Pitchfork Media

Pitchfork Media is a Chicago-based website focused on alternative music and tough critical reviews. Pitchfork does highlight some mainstream music but for the most part indie music is the base for Pitchfork. Pitchfork does reviews, interviews and even videos for its Pitchfork.tv segments. They have their own music festivals in Chicago and Paris. Pitchfork is not owned by any larger media company. When you visit the website there are not even any advertisements.

Ryan Schreiber created Pitchfork back in 1995. Pitchfork has always been available online since its inception. Pitchfork has been a factor in the rise of many artists such as Bon Iver and Arcade Fire. A majority of blogs on indie music have striking similarities to Pitchfork such as content and audience. That audience would be hipsters. Hipsters are those people who are too cool for the mainstream and wear beanies in the summer. The audience is important because the music on Pitchfork is indie and a general assumption of hipsters is that they only listen to bands that are not famous because hipsters are counterculture and know everything before it is cool. That type of audience is what Schreiber wanted when he began Pitchfork. He created Pitchfork to write about underground music since newspaper music reviews often neglected anything that was not mainstream music.

Pitchfork qualifies as an independent media outlet because it not only features independent artists but also because there is an entire staff of journalists and critics that operate independently of any large media conglomerate. There are no restrictions or commercial interests in the writing. Pitchfork is like a zine, a specific publication with a specific audience. The album reviews give Pitchfork notoriety. Critics have been known to be tough and even gained attention from it. While Pitchfork is widely popular now and some might consider it “mainstream”, Pitchfork still does its own thing without any dependence or conformity to a larger parent company. Pitchfork created its own little empire without actually making one.