Pitchfork transformed from indie-elitist to poptimist as it corporatized

Evidence

The grand irony of the Swiftie uproar was that Pitchfork’s 8.0 score was the latest step of its turn to poptimism—the belief that the most commercially minded music is the most important. For most of its early existence, Pitchfork was a bastion of indie elitism, favoring obscure rock bands and ignoring pop stars like Swift. Under founder and editor in chief Ryan Schreiber in the early 2000s, only 5 to 7 percent of their reviews could be classified as pop releases. But just as Condé Nast acquired Pitchfork in 2015, the site shifted to broader, more inclusive coverage. By 2018, pop albums made up 12 percent of reviews. The following year, the site celebrated “Taylor Swift Day” by reviewing her first five albums to make up for years of neglect. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 526

Categorization

• XREF: The corporate-acquisition-driven shift from elite taste to mass inclusion parallels the book’s larger omnivore monoculture thesis about status-signaling collapse.
• DEFINE: Defines ‘poptimism’ precisely as the belief that commercially minded music is most important.