Pitchfork's Chris Ott takes No Prisoners

"hey, principles can get in the way of career, guys. sucks but it's true. anyway, curve's new album..."

Ads on YouTube videos are not mandatory, btw. You have to opt in.

This isn't true, in my experience. Over and over YouTube asked me if I wanted to monetize my videos by including ads and I always said no, so eventually they just put ads on them anyway.

I was perhaps too smarmy on Twitter about this, but if I gave a shit about whether I was indirectly contributing to corporations, I could not use this laptop, populate these sites by tech corporations, drink this coffee, take this cold and flu medicine for the cold I have, probably live in this house, definitely not live in this city, or really do anything but go off the grid.

a stance he paints as absurd because he is not anti-corporation. he's just anti-taking a paycheck from corporations for knowing about or creating indie rock. that's literally all he's anti.

I don't see how he ISN'T saying (overall) "Look, if you care, keep your music criticism untainted by keeping it a hobby and make money another way, because it is extremely difficult to both make enough money to live on AND keep your opinions untainted".

as for compromising my opinions about music, I've never done that, not even when I primarily covered pop music. (this is honestly the part that baffles me -- why he doesn't go after THAT segment of the music press, considering the problem is even more endemic there and -- this is mean but -- there are plenty more young female writers working there.)

I appreciate Whiney making the argument Ott's too blinkered to make. I posted somewhere itt that some of Ott's big picture stuff about the economics of music journalism right now seemed pretty good, but the rest of the argument was filled with crazy nonsense.

ya, he's not anti-capitalist, he's saying people like him are the only ones who can express a pure opinion and others are all tainted by drawing paychecks

(this is what reminded me of Hayek)

you can use their platforms for free, you can work in their IT dept. just don't write a 5 Best Siouxsie & The Banshees listicle for $30, cuz then you're scum.

Well, he isn't saying anything about how easy it is to get a job. He's just saying if you give a shit about whether you are contributing to corporations by compromising your actual opinions about music, than don't expect music criticism to be the way in which you expect to build your career.

― Evan, Thursday, December 5, 2013 10:42 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

again as croup and others have pointed out SEVERAL times, he for some reason thinks it's ok to use twitter and tumblr which is contributing to corporation in no less of a way, but for some reason if you actually see nothing from the work then it's ok in his mind...also the other relevant point that "just get a job" part of his argument for a lot of people will involve other corporations that will often be morally compromised in ways a whole lot worse and more important than selling converse to young people

My other gripe with Ott, besides his singling out primarily female writers as the main source of vitriol, is that his interest in issues of economic inequality come to a screeching halt for anything other than the music writing business.

Obviously these trends that Whiney outlined above are far from specific to music journalism. It's basically the story of the last 20/30 years of many industries in this country, with rapid acceleration in the last 5 years or so. I'll grant that it's probably more pronounced in music and journalism, two fields whose earning power has been slashed by the internet.

But if, as everyone knows, the gap between the wealthy and everyone else is increasing everywhere, why is music and music journalism basically the only place we should be raising a stink?

I dunno, katherine, I do think it's really lame how much something like Mountain Dew can benefit from an artist as small and inconsequential as Neon Indian; or how companies have gone from giving bands $10k to use songs in their TV shows to giving them little more than "exposure"; or how sponsored content is funding multiple websites that pay their writers the most dogshit wages in history.

I think I'm allowed to be upset at that without being all "Oh, I'm wearing shoes so I guess the corporations win, Ayn Rand 4-eva"

whiney why are you pretending people mocking ott's stance are mocking your stance.

i mean, he could have just mocked bad shitty articles, laughing about all the losers trying to scrape together a living by doing dumb listicles, making pennies pushing mediocrities for mountain dew ads, etc etc etc etc, but instead he has to pretend he's KEEPING MUSIC PURE. it's ironically the piety, not his arbitrary abuse of writers, that really does him in.

I mean, I'm upset at that too -- I don't think anyone in this thread isn't -- but at the individual writer level there is really not much that any one person can do without either a) getting a lucky break or b) taking the kind of hardline moral stance that does beg to be applied en masse.

he is not concerned about broader economics, in fact I bet he's an Atlas Shrugged kind of guy at heart. he's only concerned about purity which is why his stance has very old conservative echoes, that only the independently wealthy are pure enough to think clearly and express a true/right opinion

only in this context merely working a non-music journalist job for 94k plus bennies = independently wealthy

and, yeah, intheblanks, the income gap between the haves and have nots in music journalism is widening just like the erosion of the middle class in america. so it's hard out here for anyone content with 94k plus bennies

which is honestly the most frustrating thing about all this (as opposed to the infuriating thing, which is that this kind of vitriol directed in this direction means the venture capitalists give zero shits and the earnest new writers give all the shits -- this distribution seems a bit familiar, doesn't it?): I am sympathetic to a large portion of this argument but when it comes to what one is actually supposed to do, as a writer, to be in the right, there is a blank and "get a job, you lazy shit."

it's true that millenials are def the most "I'm gonna be a ballet dancer/writer/musician/artist/professional video game player" generation in history thanks to helicopter parenting and this is one forum where the chickens are definitely coming home to roost

"hey guys you're so focused on his nonsensically selective anti-capitalism that you're missing the real point, which is FUCKING MILLENIALS MAN"

jus sayin

not blamin

in that case I apologize.

(that wasn't smarmy, it's sincere, I don't like being entitled and I try to battle it in myself but sometimes I slip.)

@whiney I absolutely agree re:"haves and have-nots," and I think those are the part of Ott's video that are good. The gap between the haves and have-nots is growing everywhere, and wealth and power getting concentrated isn't a good thing in music journalism, or public policy, or agriculture, or any field.

I just don't get combining the "don't be a tool of the wealthy" with the "94K plus bennies"/"Get real job, man!" components of his arguments.

my main takeaway from all of this is that ott used to write for pitchfork when they didn't have ads. and now they have ads and he doesn't write for them anymore. hooray for ads!

unless being a tool of the wealthy only matters in one field: music journalism, historically the purest of all trades

it's true that millenials are def the most "I'm gonna be a ballet dancer/writer/musician/artist/professional video game player" generation in history thanks to helicopter parenting and this is one forum where the chickens are definitely coming home to roost

― tuostprophets (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, December 5, 2013 11:03 AM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

def lots of proven facts in this post

lol

Well, he isn't saying anything about how easy it is to get a job. He's just saying if you give a shit about whether you are contributing to corporations by compromising your actual opinions about music, than don't expect music criticism to be the way in which you expect to build your career.

― Evan, Thursday, December 5, 2013 10:42 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

again as croup and others have pointed out SEVERAL times, he for some reason thinks it's ok to use twitter and tumblr which is contributing to corporation in no less of a way, but for some reason if you actually see nothing from the work then it's ok in his mind...also the other relevant point that "just get a job" part of his argument for a lot of people will involve other corporations that will often be morally compromised in ways a whole lot worse and more important than selling converse to young people

― My Chief Keef Keef (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, December 5, 2013 11:49 AM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

He is saying there is nobody pressuring him to tailor content in any way on twitter or tumblr in the same way pitchfork might.
He isn't making a point on the moral compromise of alternate jobs/careers, just that you can't expect to have your music criticism remain pure (likely) if you work at, again, a pitchfork business model.

Purity is a great concept if you have the brain of a 15 yr old

otm

Should have said "pure": as untouched by "corporate pressure" as possible.

how many times do you think ott has watched the "This Note's For You" video?

gotta be in the 1000s

this ott's for you

xpost I don't think it's corporate pressure he's worried about. He doesn't think Converse executives are pushing bands on Ryan Schreiber and Mark Richardson. He's saying that the corporations are exploiting these guys' taste/talent/skills/whatever to turn fans of hip music into converse customers. And that it sets up a culture of "finding what's cool" because that's what advertisers covet.

for the record i don't really care too much about that. Most of the argument is so toxic I feel like I need to distance myself even when I'm citing parts I agree with.

not literally toxic, I don't want waterface to chime in with "I missed the part in the video where he poisoned the water supply."

it's literally toxic in that I feel sick to my stomach

out of fear, mostly. which I suppose is the solution to the income/success/whatever-you-call it gap in music journalism: instill more fear in writers.

i'm probably we're dealing with two parallel problems here, the first is that ott's analysis is shaky, narrow and conspiratorial. the second is that he's a belligerent jerk.

the belligerent jerkiness is where i checked in, specifically his white collar down-punching (the now famous "94k + bennies") but more importantly, his crude, sub-breitbart gay-baiting trolling of ed droste. and it's readily apparent in this big exchange here; a bunch of people have tried to engage critically w/ him on twitter and gotten another blast of name calling etc. i don't know what he's like a critic or a writer; indie rock isn't really my thing and the discourse around it really isn't my thing.

factor all that out (not that you should; you shouldn't) the analysis itself doesn't hang together. and yeah, it all rests on the assertion that Music Is Special and should be Untainted.

the first step is that contemporary internet music media outlets aren't really what they are, they are just fronts for venture capital. people have asked how this is different from earlier ad-funded/print media era and he said that was just as gross, or something (https://twitter.com/shallowrewards/status/408407992061931520). people have also asked, well, how is that different from the rest of capitalism? and the argument is "capitalism is fine" (https://twitter.com/shallowrewards/status/408414088545705984) but capital's relationship to music -- really ANY relationship between capital and music writing -- is heinous (https://twitter.com/shallowrewards/status/408645007084515328). it should all be free, i guess, somehow.

the second step is how writers who take money from these sites are implicit in their own corruption, or blind, or something. and the third is that nobody should care about any of these bands anyway, because nobody cares anymore about the bands he wrote about ten years ago.

yeah, it's a monastic/aristocratic argument. do it as a hobby. i do it as a hobby, i'm in the upper middle class. do what i did, start your straight career during the clinton era. or i'll call you a cunt on twitter.

my advice, if anybody is listening, is the opposite. get by! survive. for god's sake, take the money. there's less money out there for anybody, for anything, period. are you kidding? take the hundred bucks or whatever. why not?

er that first sentence is garbled -- "i'm probably repeating a lot of what has already been said, or will be, by the time i hit submit"

Good summary. I think that deep down thinks music writing should be a hobby (which, fine! Ignore pro writing!). But he also doesn't like a lot of the music that is getting written about, and attributes it to shady forces behind pro writing..

also he hates women

Sure, take the money, but don't pretend to think you're doing anything worthwile or lasting, you're just shitting down the throats of a million people

what is the morally superior alternative, then? preferably, is there a morally superior alternative that is attainable and will allow one to pay the rent? this is a serious question.

In his opinion, it's finding a job and doing the music writing as a hobby.

Have you guys read that article this morning about SWARM????

I'm not being smarmy. if I came off as smarmy, that is my fault and I apologize.

As D-40 pointed out, this http://www.hipsterrunoff.com/node/8599 also picked up on the way bands seem to be treated the same way a new flavor of Doritos from a marketing standpoint online.