Is this the slow-motion death of music criticism?

News of 'Pitchfork' being folded into 'GQ' is another sign of the shrinking space afforded to informed criticism

- Akhil Sood

In 2020, after the online music publication wrote a middling review of her album, American singer-songwriter Halsey wished for the "basement" that they run Pitchfork out of "to collapse already". It turned out to be an accidental 9/11 joke, a faux pas she apologised for soon after. The same year, a large number of Taylor Swift fans-the notorious "Swifties" went after a Pitchfork journalist, harassing and doxxing her, following a largely positive review. One of Pitchfork's most infamous moments is a review, from 2006, of Shine On by Australian garage rockers Jet. The review, assigning a grand score of 0.0 out of 10 for the album, has no text, just an embedded video of a monkey taking a piss. In its own mouth.

For close to three decades, the American website has held an outsize, influential and controversial position within the music industry. They have pivoted from the olden times into the digital streaming era, they have pivoted from their allegedly snarky, elitist snobbery about pop music to a wider, more inclusive, often more "poptimistic" approach, they have pivoted from being an independent publication to being a Condé Nast stepchild. Two weeks ago, news surfaced that Pitchfork would soon be folded into GQ, the popular men's magazine, along with widespread layoffs. It's the same miserable story on repeat every few months: from MTV with its doomed "pivot-to-video", or Vice's music vertical Noisey packing up, the recent downsizing and layoffs at Bandcamp Daily, the publication run by online distribution organisation Bandcamp, and on and on, music media is shrinking by the minute. Journalists are being thrown under the bus, crucial archival material decimated. Nevertheless, Pitchfork had acquired a certain prestige, a reassuring cultural capital built over years of critical engagement, that made it too big to fall. Yet here we are again.