Pitchfork Behind A Paywall
Yesterday’s big music news: Pitchfork, the once-iconic online music magazine that dubbed itself “the most trusted voice in music” has launched a paywall subscription service, and limited non-subscribers to a measly four reviews a month.
It feels like the culmination of a long, slow downfall, with Pitchfork’s trajectory representing everything Sherwood is trying not to be.
Pitchfork spiked in popularity by publishing brutal album reviews with a 10-point decimal rating. Whilst Rolling Stone would rubber-stamp most albums with a safe three-star review, Pitchfork went out on a limb to pick fights, savaging records with 0.0 scores and an audacious, pretentious and snobbish snark-laced tone. The website’s influence peaked in the 2000s, but was acquired by corporate publisher Condé Nast in 2015 and started covering bigger-name pop and hip-hop acts. Much of their dedicated staff were laid off in 2024 and the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago, a genuinely beloved institution that highlighted up-and-coming indie artists, was cancelled after a 19-year run. Pitchfork has almost entirely retreated from the cultural space, with the introduction of a paywall underscoring just how far they’ve fallen.
Pitchfork’s caustic disdain made for entertaining reading, but bred resentment, and some of their scathing reviews bordered on character assassination, leaving many artists and their fans feeling under attack. This turned off a lot of people over time. Musicians dreaded the decimal score verdict, and whilst covering Beyoncé or Taylor Swift alongside esoteric indie bands isn’t inherently bad, Pitchfork ended up pleasing no one and losing the identity that made it popular and influential in the first place. Traditional gatekeepers carry less weight now that everyone can be a critic on TikTok. Listeners now encounter countless voices weighing in on new albums whilst scrolling their feeds, from casual lists to Youtube essayists, and a single publication like Pitchfork’s review is just one drop in a vast ocean. There is simply no need for an arbiter like Pitchfork to tell us what’s bad anymore, and their bloated reviews seem slow and detached in today’s landscape of social media immediacy.
Decades ago music fans needed critics to guide them before spending their hard-earned money on new albums, but we can now stream any album in just a click. Why read 1000 words when you can just hit play? Additionally, online ad revenue has vanished for mid-sized publications as the tech giants of Google, Meta and Amazon gobble up the entire advertising market. Stereogum cited getting “killed by AI” as the justification for the introduction of their paywall.
Should we be sad about Pitchfork? They did elevate many deserving artists over the years, but the music industry and press needs to evolve. Dominant taste-makers have given way to something more pluralistic, with more choice, and that feels healthy. The average music consumer now discovers songs via streaming services, friends, trends, and niche communities, and the music world has shifted toward more of an ethos of celebrating what you love instead of dunking on what you hate, leaving little space for an elitist blog like Pitchfork.
From our perspective at Sherwood, this is all good news. Our little zine was built to champion music without cynical scoring and snark, free in print for the people who actually show up to gigs. We believe in a better path than the one Pitchfork walked, rooted in genuine enthusiasm. Where Pitchfork is now asking you to pay to read their content, Sherwood remains proudly free in print with no scores, no sarcasm and no harsh takedowns. Our goal is simply to uplift the best music we can. There’s an opportunity to rebuild the music press on a better foundation as the old guard fades away.
