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Indie, rocked

Did streaming kill the quintessential online music magazine?

Pitchfork came of age in the early aughts as music began to transition from analog to digital, rising to prominence as the way people listened changed from buying CDs and turning on the radio to pirating albums and downloading MP3s. Once upon a time, it was possible for the music director of a single radio station to launch a career; Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game” charted at number six on Billboard because one obsessive David Lynch fan in Atlanta happened to really like it. Famously, one was simply two pugs captioned “sorry :-/.” Reviews can be art criticism, contextualizing work within a genre (or an artist’s own oeuvre), or they can be service oriented, telling a reader whether an album is worth their money.

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