Behind the "scene" of Pitchfork Media
By Jen Kessler, Entertainment Staff Writer
April 5, 2008 | 9 p.m.
PitchforkMedia.com, the Internet’s most popular independent music publication, is an internationally acclaimed force with the ability to shake, rattle and roll the entire music industry as it marches around with an enormous gaggle of loyal fans in its wake.
Speakeasy had the opportunity to glimpse the inner workings of this media mogul through a conversation with Pitchfork’s Associate Publisher, Chris Kaskie. For a full transcription of the interview, click here.
Pitchfork slinked quietly into a corner of the World Wide Web by way of a relatively unremarkable birth in 1996. A young and decidedly broke Ryan Schreiber, founder and editor-in-chief, was pursuing ways of integrating himself in the music scene and using his parents’ basement in Minneapolis, Minn., as a headquarters.
“[Schreiber] decided he wanted to figure out a way to meet bands, interview bands and get free music, and he didn’t have any money to start a print magazine, so he decided to do something on the Internet,” Kaskie said. “So he started up the site at first in order to get band reviews and whatnot and get on guest lists and stuff, and then it just kept growing.”
Schreiber accommodated steady growth for a few years, amassing a collection of contributors who wrote for the site for free and eventually packing up for Pitchfork's move to Chicago in order to fully devote himself to the site. Kaskie called 2001 a "table-setting year" for Pitchfork, as it saw a substantially large jump in traffic after publishing a Radiohead review, and seedlings of business began to take root. Schreiber garnered more writers and began to pay them where he could, and in 2003, he decided that the continual growth of the site called for a few full-time employees. Kaskie was hired to man the controls of the business aspects of the site, and shortly thereafter, Scott Plagenhoef was brought on as the associate editor-in-chief.
“When Ryan made the decision to turn it from a hobby into more of a company, the goals went from just getting by to making sure we could put out some of the best music criticism out there,” Kaskie said.
Success in this vein, it seems, has been abundantly achieved. Today, Pitchfork reigns as the most popular independent music publication on the Internet, catering to hundreds of thousands of viewers each day. The site is divided into five sections: News, Features, Forkcasting, Best New Music and Reviews. The actual, sharp-tongued record reviews usually play second fiddle to the accompanying numerical rating of the album, which is determined on a 10-point decimal scale, with 10.0 being the highest score. A sixth section, Pitchfork TV, is slated to launch April 7, 2008, amidst much anticipation.
"I think it’s going to be an incredible thing to see how they pull it off," said Sean Moeller, founder of Daytrotter.com, a well-known music media site. "I think it’s a response to the atmosphere that’s been created by, well, basically by them…I think they’re always going to do what they do, but perhaps this will lead them into a different direction that’s even better for Pitchfork. It’s going to be a hard move; you’re talking about a lot more expenses, you’re talking about a lot more effort -- a lot more work -- to put together a TV station on the Internet. It’s quite an undertaking, but I hope it works. I think it’ll be great. I think everybody’s hoping it’ll work. It’s their move, it’s their attempt to I guess be king at something else now."
Eighteen full-time staffers comprise the cogs in the managerial machinery at Pitchfork, and they reel in content penned by 50 to 60 writers who are spread across the globe. Those 50 to 60 project-by-project writers are responsible for the Review and Feature portions of the site and are given a fair bit of license to saturate their articles with their typically impassioned opinions.
“For the most part, it’s the writer’s opinion, and then all the editors have to make sure what is happening is that Pitchfork sort of agrees with their stance,” Kaskie said. “Not necessarily if it’s good or bad, but if we can stand behind what they’re putting out.”
Keeping tabs on such a widespread writing base can prove to be an exceedingly difficult task, and as Pitchfork continues to burgeon, the site has taken several steps to regulate issues that spawn from this. All the writing that is generated in the News section is done “in house,” as is all of the Forkasting, which is the audio/video blog section of the site.
In the 12 years since its inception, Pitchfork has risen to a position of ample influence in the independent music scene by way of deft, zealous writing, well-executed business decisions and an exceedingly loyal fan base that seems to multiply rapidly. Often toted as “tastemakers” of the generation, the site has a tendency to determine which acts will prosper and which will fail miserably in the tenacious world of the music industry. The site is prone to onslaughts of backlash for the sizable power it wields and the ways in which said power is used. Reviews on the site are oftentimes absolutely scathing, and it has come to be fact in the industry today that a poor rating on the 10-point Pitchfork scale can single-handedly end a musical career.
“We definitely like the idea of being a tastemaker, but the only reason we’re considered that is because we’re directing a bunch of loyal readers who are loyal to our site,” Kaskie said. “You obviously have a responsibility to make sure that you’re doing well, but the site has always just been honest with what it likes and with itself. It’s up to people to put how much weight they want to put into what we say. In some cases, some people think it’s the end-all, be-all, while other people don’t think it matters.”
While many artists such as Liz Phair and Travis Morrison (who have both put out records earning a hefty 0.0 rating) have been bitterly spurned by abysmal Pitchfork ratings, the site has also done more than its fair share in bolstering formerly no-name bands to considerable fame. The back-story for the immensely popular Canadian indie group Arcade Fire is a well-sung tale; the band’s debut album, Funeral, received a 9.7 rating from Pitchfork, which immediately propelled the band from obscurity to prominence.
"They do a lot of good for people, and if people get bad reviews on there, they do a lot of bad for people," Moeller said. "But that’s just kind of the nature of being the most powerful criticism site in indie rock and roll."
Schreiber’s penchant for music that slipped onto the Internet 12 years ago as a manifested hobby has grown into an absolute media giant. After years of gathering momentum and notoriety, Pitchfork now finds itself with the inadvertent ability to lasso millions of readers and throw their collective weight around, both breaking and boosting artists and bands the world over.
Whether or not the power Pitchfork has is excessive or abused is a question that has been and will forever be debated amongst “hipsters” and “indie kids” everywhere. The fact remains, however, that the site harbors no fear of undiluted honesty, even when that honesty comes off as abrasive. This fearlessness has secured Pitchfork’s spot as sovereign of today’s independent music industry.
"Pitchfork is great," Moeller said. "You can love it, and you can hate it, and I think everybody does a little bit of both. It’s the same with anything that’s kind of the king, I guess. There’s always that pull between ‘they’re amazing’ and ‘I can do without.’ I don’t know anybody that’s in the music industry who doesn’t check Pitchfork three or four times a day, whether they like it or they don’t like it, and that’s just a sign of something that works."
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