The Day The Music Died

The demise of Pitchfork has brought forth a lot of great thoughts (Ezra Klein, Casey Newton, Peter Hamby) and hand-wringing about what it means for the media business. I wasn’t going to write anything about it because I wasn’t sure I had anything unique to say (and if you read the below maybe you’ll think I don’t). I largely agree with Ezra Klein that life is tough in the middle of media, but mass is tough too; just read Mark Thompson’s CNN manifesto for the challenges facing a global TV operation looking to extend its audience and business to places where the model will probably never approach the existing one in terms of size and profitability.

I too loved Pitchfork, first as a music fan trying to discover new artists, and then as a business person looking to help Pitchfork survive and thrive within Conde Nast’s portfolio. At the end of the day, Pitchfork succumbed to a number of forces, some specific to its corporate home, some of its own creation, and some tied to the upheavals of the music and media businesses.

On the corporate front, at a company scratching and clawing to achieve and maintain profitability, there are only so many bets one can make. Those bets tend to focus on the biggest opportunities and, unfortunately, Pitchfork always seemed too small to be prioritized. Executives and editors at Conde love music (and were obviously big believers in the category when Pitchfork was acquired), but the synergy across the company turned out to be largely tied to celebrity and fashion, not criticism. Celebrity is a scale game, not a literary one.

The independent, anti-establishment vibe was the key to Pitchfork’s voice, but it didn’t make the work any easier for cross-functional teams in subscriptions, events, or product that did lean into the brand.

Supporting the quality of Pitchfork’s writing and multimedia ambitions isn’t a single-revenue stream business and even on the advertising front, despite the best efforts of many talented and dedicated sales folks, major sponsorships and direct sales always felt like a slog. And while the Pitchfork’s reviews and event coverage were popular, the traffic could not support a pure programmatic advertising play. Despite attracting one of Conde's most loyal audiences, Pitchfork was never able to figure out a subscription offering. Is that on Pitchfork or Conde execs? Probably both.?

Of course, the Chicago Pitchfork festival was a key driver of the business, but events are hard to scale and, by the time it came to try to really grow that part of the business, the festival landscape was saturated and had largely consolidated around a few big players. The new events Pitchfork tried sang of indy-cred, but felt small and clearly weren’t meaningful enough to win the day.

Like many musicians who have seen touring and merch become their primary (only?) revenue streams in a world of streaming, music-focused media ended up scrambling to find a new way and I can’t name any music-brand anchored in content that seem to be winning.

Most folks writing about GQ’s absorption of Pitchfork have noted that Spotify’s AI and algorithmic recommendations have replaced the role Pitchfork and music reviewers play in discovery. Spotify playlists are definitely a top place where I find new artists, but the playlists tend to be repetitive and relatively uninspiring. But creating the playlists is essentially free for Spotify (ok, they are investing in AI and compute) and it is hard to compete against free.

SiriusXMU has filled a big role in music discovery for me and, of course, I seek out recommendations from friends. I even have a Discord channel with one friend group focused on music (and other content recommendations). I’m sure there are some great music writers making a go of it on Substack, but they’ve not broken through in a way to come to my attention.?

So, peace out to Pitchfork that through a love of music and a dedication to artists helped me find new things to listen to and bands to follow. Maybe someone will figure out a model to keep humans in the music mix, so we’re not reliant on algorithms to fill our ears, just as they seem to rule our eyes.