junkmedia.org (or stylusmagazine.com) vs. pitchforkmedia.com is there a winner?

I've only been to Junkmedia a couple of times, and it was a few years ago, I think because they had an interview with Sam Prekop or something. I don't remember being terribly impressed, but I guess I'll check it out again.

I admit my perspective may be skewed from this board.

Cokemachineglow
http://www.cokemachineglow.com/

Indieworkshop.com
http://indieworkshop.com/news/

Prefix magazine
http://www.prefixmag.com/

30music.com
http://www.30music.com/

e.g they broke the news of the upcoming Books album first.

what about nude as the news. i used to love it. it's updated not too frequently. i still like the clear layout.

there is also delusions of adequacy. very indiecentric. don't know too many artists. which doesn't mean anything as i am not too much thrilled by any of the new bands of the last couple of years.

tiny mixtapes is another indie news/reviews site. i like that you get all reviews of a band on one page.

I like Dusted. I'll admit I've never read Junkmedia. Does everyone in the country need to write about these same bands? If people start new webzines, they should go to the far corners of the earth, not cover Animal Collective and the Arcade Fire. Someone should start a webzine that only covers swamp music, and just write about that like they've got five hours to live. Then the next guy who wants a zine should do, I dunno, alp horns. Anything but this indie coverage of bands that only sell < 50k records in the first place.

i'd forgotten about dusted and had accidentally deleted the bookmark a while ago... so glad to be reminded of it.

Dusted I hugely admire but dammit they need a search function! I always feel bad that I don't check them more when I've had a look.

From Prefix today

V/A: DFA - Compilation No. 2
Compilation No. 2
label: DFA
rating: 4.0

by John MacDonald

Alright, let me just get this out of the way: I don’t like dance music -- not at all. My tolerance for BPMs and glow sticks extends no further than the circumstance of a pill of ecstasy. Boards of Canada and Manitoba get props, but my sympathy ends there [etcetera]

I'd actually written them off long before after their review of 'Berlinette', but reading it again it's not quite as wretched as I thought before... it still reads like the underinformed opinion of someone whose knowledge of 'dance' starts with 'Fat of the land' and ends with The Crystal Method though. Can't see a good reason to go back yet. Fuck 'em.

I haven't really given Junkmedia much attention really. I tend to measure the worth of a site by the amount of reviews of stuff I've heard of/stuff I don't know. That one looks ok, I don't remember it being that way last time I passed.

Brainwashed seems even more Wire than The Wire! It's definitely in my bookmarks but it's not a daily read. Much admired though.

e.g

Almost Cool
http://www.almostcool.org/mr/mrindex.html
updated each Friday

Funprox
http://www.funprox.com/index.asp

Leonard's Lair
http://www.leonardslair.co.uk/
Updated Friday evening [UK] time

Opus
http://www.opuszine.com/

However I *adore* it when said publications rip into well-deserving-of-scorn British hypes. Living in the land of such Gods as Kasabian it's somewhat reassuring that all is not lost.

British music journalisim is still largely fucked and way in thrall to the great old NME/MM axis of yore unfortunately. I'll read the BBC web reviews but that's about it really for the UK.

Just to be clear, I haven't really checked out Junkmedia, so please don't take what I said as a diss on any one webzine.

I think the webzines are competitive with some of the print magazines. Print mags, like alt-weeklies, can fall into boring patterns. And I still don't get why Pitchfork is obnoxious when, say, everything I've read in Blender is titties and binge drinking.

I need to start reading Stylus more. I've enjoyed what I've read so far. Maybe I should even try to write for them...

As for PFM, it's the same deal as everyone else has mentioned.

when i am a rich and fabulous brazillionaire i will start my own magazine.

ps...dusted search function and redesign coming in a month or so...

certainly popmatters must be considered here, unless yr talking about news and stuff, in which case i'll shut up

actually i'll shut up anyway

tangents (it's personal and from the uk) and perfect sound forever (every two months with great off-the trodden paths music) should be mentioned as well in this category.

I prefer PlayLouder.

SORRY RYAN.

i don't think we want to be the next PFM, as DJ Martian said, but thanks for the nod.

i know we don't cover the widest range of music, but we are actively trying to fix that. actually, we have a new site launching soon and it will be more equally focused on music, books, and film.

i'm not trying to be the next PFM, i'm just writing to write about what i love. if other people like it (which our numbers have gone up recently) that's great. but i don't really think we will be eclipsing the big boys anytime soon.

i have previously linked to the site on my blog, the news section in particular is much faster than the tortoise speed of Pitchfork.

in reference to the Pitchfork comparison it was primarily made as you update the site regularly during the week and cover music released on independent labels.

i really had a hard time coming up with something, and although i'm not really fond of it, people seem to remember it. so i guess in a way that works. but i understand what you are saying.

i actually remember when you had us linked... i was sad to see we weren't on our list the last time i checked.

The editors have relatively similar tastes, but stylus swoons for acts like Junior Boys or Nellie McKay. They even share a lot of the same editors (plagenhoef, pemberton). I check both of them daily, so I glad they both exist, but I'd trust PF over Stylus in a head-to-head.

I never trust AMG new music reviews (cf. Aberfeldy), but they're the obvious source for background info. And I like Metacritic, too, just to see what's "hot" or whatever. And I like tinymixtapes, too (I'm preparing my first submission right now! too exciting.)

don't mean to whine to you.

All Music Guide = the largest database of album reviews on the web
http://www.allmusic.com/

Also known for their completely botched website relaunch - that has poor usability and numerous user experience issues.

todd's done a great job of bringing on talented, established writers like Miccio, Rollie, and now Matt Cibula, plus he's made the wise decision in general of not hiring a bunch of like-minded listeners, which i think is a trap Pitchfork fell into for awhile (seriously, i figure 65% of the people in America who actually like Animal Collective write for pfork). there's just a ton of room on stylus for differences in perspective and taste, where you can have a true-school badass rock 'n' roll chick like Clem Bastow alongside knowledgeable indie dudes like Todd Hutlock and Ian Mathers.

you don't know how many college students i get requesting to write for the site (..."my interestes?... well, i like almost anything on SubPop... and Death Cab).

http://rateyourmusic.com/
a user centric database driven design that works.

I have a name for these people: Indie Rock Robots

yo chris, was Travistan one of the albums where Ryan had a chat?

Actually no, although I wavered between a 0.0 and a 1.0.

My boy writes for Cokemachineglow, but overall I think that site suffers from being too Canadian.

By contrast of fanbase, I know a number of people who read Pitchfork regularly (all claim to hate it, but need it to survive, it seems). Stylus wise, I know one DJ who reads daily but he's also the type to import German vinyl and chat about boxsets. I don't know what that means, exactly.

it's not supposed to be about competition, right?

anyway, via this thread, my apologies to todd for delay in sending my stypod article; as you might have surmised from my blog, life is involuntarily hectic at the moment. i'll try and get it over to you at some point next week.

1. "Pitchfork (content, design, particular article) sucks."
2. "Pitchfork has a lot of money / influence."
3. "Pitchfork doesn't pay / treat writers well."

There's already enough information on ILM for anyone to form a reasonable opinion on any of these subjects.

I was never interested in exposing that cross-section of Pitchfork's *billing* (not revenue) sheet, and it sucks that it's come out, because it's led to a lot of totally ignorant people mouthing off about the site being "rich" (as if it's a bad thing) and "corrupt." Clearly the people in question are jealous and frustrated - and who wouldn't be, Ryan wrote his own ticket - but I have no idea how anyone could care so much about Pitchfork's success versus, say, Blender, which is about as recent and (arguably) authoritative in tone (and a far easier target at that).

If you think Pitchfork's making a lot of money, consider that their monthly revenue is less than the cost of a full-page ad in Blender (and not even a quarter of the cost of one in Spin).

And that gets into a whole bunch of crap I've said elsewhere in here, two or three times, about PFork having to answer for indie insecurity and paranoia and whatever other bullsh*t such a large part of their audience is so saddled with. Put yourself in Ryan's shoes: you pull two or three all-nighters a week, you put up a sh*tload of content every day, people all over the world are checking it every morning, and yet all you hear from the community you sought to lend...if not a voice, then a central repository of information, is, "F**K PITCHFORK CORRUPT HACKS." The only negativity Ryan's earned or engendered is from writers he's dismissed or inexperienced ones he's hired. Those those moves are all his call - it's his site - and that's fair game. But the audience has no business pissing and moaning about the site's finances, that's ridiculous. If you're uncomfortable with a few dollar signs, stop reading it - it's no different from not buying Rolling Stone anymore, or Spin or whatever.

I think the real issue is the (better part of the) audience's unconquerable insecurity. The problem isn't Pitchfork, it's the people who not only define themselves by the music they listen to, but worry about whether or not said music is "in." These fashion victims - and to be fair everyone's a fashion victim at some point in their youth, sometimes for their whole lives - they've started to resent Pitchfork's popularity because it reduces the music they want to believe is "cool" to what it is - the coin of the realm - and causally, Pitchfork forces them to reconsider their personal politics. "OMG I MUST CHECK THE CURRENCY OF MY SUBCULTURE TODAY" is a pretty shallow impulse to wake up with every morning. Even people who understand all this explicitly *still* read the site, so, it might touch on the larger question of internet addiction (and that other post of mine about the low cost of sites, daily updates and free dissemination killing print as an option for underground entertainment coverage).

You can look to Almost Famous for nostalgia but there's also that Foundation/Blind skateboard road-flick Barbarians at the Gate, which impresses me more and more the older I get. It's an ode to the idea of "labels" spending money on artists, paying for the kind of environments that nurture creativity (destructive or not). It's an old story, but clearly there's no investment in that coming from the big five at an artist level, so there's less than nothing left when it comes to journalists. You know, nobody's hanging out in the studio, following the progression of the band, charting it, telling/making the story poetic/dramatic in print, so all you get is face.

Not that I'm suggesting we can all pick up stakes and go back to the days of Crowe/Bangs/etc., but the 'Net's made it so much more impossible. What do labels need from journalists today but pull quotes? The longview that used journalists as conduits/messengers to/for fans is dead, and the only positive is that places like Pitchfork can say whatever they want without fear of jeapordizing that kind of relationship. The advertising makes up for whatever money is lost to that relationship, but the relationship itself has considerable cultural/literary/historic advantages that would water pop music more than easily traded cash.

Pitchfork has a handful of good writers, but it seems like most of the writers on there have been brainwashed by some sort of Pitchfork style manifesto that forces them to overwrite, act snide about things they know little about, and generally annoy the hell out of me.

Stylus is unfortunately hellbent on transforming itself into Pitchfork.

I kind of like Cokemachineglow - it doesn't seem as doctrinaire indie (or pop) as some of the other sites and the writing doesn't seem as uptight.

i whole heartedly agree. they have some great writers but many definitely fall into the above mentioned. that said, to the writers posting here. I like the site. i will continue to read it (not that you care), i/we/people are allowed to note what they like/dislike about the site.

it's important to have multiple sites to present a varying degree of opinions, I think what mr. ott describes as jealously and insecurity is more concern over the overbearing influence of pitchfork, it seems perhaps unknowingly to have transformed itself into the initial media it was rallying against. this is of course not entirely true, but the power in sales/indie thought/hype that pitchfork controls is a little too dangerous. yes most people here form their own opinions and people like what they like, but pitchfork does steer people in the direction of people they like and it works to a level perhaps even MORE significant than a page in spin or blender b/c people respect, turn to pitchfork. this is why i'm happy to see sites like Stylus growing in readership respect. it's important not to have one tyrant online music mag voice that dictates all....

If music criticism is being run by people whose music collections are a series of folders on their hard drives - and it's getting that way - are we just kidding ourselves about physical media? When is it time to give up the ghost of Bands Putting Out Records and Wearing the Right Clothes? CDs have always been Digital Audio Files - nothing has changed but their presentation, or lack thereof - so there's a real man-behind-the-curtain element to the whole thing. We're in a transitional phase (this is something Jason Gross talked about on our site recently), and we've got nothing to make it easier, no precedent for how to discuss or more importantly build/promote/identify a music scene when it's all open source. My generation and obviously the one ahead of me have a lot of hangovers in this respect, but within a relatively short period of time someone's going to - has to - figure out a way to make people feel the same way about a file folder as we always have about records.

hahahahaha, that's a good one!

What kind of bands do you have in mind? Jazz/experimental? Do you have any examples from last year? I review a lot of shit nobody cares about, maybe I can help.

OMG now that is intentionally funny. Chris, I feel that way all the time!

Well, that's just how it appears to this outsider. In reality they probably have regular staff meetings on how to differentiate themselves from PFork, but in any case they seem to have caught the same overwriting virus and suffocating indie attitude.

xpost

You're welcome!

-- jaymc (jmcunnin...), January 20th, 2005.

Pitchfork's pros seemed kinda obvious to me, but they are an larger reader base and name recognition. I mean, I was at a Sixtoo show last year talking to DJ Signify and he mentioned my name out loud and some guy goes "HOLY SHIT ARE YOU ROLLIE PEMBERTON FROM PITCHFORK!?!?" This was clearly not from Stylus. I'm not sure if that's a pro.

Although I think he stopped liking me when I mentioned that I loved Beanie Sigel. He assumed I'd have a strict anti-thug stance, I guess.

I think Dusted is great, just to make that 100% clear.

"Does everyone in the country need to write about these same bands?"

Now, I know from what else he said Chris doesn't mean it this way, but when I read I think, "So if someone else reviews a record first then I'm just shit out of luck? Huh?" Next thing you know the, say, Can albums get reissued and none of us say anything because so much has already been said.

Like I said, I know that's not where Chris was going with the idea, but it's something to think about. Someone else (that I'm too lazy to look up) posted something to the effect that really, since they all review the same _basic_ stuff what you need to do is pick one you like and rely mostly on it, which makes sense to me.

Oh, and when trying to talk about why a website/magazine/whatever is reviewing/not reviewing something and so on and so forth, never forget the more prosaic issues at hand; is anyone willing to review it? Does anyone have a copy (digital or otherwise)? Does it ever get done? Etc, etc.

Personally, my relationship with Pitchfork as a reader was very similar (albeit more recent) than mine with NME online; first I read it avidly (all these great bands I've never heard of!), then I read it grudgingly (eh, nobody else writes about this stuff (which _always_ means you're just not reading widely enough)), and then finally I just went cold turkey (jesus, my once-reliable source just gave hyperbolic props to another band I don't like. Shit.). We'll always have the Wrens, though.

How many times this year did you read that story about how Brian Eno invented ambient music because he was stuck in a hospital bed and his buddies forgot to turn the radio up? My count is like twenty.

I don't want some panel of judges to assign reviews to the whole country, but it makes you appreciate new perspectives when you can find them - and most publications feel they have to publish a "definitive"/standalone review that is forced to cover certain bases. (I'm guilty of playing into this too.)

Oh and maybe I'm sorry for that smug/belittling comment. My misreading is legendary.

It'd be great if some other enterprising person decided to try something like this. (Aside: I miss the FT FGs.)

Ott (so many Chrises, we use last names): Well, when I think of Spiritualized I think fondly of the fact that I bought Ladies And Gentlemen... sound unheard because of the review I found a NME.com (I'm terrified to go back and re-read it, in case it's horrible!). And whenever I pop in the Meadowlands or Secaucus, I'll remember that before pfork I hadn't heard of them; mind you, I didn't "believe the hype" and order it off of Amazon until Unterberger's Stylus review went up. But they were the closest thing I could think of to an analogy off the top of my head.

Dahlen: The problem of covering the very basics is always going to be with us, I fear, and I'm broadly sympathetic to what you're wishing for; I just wanted to point out the flipside. Personally as far as reviewing weird shit I try to get Todd to send me whatever hasn't gotten taken from the promo pile every so often, but then there's the problem of how exactly do I review (for example) Argentinian ska (Matt Cibula rules this thread) when I've never heard it before this album? Not insurmountable, certainly, but a problem.

As a pop writer, I don't particularly find Pitchfork's attempt to cover chart pop particularly convincing, largely because I don't quite think the PF audience is ready for the same level of incorporation (assimilation) as Stylus is. I appreciate the effort that's clearly been made to widen the horizons of the typical PF reader, but in the kind of geminal state of the project, there's this sort of defensive distance in a lot of the writing on WAtW, and it seems to be a bit behind the times a lot of the time.

That is to say, "Yes, I would love to participate again, and perhaps even on a semi-regular basis, you betcha."

Please don't democratise me, I'm scared.

a wise sage man

Junkmedia I'm liking alot right now but I write for them so go figure.

And pfork is pretty much a necessary evil. I can't stand the tone and posturing, but there are a few bits of good writing here and there and it covers bands that I care about. I'm not sure the redesign was worth the time/money they put into it.

Stylus has a greater variety of content outside straight reviews, I read it every once in a while, but the reviews themselves aren't a great deal better than PFork's.

But I'm not a big follower of music crit anyway, so it could be that I'm just missing the boat. For the most part, I find individual pieces on music have less readable content than pieces on film or literature. Too often they read like someone was just trying to fill space and couldn't find a whole lot to say about an album.

I may be be dating myself here, but I think that there is a DIY belief system at work at Splendid that values, in sort of the way K Records did as a label, the fact that anyone who feels the creative urge can make and record music. Splendid validates that by writing about anything and everything that arrives through the mail slot, diarrhea on a disc or masterpiece. I find that charming, and also refreshing in that it levels the playing field a bit and removes the stink of marketing and promotion and commerce from the music writing process a little bit.

On the other hand, I agree with the widely expressed view that there is no filter at work at Splendid for readers, and therefore you can spend a lot of time reading about stuff you might not like or that just might not be any good. But there is also nothing forcing you to read it, either, and Splendid readers know what they are getting into in that regard. But I think the site really offers something for people who feel like coverage at more popular web zines is too focused/similar to each other.

Bah, enough of this -- I don't mean to be such a cheerleader. Just idealistic, I guess.

We certainly get our share of rubbish, as much from full-sized labels as home taper types, but finding one amazing record you'd never have discovered otherwise justifies a week of spinning through dross, as far as I'm concerned. YMMV.

I'm not as voracious a reader of all the online mags as I once was, but I quickly grew tired of Pitchfork's tendency towards negative reviews that were only negative because it was a chance to be 'entertaining' - that shit's fine in a capsule single review about someone who doesn't care anymore (see: Limp Bizkit) but trashing a whole album just because you can make some funny calls (see: Jet, who I don't like, but who can be discussed much more astutely)? That's just... lazy.

What I like about Stylus (and sure, I'm biased) is that there's no house opinion, there's a great range of styles and tones, plus I think the writers are genuinely critical in that they'll give the records a good and proper listen and, if it is shit, at least give valid reasons why.

I write for a gaming magazine (The Escapist) that publishes its issues on one site and then hosts a blog at a separate domain. You've got a place to rant and rave, but the publication stays intact and keeps its dignity, as it were. I like that approach. It's great to have a place to argue about the work, but the work should still be the work, it shouldn't just be a launching pad.