Pitchfork

The first rule of Hipster Fight Club: You do not talk about Pitchfork.

That’s bullshit, of course.

Plenty of folks I know who are considered hipsters check Pitchfork on the regular and talk about it without pretension, irony or fear.

I want to talk about Pitchfork and specifically how it’s staying relevant. Plenty of niche blogs and hip-as-hell webzines beat it for coverage of the out there stuff, but Pitchfork is undeniably the flagship online music journal.

It’s probably the closest thing my generation has to a Rolling Stone magazine, unless you’re talking to kids my age who still read Rolling Stone. I don’t know.
In Internet years, Pitchfork is probably as old as Rolling Stone.

Somehow it stays cool.

It launched Altered Zones, a partner site to rival some of the more prominent hip webzines.

Altered Zones was born in 2010 and died a quick death in 2011. Its Tumblr-chic layout and attention to nearly-outsider music from the likes of James Ferraro and John Maus made it a worthy addition to Pitchfork’s brand.

Altered Zones’ collapse meant the integration of more hip music coverage into the main Pitchfork site.

Maybe thanks to this, Pitchfork is somehow keeping up with most of “alt” music’s prevailing trends.

For instance, plenty of readers scoffed at Pitchfork’s seeming refusal to give decent coverage and review space to metal. In the past year or so, a lot has changed.

Wolves In The Throne Room landed Best New Music and Liturgy scored an 8.3. Though not unprecedented on the site, there is noticeably more attention being paid to the genre.

American black metal was considered a hipster thing by many enthusiasts even before Pitchfork starting using “kvlt” in reviews. Mercy.

Nevertheless, the site has helped deliver black metal closer to the indie mainstream, for better or worse.

Pitchfork’s latest appeal to relevance is its People’s List, the closest thing the publication has to reader interaction outside of its annual Readers Poll.

The People’s List is supposed to be some zeitgeist-tapping collection of indie favorites and records Pitchfork overlooked.

It’s sponsored by Converse and connected to Facebook, Twitter and Google.

High school kids everywhere will be sharing their favorite albums online, which means more exposure for the site and its readers. Eventually it could be the inspiration for 2030’s “Almost Famous 2.”

It seems like Pitchfork might finally be Rolling Stones-ing itself.

I can’t wait to tell my kids about how cool it was back in my day.