got a bootleg mp3 before you ever heard about it. The idea of exclusivity seems to dictate what is worth listening to instead of purely appreciating good music for what it is. In my interview with Tittsworth we discussed this issue and he had the same viewpoint - although blogs and DJs may not know/admit it, for the most part they’re more concerned about volume of content and availability (or lack thereof) over quality.
On to the subject of Pitchfork itself, if I lump Pitchfork into a larger media genre of music publications like BPM, URB, XLR8R, DJ Mag, etc., they still serve a purpose as much as some of us would like to think they’re becoming irrelevant. Here’s the thing, there is a difference between a review and a critique. A review relies heavily on personal impression, experience with the music and reactions. In other words, it’s subjective. A critique is a more technical approach that incorporates critical analysis based upon, for example, artists in the same genre or similar songs. It’s objective. These magazines have always represented a knowledgeable base of exploration and criticism that can’t generally be found in our sound-byte blog posts. Besides, I still think that tactile is valued over what we can just read on screen. When a publication has a finite number of pages to print and they decide your band is important enough to put on the cover, that carries an incredible amount of weight.
Granted, our generation might have shorter attention spans, but how much of a shame is it to dismiss the music publication and throw our hands up and say, “well, it doesn’t seem that important, we’re only interested in pictures and links.” Are we that dumbed down? Besides, lots of publications have taken the steps to integrating several types of media as well as many of the ideas mentioned in the above quote. URB.com boasts a blog where writers are free to be somewhat reactionary and RCRD LBL combines the Pitchfork news mentality with free downloads. Give us a little more credit - we’re still more than point and click. A picture is worth a thousand words, and I still want to read some of them.
