Yep yep yep

I feel like a lot of this memorializing is 10 years too late. Pitchfork shifted hard into semi-mainstream pop and rap when Conde came in, alienating a lot of their old audience without finding a new one. In the aughts, they were regularly taking bands from zero to 60. Hasn't happened in years now.

While I agree with the bulk of the points made here, this line had a distinctly "get off my lawn!" vibe: "This has all helped produce a mass of music fans who don't understand the value of criticism and outright detest being told the things they like might suck." Also, not sure it's entirely true.

Not just among the industry suits. I ran into a post yesterday on r/SonicYouth about the infamous 0.0 review for NYC Ghosts & Flowers and the majority opinion there seemed to be “good riddance to pitchfork and fuck music criticism in general.” It made me sad.

I was thinking last night about how "journalism" as a career is relatively new. It was impossible before the introduction of the printing press, the earliest "newspaper" was published in Venice less than 500 years ago. Maybe it's going to become just as obsolete as typewriter repair work?

The pitchfork Sunday reviews have been the best music writing going for a bit now. This sucks.

music criticism transformed in to label marketing a long time ago. it sucks.

Drove me out of music journalism.

For all those folks who derided rockism (which to be fair could be annoying and ridiculous), how is the unholy marriage of business weasels and pop insipidity working out for you

For all those folks who hated rockism (which to be fair could be annoying and ridiculous), how is the unholy marriage of corporate business weasels and pop insipidity working out for you

'...everybody's a critic and most people are DJs...' Honestly, did music journalism *ever* really matter? Even in the 1970-80s? Wasn't it only ever about helping 'shift units'? I'd like to think was meaningful at some point in my life, but I suspect every generation has the same fantasy.