The Pop Corporation

There’s no money in writing about music, and that seems to be a sad fact of the present day. In fact, there’s been no money in it for years, which is a shame as music criticism and opinion struggles to gain a foothold in a period where, honestly, most fans are waiting for marquee releases and get to hear it stream at exactly the same time as reviewers do.

In the past, publications would get advance copies of LPs and write about them before fans got a whiff of a single note. With music being able to be sent digitally now, you’d think it’d be easier than ever for record companies and artists to send promotional materials before release, but it feels like writers have been backed into a corner where they can no longer write about smaller outfits because it just doesn’t generate the clicks thanks to Silicon Valley’s algorithm. And fans are more likely to get a bespoke playlist with more niche music on Spotify, if they have already been listening to niche music.

Smaller bands don’t get the platform, publishers discourage coverage of them, and Taylor Swift and Lil Nas X get more traction, along with transparent hatchet jobs. It’s a funny ol’ time in the world of music and no-one has worked out how to navigate it yet.

With that, Pitchfork is undergoing some changes which doesn’t sound great.

Of course, Pitchfork and it’s very specific marking scores for LPs, is one of the more famous names on the scene, starting in ’96 as a blog from Paul Schreiber who was working in a record shop, covering the stuff that wasn’t really being covered elsewhere. In 2015, Schreiber got the opportunity to sell to Condé Nast, and when someone offers you the kind of money you can buy a house with, in the world of music, it’s probably wise to go for it.

Now, business being business, there’s some rejigging and Pitchfork is merging with GQ, which means a lot of people are losing their jobs, including Pitchfork’s editor-in-chief, Puja Patel. In a sentiment that doesn’t feel right, the news was broken by Anna Wintour. That’s Anna Wintour with a say on a website that probably made Clap Your Hands Say Yeah famous. Two worlds collide, and all that.

“Today we are evolving our Pitchfork team structure by bringing the team into the GQ organisation. This decision was made after a careful evaluation of Pitchfork’s performance and what we believe is the best path forward for our brand so that our coverage of music can continue to thrive within the company,” wrote Wintour.

“Both Pitchfork and GQ have unique and valuable ways that they approach music journalism, and we are exciting for the new possibilities together,” she continued.

Features editor Jill Mapes wrote on Twitter: “I’ve referred to my job at Pitchfork as being on a ferris wheel at closing time, just waiting for them to yank me down. After nearly 8 years, mass layoffs got me; glad we could spend that time trying to make it a less dude-ish place just for GQ to end up at the helm.”

It feels like a sad end to a publication that, while not without it’s faults and some unintentionally hilarious and overwrought reviews, it has been a titan in the music world. With the NME pivoting to being something adjacent to a musical version of the freebie Metro paper, we’re going to have to hope there’s a voice emerging somewhere that can take up the mantle.