Pitchfork.tv
Pitchfork.tv is almost here and apparently Wired got an early look-see... I’m not sure about this move into online TV. The one’s I’ve used such as Joost have ultimately let me down because they still push content at me rather than allowing me to pull in the content I want. Also I don’t want to spend a lot of time at the laptop just watching one piece of content; the thrill of discovery through linking ever onward on the ‘net means it takes a lot of great stuff to make me hang around one site, aka being ’sticky.’
I’m worried that the Pitchfork folks are seeing the internet as a TV channel rather like some ad agencies do. When PFork founder Ryan Schreiber says this - “There are a lot of people doing really cool stuff with music and video on the web, but in terms of clean, crisp audio and video recordings, there’s really nothing out there,” he is missing the point - yes there are many great sites that we can visit to watch stuff (hello, YouTube) but do we need “clean, crisp audio and video”? I say no we don’t, we want instant gratification and we don’t need production techniques to tidy it up and make it presentable. I saw amazing footage last month of a Boeing 777 trying to land in a storm in Frankfurt - it was a shot on either a mobile phone or a cheap digital camera and I watched it multiple times because of the content and subject matter and the commentators voice - someone who was equal parts thrilled and scared at what he was witnessing/capturing.
Schreiber goes on to say - “[We're] really documenting the music that we like and that we feel is vital.” That’s noble but should Pitchfork be a gatekeeper or a filter or both? A better way to go might be as a consumer-driven social network that allows music fans to upload what *they* believe is *vital.* Meanwhile I’ll wait until the folks at Hipster Runoff have their say.
