On Wednesday, Condé Nast announced that Pitchfork is being merged under GQ Magazine.
This announcement comes months after layoffs were announced by related outlets like OkayPlayer, MTV News and Buzzfeed News.
Some of these layoffs have come similarly to Pitchfork’s — under the guise of announcements of “restructuring” from their corporate offices — but have unfortunately seen declines in the viability and livelihood of the platforms.
It is no secret that the entertainment industry has been seeing layoffs on a widespread scale.
In December, it was announced that Spotify would lay off 17% of their employees amid an alleged “tech slowdown” referenced by CEO Daniel Ek.
Q Magazine has ended its legacy after 34 years. NME has halted production of its print edition. Vibe stopped producing its print edition in 2014. Both Paper Magazine and OkayPlayer laid off their respective editorial staff.
Now, the disconcerting trend blazes on in the form of a merge of Pitchfork into GQ Magazine and consequently, the announcements of tons of layoffs.
We are seeing a sharp decline in the number of active music journalism platforms, a troublesome trend not just for music, arts and culture journalists, but also for the musicians and artists who have enjoyed, and need, coverage from these publications.
The Pitchfork merge and the consequential layoffs not only affect music journalists and staff members, but also the artists that the publication has been serving since its mid-1990s conception.
Pitchfork’s History
The publication began as an indie music blog in 1996 in Minnesota. It has become known for its opinionated reviews and recognizable numerical ratings system for some of the most popular albums, EPs and other projects.
For context, Pitchfork designates a score for each project that it reviews. This score comes from the opinions of multiple employees, whose scores all get merged to form an average.
Pitchfork is home to over 28,000 album reviews (as of 2021) and many look to the brand as a baseline to foreshadow how society might potentially process certain projects.
Pay to Play
An unfortunate trend that has been sweeping across the music industry is that of “paid placements” (colloquially referred to as “PR”) through which writers and publicists will offer articles in exchange for financial compensation from artists.
This trend is seeing an upward increase, as the value of traditional music journalists becomes lost in the acquisition and monopolization of some of its most visionary outlets.
Christian Carter-Ross is an independent music journalist who runs “The Melodic Note,” an online music-oriented publication dedicated to highlighting R&B music amongst other genres.
“I hate that people are losing employment. The more you water down music journalism with content creation, it kind of cheapens the craft a little bit,” said Carter-Ross. “You kind of lose the conversation that we need to be having about music.”
“You want to go deep when you talk to people about music — we’re kind of losing the foundations of music journalism when you fire these journalists from Pitchfork or Vibe.”
“I don’t want to make light of what happened, but I wonder if this will push audiences to go more towards independent journalists,” Carter-Ross said.
Although the dissemination of some of music journalism’s most recognizable platforms is disturbing, Carter-Ross hopes the future of music journalism will see writers able to flourish in a more independent industry.
Payola Concerns
Carter-Ross recalls a time growing up in North Carolina where he would see talented artists offer money to DJs in exchange for their music to get played. This is called “payola” and is commonly known to be an unethical process across the industry. If not unethical, it is often inaccessible, another reason why gaining mainstream music success can be so difficult for those without preexisting money, power, or influence.
According to Yahoo News, “57% of music industry creatives come from professional family backgrounds.”
This draws a comparison to the music industry climate that we are seeing right now — we are headed towards a climate in which “pay to play” is becoming normalized through paid placements.
“I hate that there aren’t enough music journalism spaces,” Carter-Ross concluded. “I hate to see it happen that way. I want to see people retire in these roles.”
“It’s not good for music journalism and criticism as a whole,” said Josh Svetz, content coordinator at HipHopDX, who also does freelance journalism as well as artist consultation and strategy.
“With the framing of the messaging, I have pretty much lost all faith in any type of restructuring after seeing what happened with MTV News, OkayPlayer, BandCamp […] the list goes on and on,” Svetzs said.
The future of music journalism may look different than it has in previous decades — many industry professionals foresee a formatical change into a “blog era” where the challenge will look more like figuring out how to monetize content and still preserve the traditional, authentic foundations of music journalism.
“None of these announcements of restructuring have led to something better, or of keeping the old values of what good music journalism was,” Svetz said.
“If they [Pitchfork] are not safe, then nothing is pretty much safe at this point.”