The year got off to a bad start: If an absolute music journalistic icon of the Internet era is to be named, "Pitchfork" is probably the first name that comes up. But even being the global market leader in indie music criticism did not save the legendary blog-that-turned-into-an-international-brand from being put on the backburner by the American parent company Condé Nast at the beginning of 2024, editorially now only functioning as an online section of the (men's) magazine GQ, future prospects unclear.
In Germany, already last year Axel Springer Verlag separated from its three own music titles "Rolling Stone", "Musikexpress" and "Metal Hammer" through a management buyout and currently the dance, club and electronic music magazine-institution “Groove” is fighting for the survival of its already fairly downsized online existence while the public broadcasting media are wielding the budget ax in their entire cultural departments.
Where is the future of music criticism when everything is just social media, content creation and algorithm business? Not to mention ChatGPT & Co. At the same time, swan songs for music criticism have been sung at regular intervals for over 20 years and yet new forms, magazines and organs continue to emerge that satisfy the audience's need for expertise, classification and discourse.
We discuss how tragic (or not) music journalists see their situation today in this panel, which of course does not report on the end of a cultural technique, but rather wants to know what the next chapter might look like.