we're reporting on other music sites now?

hang on a review site where users can actually assign ratings?... what a terrible idea!

@heck

This is interesting on so many levels, so yeah.

If this means I can finally tell that dude that writes hip hop reviews he’s a hack I support it

Screw em.

They pretentiously loved themselves so much they thought the world would line up to read their articles and content as if they were generational poets.

Now that they’ve become irrelevant they finally want to embrace social media interactions two decades after their competitors?

No thanks.

can't wait to tell the p4k comment sections about grotesque

I couldn't care any less about this if I tried.

-- They pretentiously loved themselves so much they thought the world would line up to read their articles and content as if they were generational poets.

For a time, that was true, but it seems that it isn't anymore. Nowadays, music is everywhere and people don't really need media like Pitchfork to tell them what to listen to. In fact, it's people that need to talk about the stuff they listen to.

Which brings the question: is music reviewing still relevant?

Imho, it still is for reasons that go beyond "professional" criticism and the production of economic value for the sake of it.


-- I couldn't care any less

Normally, I would be on the same boat, but what pushed my buttons was an article I read in a Greek news medium

http://www.kathimerini.gr/culture/music/563909626/ekdimokratismos-i-pligma-stin-kritiki/

Its title has the journalist wondering whether Pitchfork's plan will democratise music criticism or degrade its quality, a rhetorical question by itself, because Sputnik - which is not mentioned in any of the aforementioned pieces - has been answering this question for the past 20+ years.

At least Sputnik works because there is good counterbalance between reviewer and audience; reviews are not centralized to a monolithic panel of reviewers and there is expectation that reviews are fallible and subject to critique (good and bad).

i'm so glad the king has allowed the peasants to prove themselves worthy of their presence. you should be grateful!

@Christbait

Precisely.

Hipsters are a scourge on humanity,

I give it 7 minutes.

itll never catch on

honestly i doubt anyone truely cares about pitchfork anymore. they had their heyday but their attitude has driven a lot of people off. plus the rumors of them being paid under the table to give certain albums high scores really didn't help.

"plus the rumors of them being paid under the table to give certain albums high scores really didn't help."

I mean considering some of the shit they've given high scores to, that wouldn't surprise me at all. There were some ratings that went beyond, "oh you pretentious contrarian snob" into, "how much money did they cram in your ears to get this rating?"

My input is that they delete the entire website

yeah, I haven't visited that site in the longest time because I was put-off by the pretentious vibe of much of the writing. Last time I was around, much of their schtick shifted from 'we are superior due to our all-knowing fountain of indie music history knowledge' to 'oh wow pop is now the greatest of all the genres' - which, if that total 180 doesn't show you they were paid off, idk what would, lol

I know it's cool to hate pitchfork, and fair enough, they're pretentious douches, but I find a lot of their ratings pretty accurate and I've found a lot of great music because of that relic of a site.

So they're pretty much rotten tomatoes for music now?

Can't say I've ever even been on Pitchfork lmao. Always heard bad things, no use for it tbh.

Sputnik/p4k collab incoming

“If this means I can finally tell that dude that writes hip hop reviews he’s a hack I support it”

if this means I can tell the dude who reviewed Belong’s last album and spent 90% of it talking about the legacy of My Bloody Valentine instead of, you know, the fucking album that he was supposed to be reviewing that he’s an idiot and needs to learn that there is indeed such thing as too much context, then I support it.

rym has destroyed both sput and pitch

it's not even close

We're at the top of our game wym

rym suck in terms of community, sput is still where it's at
database wise rym blows sput out of the water, but it's not hard to add something to sput's database.

they are very big babies about a lot of stuff on RYM; your comments can vanish for basically nothing, tho with how many comment sections descending into shitshows i do kinda get it. still!


cheq grotesque yea

yall straight hating in here damn.

..."there is indeed such thing as too much context"

ah yes, this was a major issue back in the day too. A lot of their writing descended into impenetrable history lessons with a huge emphasis on societal context (like seriously some of the tangents were unbelievable), trying to make every single release sound like the most important statement to ever happen, or completely worthless because it failed to deliver that expectation. Like, sometimes it ain't that deep. Any chance you could provide an idea of what the album your reviewing actually sounds like?

Reminded of that notorious Lateralus review

https://web.archive.org/web/20150716064402/http://whirrhatespitchfork.tumblr.com/