On November 11, 2024, in a crushing blow to the Chicago music community, Pitchfork Music Festival announced via Instagram that the festival would not be returning to Chicago in 2025, ending its 19 year run in Union Park. The publication cited little cause other than the rapidly evolving music festival landscape.
The announcement comes not quite a year following the announcement that media giant Condé Nast would be nesting Pitchfork under the umbrella of men’s style magazine GQ, resulting in layoffs of over half of the music publication’s key staff members and editors. Not only did the consolidation represent a significant loss in the world of music journalism, as Pitchfork is the most well known music journalism site in the digital age, it also begged the question, why in 2024 would music journalism be considered mens’ media?
The choice seemed especially confusing and unnecessary considering that Pitchfork had the highest daily site visitors of any Condé Nast properties, according to an audience development editor from the company.
Many attendees and employees of the final iteration of Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago in 2024 could feel a change in the brand’s identity. With the addition of a VIP viewing tier, sponsorships from brands like Nespresso and Butter Chardonnay, and a more mainstream lineup, with headliners like Alanis Morissette and Black Pumas, the festival’s intended demographic had clearly shifted from the indie-loving concert heads of the past to a more comfortable, luxury festival experience. While the cancellation of the 2025 festival came as a shock, it was not necessarily a surprise. With the announcement’s specific wording that the festival “will not be returning to Chicago”, many Chicagoans worry that we are seeing the city lose another one of its homegrown musical institutions to New York City or Los Angeles.
With music and media more widely accessible than ever via the Internet and social media, why are we seeing journalism and critical thought about said popular media fall to the wayside? In the age of streaming, music listeners no longer have to make a financial sacrifice to try out a new album, taking the relevance of album reviews from informed consumers to a more niche subsect of music enjoyers. However, in the same way that radio introduces a human aspect to the listening experience, music reviews provide connections, history, and critical thought about a piece of music in the context of its cultural landscape that your Spotify algorithm cannot. However, since anyone can share their opinions on social media, it’s easy for well-educated and evidence-supported takes to get lost in a sea of tweets and TikToks.
There continues to be a strong heart of young music journalists despite the lack of infrastructure provided to pursue music journalism as a career. College radio stations, such as our own, continue to be a hub for those who care about the continuation of music journalism, despite the diminishing resources that college radio stations across the nation are facing. Zines, such as Off the Record Press and Sunlight Magazine, represent the continued interest in more traditional forms of music journalism, even if DIY is the only realistic way to publish them.
To aspiring music journalists: I don’t think that all hope is lost for music journalism, but its landscape is surely changing. Find venues to make your voice heard, and if you can’t find one, make one. Practice your craft, even if it is just for your own eyes. Music journalism will never truly die out, as “you can’t have art without criticism, or criticism without art.”