Tfw you hear bands casually converse about paying for their p4k reviews

>tfw you hear bands casually converse about paying for their p4k reviews

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>tfw you hear the unknown opening act talking shit about the established headliner

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run_for_Cover_Records

here are known shills

+foxing

>dude dave, p4k called me saying the check didn't clear for pw
>i-i'm sorry i spent the last of my trust fund on deaks used buttplugs he wouldnt give them to me for free anymore

You know what you just did? You went and >pizza'd yourself.

Pitchfork is awful. Not only for this sort of thing, but also because it perpetuates the most irritating and useless cliches of art criticism.
Critics have always tended to be pretentious charlatans who merely have a talent for obfuscating their complete lack of taste and originality. Some critics are great, mind you, but they're usually the ones that seem to understand the limits of their "trade" and treat their job more like that of a historian or curator, whose job it is to evangelize the art they love, rather than dissect and reverse-engineer art until it's been reduced to only its elementary particles.
You'll notice that critics rarely, if ever, appreciate new genres as they emerge. They only appreciate innovation in hindsight, when there's a safe consensus.
How many music critics, even those that were fond of rock n' roll, "got" punk, metal, or progressive rock (the three most important genres to emerge from that decade) in the 1970s? Very few. In fact, most of them slammed bands like Rush, Black Sabbath, and the Clash, if they even paid any attention at all. Later, how many got hip-hop? Earlier, how many got rock n' roll, jazz, the blues, and R&B?
That's the irony of criticism, actually, and it plays into what the OP has shared about Pitchfork: critics may seem like they're tastemakers, but in reality they're bound to trends and popular opinion. Pitchfork appears to get away with this because they smartly (from a marketing sense) choose to side with the popular opinion of tens of millions of hipsters, rather than the popular opinion of tens of millions of jocks.

Somehow, to the outside world, this makes them seem like "outsiders", much in the same way that Apple continues to cleverly market itself as the "different" computer company, despite the fact that everyone either has one of their computers or wants one.
But Pitchfork's major sin, in my eyes, is that they're a little too bald-faced about it. They're so fucking serious. That's the sad part. They're beyond irony. I mean, art is subjective. We can all agree on this much, I hope. So even making the most open qualitative judgments about music can be tricky. Often we can only respond positively or negatively, with little room in between. Smart critics, even the terrible ones, understand this, and sometimes use simple, straightforward devices like their thumbs to indicate whether or not said piece of art is worth your time. Naturally we demand a "score", but again, even there the wise critics lean heavily toward a simple yes/no.
Few have the complete lack of understanding of how art is supposed to work that the useless pricks at Pitchfork have. Fewer still do so with such a lack of self-awareness.
You see, the reviewers at Pitchfork actually believe they have reviewing down to a science. Not satisfied to grant a mere "thumbs up" or even a "3 out of 5", Pitchfork believes they can ascertain the value of a piece of music down to the tenth of a point. That's right, without any sense of irony, Pitchfork believes they can say, without question, that an album is a 6.7 out of 10. Not a 6, not a 7, not even a 6-and-a-half in order to split the difference. No, those extra two-tenths really matter to them.
Personally, I think the 5 stars that iTunes gives you to rate your music library is too much, but what do I know?
It's laughable. Pitchfork has got to be the most joyless publication on the planet.

btw you can spot a paid review pretty easily, honed in articles with a 7.0+ plastered on it. look at the reviews from all of these bands. all the same reviewer with a randomized 7.0-7.9 number assigned to them.

check'd

anyone know any more bands/labels that do this?

the trend seems to be slightly popular bands on big independents.

car seat headrest

I know he viraled himself but I'm speaking more towards labels actually putting aside their marketing budgets to buy reviews. I know from personally speaking to multiple bands on Run for Cover that they do this often.

not sure about Matador.

Why would they pay to get a random 7.0+ review and not a BNM review?

because that's extremely obvious and p4k is hesitant to give bad bands like modern baseball bnm when they would shit on something like blink-182.

it was funny hearing how mad foxing were about their anthony fatmano review tho.

>it's all a conspiracy!

how? it's just how internet journalism works now.

this is coming from the bands' own mouths dude.

>this is coming from the bands' own mouths
source? proof?

i'd like to keep my job

if you were in a band you'd see way worse shit than this going on with these big indies.

So you expect us to believe you without any proof at all?

Would you like me to go back in time to when You're Gonna Miss It All came out and tape record the conversation?

oh shit quads

I'm sure Chris Ott and others know

And im pretty sure almost all the big indies do, to the point where it'll be hard to find a label that isn't broke which DOESN'T pay

Having a solid 7(0)+ on meta sites is worth a lot of money. It's crucial for both independent labels and the bands, one album with even a 7/10 score from mainstream media can get you to a major, where the independent will benefit also.

It's fucked up. Don't even get me started on 10% album sale cuts, having to buy your own records individually from these shitheads with nearly no margins.