The Ledger
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Pitchfork's infamous 0.0 Travis Morrison review forced it to wield authority responsibly
“And unfortunately that was also the point at which I realized when I realized that pitch work could break careers, could like break artists in the bad way.
I was like, yeah, that really gave me pause because the reaction to that, I did not, I mean, I didn't,
E…”
UK music press inspired Pitchfork's vicious early editorial tone
“And that, I think that, that kind of UK sensibility of me, of the UK music press, was one of the things that really influenced me to kind of be cattier or more vicious early on.”
Pitchfork faced zero online competition for indie music coverage in the mid-1990s
“I was very fortunate to be able to establish Pitchfork at a time when there was zero competition. There was nothing on the web for these artists.”
Pitchfork gained mainstream attention precisely because of its hyperbolic editorial style
“If that had just been, you know, a pretty straight face, you know, if it had read like any other music journalism, I don't think people would have even really necessarily noticed us.”
Modern digital media publications struggle to survive without a subscription paywall
“If you don't have a paywall, You're struggling.”
Condé Nast cut Pitchfork's print and film projects over poor ROI
“These were both things that Condé decided weren't worth, you know, the ROI, basically.”
Pitchfork maintains major influence despite the dominance of algorithmic music discovery
“Considering how most people interact with and engage with new music discovery now through algorithms primarily, that it still has significant influence in the world of music journalism and music listeners.”
Pitchfork secured its first advertiser, InSound, for $500 a month
“They asked me to name a price and I, so I went, oh my God, I wonder how much. So I just pulled out the biggest number that I could think of, which was 500 dollars a month.”
Pitchfork broke 5,000 daily readers after publishing its viral Kid A review
“It brought in a staggering amount of traffic. We handily broke that 5000 mark in the day that review came out”
Live music festivals are incredibly high-risk businesses vulnerable to single-point failures
“There is so much overhead that it's also like kind of a delicate dance where all of these things have to just happen just right. You know, you have to have a reasonable artist budget with which you can attract talent that's not going to the competing festivals…”
Pitchfork kept its music festival profitable by deliberately refusing to scale
“By staying mid-sized and not trying to scale up and not trying to compete with the Lollapalooza's and Coachella's and Bonnaroo's we were able to manage to make it profitable, break even. So no, it wasn't a big, it was probably, it might've been 10% of our over…”
Schreiber scaled early Pitchfork by mailing advance promotional CDs to volunteer writers
“Once that started to happen, I started to go, I have so much music here that I can't cover myself. Maybe if I put out, like, you know, a post on the website, I can find other people I can send these CDs to, they can write about it, and maybe we can, like, real…”
Pitchfork was not officially incorporated as a business until 2004
“I don't think we were even incorporated officially until, like, 2004.”
Schreiber funded his move to Chicago by selling CDs on eBay
“I just started selling the stuff that I already had in my collection, kind of like whittling it down and what can I get rid of and what's worth a lot. And through doing that, I made, I don't know, Probably five grand, but I moved to Chicago with that much mone…”