Criticism
Along with its popularity, Pitchfork has attracted criticism.
One common complaint is that the site's journalism suffers from a narrow view of independent music, favoring lo-fi and often obscure indie rock and giving only cursory treatment to other genres. Another is that the site's opinions reflect a "hipster" attitude, overly subject to changing musical trends, often speaking openly about what is considered "cool" and "uncool" to readers, and attempts to create hype around chosen scenes (such as "dance punk" or "freak folk") or acts (such as Sufjan Stevens and Arcade Fire). Some critics have suggested that the site rates albums from particular music scenes or artists more favorably in order to bolster its influence when the music becomes popular.
The majority of criticism, however, is aimed at the site's album reviewing style. Critics argue the site often emphasizes a reviewers' own writing over the actual music being reviewed, sometimes not even reviewing the album and instead criticising the artist's integrity. Pitchfork is also known to give "0.0" ratings, deeming the work as utterly worthless. One critic wrote that Pitchfork's "0.0" rating of a particular album amounts to no more than a "cheap publicity stunt" for a website that "thrives on controversy." The critic also hypothetically asked how a neo-Nazi punk record would be scored in comparison to these "0.0" albums, based on Pitchfork standards.
Read more about this topic: Pitchfork Media
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“Unless criticism refuses to take itself quite so seriously or at least to permit its readers not to, it will inevitably continue to reflect the finicky canons of the genteel tradition and the depressing pieties of the Culture Religion of Modernism.”
—Leslie Fiedler (b. 1917)
“The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men’s genius. By virtue of style, criticism can itself become literature. But usually this occurs only when the writer is acting as critic of his own work or as outrider to his own poetics, when the criticism of Coleridge is work in progress or that of T.S. Eliot propaganda.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)