The Death Of Pitchfork

This is not a harbinger of what's to come, this is the last gasp of a dead paradigm.

In other words, record reviews are history.

We needed them. Because there was no way to hear most of the music. We needed guidance before we laid down our cold hard cash. And we got to the point where we trusted certain writers, or at least had the skinny on their viewpoint. And then there was the imprimatur of the publications themselves. "Rolling Stone" had gravitas. As for the magazine sporting that moniker today, it's behind a paywall and is invested in clickbait headlines and they say it's making money, but it's lost all cultural relevance.

Cultural relevance? How do you achieve it?

Via word of mouth.

Which means it's out of control. In other words, the usual suspects, the tastemakers, the gatekeepers, they've lost all power. And on one hand this is fine with the consumer, this has been an evolution since the mushrooming of the internet around the turn of the century. On the other, there's no coherence, no way to make the public aware of great stuff, that they should know about.

This responsibility now lies with the distributors, although they've completely abdicated it. They think it's all about personalization. But people could find the records they wanted to hear in the retail bins, but it was those featured on the endcaps, those that were played in the store, that mattered.

So Spotify, et al, have to promote one track a week. On the homepage. That everyone is exposed to. Maybe have a round robin. One week for Universal, one week for Sony, one week for Warner and one week for independents.

Or maybe it's more than one record. Each of the above four gets to put forth and feature one track a week.

But ideally it would be less. Somewhere between one and three.

And they would be from different genres. This is not like the Top Forty radio of today, all hip-hop and pop. I'm speaking of something more akin to the FM radio of yore, when it was underground and free-form, when it was a cultural meeting place. The records will be featured because people should hear them, need to hear them, not because they will become instant smashes.

So I hear you now, saying you're not interested in most records. Fine, but I know you've got the power of analysis, I know you like to talk about records, I know you like to trash the records you don't like. But when you do this now you're operating in a vacuum, it's just you. But if we were all exposed to the same tracks...

Yes, kind of like a national book club, like Oprah, "Good Morning America," "Read with Jenna." However, it takes much less time to listen to a track than read a book. Not only would the chosen tracks get traction, i.e. listens, we could discuss them amongst ourselves. Worthy left field stuff could blow up.

The dirty little secret is the labels are unable to break new acts. Which are the lifeblood of the music economy. There are almost no bright spots. They keep trying to amplify social media stars to little effect. There needs to be an outside force.

This is not terrestrial radio. More people are going to the homepage of the streaming outlets than are listening to terrestrial radio. If you can find anyone under twenty five who still listens...I can't.

So we need to whittle the chaos down. To comprehensible bites.

Now let's be sure, the labels don't want this, even though they need this. They'll argue over who has more market share. They'll say they've got so many worthy cuts. Maybe Spotify has to pick the track. But Spotify and the labels and the acts must be in cahoots, so that any success can be amplified.

As for Pitchfork... They say there's not enough money in advertising. But if the site were so desirable it could be subscription-based. But it's not that desirable. I prefer Metacritic to Pitchfork anyway. Amazon's book recommendations used to be done by humans. But they found out that the algorithm sold more books. So they fired the human curators. But having said that, there's still a bit of curation left, on the new and noteworthy book level. I'm talking about something like that. However, the spots can't be bought, this can't be advertising.

So Pitchfork started when alternative rock was...an alternative. Now everything is an alternative, nothing is a reaction to anything because there's no context. You don't care about what you don't care about. But having said that, people have a strong desire to find new music, and they can't seem to do this, it's overwhelming.

And forget playlists... That's passive and we're talking active here. We want people to listen and comment, and discuss. Maybe even have a Netflix show once a week or once a month with the featured tracks/acts. This is not personal, but broad-based.

We need to bring the people together. And we do this by pointing them in a certain direction. They're not going to pay for this information. And today it's all about a very few, powerful sites. In music it's Spotify, Amazon and Apple...with Deezer and Tidal and a few others as also-rans. That's a lot of impressions, a lot of screen real estate, all in one place. Believe me, if everybody saw the same track posted on the homepage of any of these sites it would get people to listen.

Then again, it must be conveyed to the public that these tracks are based on their quality, that people need to listen to these acts, that they're just not label priorities.

So some unknown reviewer giving their opinion on an album? Who cares about that. Which is why RottenTomatoes is more powerful than any single critic, it's an average.

But watching an entire movie or series takes a ton of time, most people don't do it. But to listen to a cut? That only takes a few minutes.

Maybe you get to vote, thumbs-up or thumbs-down. And there's a playlist that also stays on the homepage of the tracks with the best rating.

This is not rocket science, this is about thoughts, innovation in a creative business. But today's business is driven more by data than creativity. They've squeezed the soul right out of it. You need some wild thinkers. And the streaming platforms were built by techies, which is the wrong kind of innovation.

I'm talking here about taste, insight, having one's finger on the pulse, knowing it when you hear it. Just like the FM jocks picked their favorite records, we need experts to decide what songs to feature/promote/hype.

But one thing is for sure, record review sites are not coming back, are not going to grow, because word of mouth from a trusted friend is much more powerful. You know where they're coming from. And there's no anointed critic who most people can agree on, they're all faceless.

Music criticism is dead. If it comes back, it will look different.

But rather than try and resuscitate criticism, I'd like to build back the music itself. Think of the acts you found from the Warner Loss Leaders. There's stuff you'd like if you just heard it. But now no one can listen to everything. And too many people promoting this act or that are bought and paid for, and therefore untrustworthy and ignored.

One can argue that the law would prevent collusion amongst the streaming services, choosing the same records. Then again, Springsteen was on the cover of both "Time" and "Newsweek," there can be serendipity.

Then again, most people don't subscribe to multiple services, so it's just what they see on their service of choice.

And instead of printing the manipulated chart numbers, media outlets will print the songs featured this week.

We need to make it easier for the consumer. At the same time we're telling them this music deserves respect, because it's quality work.

We've got to stop lamenting the passage of the past and invest in the future.

There are multiple paths. The above is just one of them.


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