Pitchfork (website) facts for kids

Quick facts for kids
Pitchfork

Pitchfork logo and wordmark
Screenshot of Pitchfork's homepage
Type of site	Online music magazine
Available in	English
Founded	1995; 30 years ago (1995)
Country of origin	United States
Owner	Condé Nast (prior owners, Ryan Schreiber & Chris Kaskie)
Created by	Ryan Schreiber
Editor	Puja Patel
Employees	36
Parent	Condé Nast
Commercial	Yes
Registration	No
Launched	1995; 30 years ago (1995) (as Turntable)
Current status	Active

Pitchfork is an online music magazine from America. It started in 1995 as a small music blog by Ryan Schreiber. Today, a big company called Condé Nast owns it.

Ryan Schreiber began Pitchfork while working at a record store in Minneapolis. The website became known for covering indie rock music. Over time, it grew to include all kinds of music, even pop. In 2015, Pitchfork was sold to Condé Nast. Ryan Schreiber stayed on as editor-in-chief for a few more years. The main offices for Pitchfork are now in One World Trade Center in New York City.

Pitchfork is famous for its daily music reviews. It also reviews older albums and special music collections. Every Sunday since 2016, it publishes reviews of classic albums it hadn't covered before. The site also makes "best-of" lists for albums and songs each year. In the 1990s and 2000s, Pitchfork's reviews were very important. They could help new artists become famous or make it harder for them.

The Story of Pitchfork

Previous Pitchfork logo

In 1996, Ryan Schreiber, who had just finished high school, started the website. He was inspired by fanzines (small, homemade magazines). At first, it was called Turntable and was updated once a month with interviews and reviews.

In May 1996, the site started publishing daily and changed its name to Pitchfork. The name came from a tattoo in the movie Scarface. Ryan Schreiber wrote the very first review for the album Pacer by The Amps.

In 1999, Pitchfork moved to Chicago, Illinois. By 2004, Ryan Schreiber teamed up with Chris Kaskie. They started publishing four full album reviews every day, along with interviews and special articles. This made the website feel more like a proper magazine for the internet. They also added a daily music news section. Pitchfork became popular for covering underground music and for its unique writing style.

Pitchfork also created other websites. Pitchfork.tv launched in 2008, showing music videos and interviews. In 2010, they started Altered Zones, a blog that shared news about underground music. This site closed in 2011. In 2012, Pitchfork launched Nothing Major, a website about visual arts like photography. This site closed in 2013.

On October 13, 2015, Condé Nast bought Pitchfork. Before this, Pitchfork was fully independent, owned only by Ryan Schreiber and Chris Kaskie. After the sale, Schreiber and Kaskie stayed in their roles for a few years.

In March 2016, Pitchfork got a new look. They said the new design would make it easier to browse, read, listen, and watch content. In 2017, Chris Kaskie left the company. Then, in 2018, Ryan Schreiber also stepped down as the main editor. Puja Patel took over as editor-in-chief in October 2018. Ryan Schreiber officially left the company in January 2019.

How Pitchfork Influences Music

Pitchfork's opinions have become very important in the music world. Many people see the site as a guide for what's popular in independent music. Positive quotes from their reviews are often used to promote new CDs and songs.

Some people say Pitchfork helped make bands like Arcade Fire, Sufjan Stevens, and Bon Iver famous. This influence on independent artists is sometimes called "The Pitchfork Effect." Spencer Kornhaber from The Atlantic magazine called Pitchfork "the most influential music publication to emerge in the Internet age."

Here are some examples of Pitchfork's impact:

• Arcade Fire is a band often mentioned as benefiting from a Pitchfork review. After Pitchfork reviewed their album Funeral in 2004, the record label got so many orders that the album ran out of copies for a week!
• Bon Iver became very popular after Pitchfork reviewed his album For Emma, Forever Ago in 2007. Pitchfork was one of the first to praise it. Later, when Bon Iver won a Grammy Award for Best New Artist, Time magazine said the 2007 Pitchfork review was the "indie cred" that helped him become a mainstream success.
• Lee Sargent from the band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah talked about Pitchfork's influence on their first album. He said Pitchfork could "speed up the process" of a band becoming famous, making things happen very quickly.

Website Size and Readers

In 2003, a study showed that Pitchfork had published over 5,500 reviews by 158 different writers. By 2007, the website had 170,000 readers every day.

Criticism of Pitchfork

In the 2000s, some people criticized Pitchfork for focusing too much on independent music, especially lo-fi and less-known indie rock. They felt other genres were not covered enough. The website also had a reputation for being unpredictable, with reviews often depending a lot on the writer.

Some critics also said that Pitchfork sometimes wrote reviews that were meant to cause arguments and get attention. They were accused of being cynical or acting like they were better than others.

The writing style was also sometimes criticized. A 2006 article said the writing was "under-edited" and often "overly flowery." Ryan Schreiber responded by saying he trusted his writers to have their own opinions and styles, as long as they were knowledgeable and insightful.

In 2007, a review of the album Kala by M.I.A. wrongly said that Diplo produced most of the songs. M.I.A. had produced most of them herself. This led to a discussion about how music journalists sometimes assume female singers don't write or produce their own music.

Leaked Music

In August 2006, some albums that were not yet released were accidentally leaked from Pitchfork's computer servers. A person found a folder with over 300 albums, including The Crane Wife by The Decemberists. One album, Ys by Joanna Newsom, was not available anywhere else online before this leak.

Funny Parodies

Because Pitchfork is so well-known, many people have made fun of its style:

• When comedian David Cross was asked for his favorite albums, he instead gave a list of "Albums to Listen to While Reading Overwrought Pitchfork Reviews." This was a joke about Pitchfork's sometimes overly serious review style.
• In 2004, the comedy website Something Awful made a fake Pitchfork front page called "RichDork Media." It made fun of Pitchfork's love for obscure indie bands.
• In 2007, the satirical newspaper The Onion published a story where Ryan Schreiber reviewed "music as a whole," giving it a low score of 6.8.
• The TV show Portlandia had a sketch in 2013 where kids ran a website called "Pitchfork Kids!" They gave a very positive review to a children's music band.

The Pitchfork Review (Print Magazine)

Logo of The Pitchfork Review

In December 2013, Pitchfork started a printed magazine called The Pitchfork Review. It came out four times a year and focused on longer music articles and cool designs. It was a limited edition, with about 10,000 copies of each issue. The magazine stopped being published in November 2016 after 11 issues.

Music Festivals by Pitchfork

Intonation Music Festival

In 2005, Pitchfork helped organize the Intonation Music Festival in Chicago. About 15,000 people came to see 25 different bands perform.

Pitchfork Music Festival

On July 29 and 30, 2006, Pitchfork held its very own Pitchfork Music Festival in the same park in Chicago. More than 18,000 people attended each day. Over 40 bands played at this first festival.

The Pitchfork Music Festival has been held every year since. In 2007, it grew to three days. One day was a special event with the British music festival All Tomorrow's Parties. Famous bands like Sonic Youth and Slint played their classic albums in full. Since 2011, there has also been a Pitchfork Music Festival in Paris, France, during the winter.

How Pitchfork Rates Music

Pitchfork uses different ways to rate music:

• Album reviews get a score from 0 to 10, with one decimal place (like 7.8 or 9.2). This is their main rating system.
• Individual song reviews used to have a star rating. Now, they simply review songs and sometimes label a song as "Best New Track."

In 2003, a study of over 5,500 reviews showed that the average rating for an album was 6.7 out of 10.

Albums Rated 10/10 on Release

Getting a perfect 10.0 score from Pitchfork is very rare. Only a few albums have received this top rating when they were first released. As of May 2021, only 12 albums have ever received a 10.0 on their first release. Some of these reviews have since been removed or changed.

Pitchfork's Best of the Year Lists

Pitchfork creates lists of the best albums and songs each year. Here are some of their top picks:

Album of the Year

Track of the Year

Video of the Year

Pitchfork's Best of the Decade Lists

Pitchfork also makes lists of the best albums and songs from entire decades.

Albums of the Decade

Songs of the Decade

See also

In Spanish: Pitchfork para niños

• The Pitchfork 500