Book details

How Pitchfork Changed Music Forever: A Memoir

Author: Ryan Schreiber

Weird Era

Format

About This Book

An Almost Famous–like memoir for the twenty-first century: Pitchfork’s founder opens up about running the most influential, and infamous, music publication of the internet...

Page Count 336

Genre

On Sale 12/01/2026

Book Details An Almost Famous–like memoir for the twenty-first century: Pitchfork’s founder opens up about running the most influential, and infamous, music publication of the internet age. In 1996, as legacy media slowly went digital, a nineteen-year-old Minneapolitan named Ryan Schreiber fired up his family’s desktop computer and brought his dream to life: a daily online music zine published for, and by, nerds like him. He wasn’t yet a writer, but he was passionate about discovering and sharing new music; he figured if he didn’t do it, someone else would. He named his site Pitchfork, an homage to the assassin tattoo Tony Montana sports in Scarface. Schreiber also decided to eschew a five-star rating system for a new one based on a decimal scale from 0 to 10. Little did he know that he had launched what would become one of the most consequential cultural forces of our time.Thirty years after Pitchfork’s founding, Schreiber recounts the extraordinary story behind the site and the generation of listeners and musicians it fostered. He was in the room for it all: the consequences and thrills of Pitchfork’s make-or-break criticism; the boom and bust of digital media; and the albums, concerts, and meltdowns he witnessed from some of this century’s most beloved musicians. Along the way, he writes candidly about the site’s and his own growing pains as he sought to stay true to Pitchfork’s roots despite its morphing from a bedroom blog to a global behemoth, a journey that culminated in the sit