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Jun. 29, 2010 at 3:45pm with 15 notes

* Pitchfork displaces some of the irrational ire against them by bringing in fresh, pre-existing brands in a new website, shining a bigger spotlight on “outsider” music without necessarily giving it the divisive tag of a Pitchfork endorsement: PRO

* This will probably just create as much backlash as goodwill, though: CON

* Cool bloggers presumably make a few bucks, get more credit for stuff Pitchfork’s picking up anyway: PRO

* Cool bloggers then have to reconsider their taste, make sure they’re not posting the same tracks on the same week, a certain inevitable loss of voice/character: CON

* Genuinely weird music that, importantly, isn’t looking for more promo gets further co-opted by the blogosphere sub-mainstream hive-mind: CON

* Pitchfork’s just going to reblog all this shit in Forkcast and Newsfeed anyway, so whatever: PRO, I GUESS

* Rest of the blogosphere gets ignored in favor of blogs/bands falling into Pitchfork taste Venn diagram, hive mind gets worse, every band starts playing terrible lo-fi so 30-something dudes can relive their college years at the office: CON

* Pitchfork is probably trying to do a Good Thing here but which also helps their bottom line: PRAGMATIC

We’ll see how this plays out. Again, if you really want the weird shit, you have to actually go underground. Pitchfork is not the underground, but at this point, maybe nothing is.