$5/mo is obviously not much. But it's more out of principle that I don't want to pay a subscription. Pitchfork's entire existence has been online in the "new media" environment and they've survived for 30 years. This isn't some newspaper or magazine struggling in the online world.

They've built their reputation on usually-good curation and usually-good taste (IMO). And they've amassed a lot of readers that allows them to sell a lot of ads and put on live events. Maybe costs have bloated a bit here and there. Cut some costs. Scale back on some features. If inflation has increased costs, inflate the advertising charges/revenue in lockstep. But don't start charging the very people that have enabled you to thrive for 30 years. To start charging your loyal readers at this point seems like a big middle finger to those readers.

Pitchfork officially killed itself today. 4 free reviews/month is gross.

What are the best alternative sites to Pitchfork? I love the number scores. It keeps the reviewer honest and makes them take a stand. And it's good for quick reference.

So are there any music review sites similar to Pitchfork that use number or star scores?

The internet already has 20 billion different places where I can read random people's musings on music, totally divorced from any kind of broader context or expertise. What kind of loser is seeing these site changes and thinking "oh boy, now I can pay to be an Official Pitchfork Reviewer"?

I can’t think of anything dumber than for a music website to pause the music you are currently listening to upon visit. I have tried everything ad blocker wise, disabled, enabled, etc.

Seriously, how are more people not complaining about this? I see scattered references for over a year now.

What's the point of pitchfork having a paywall if I can just go on incognito and bypass it. Are their IT guys just stupid?

Just thought this was funny: https://pitchfork.com/story/miley-cyrus-rebrands-as-miley-reveals-new-album-bass-persuades/

like ... a lot

(this is embarrassing)

Hello music heads!

Since Pitchfork became paywalled, I started working on my own lightweight music blog as a side project, and decided to clone it into a Pitchfork-style music blog engine. It has a simple installation and stores your reviews in a light file, making backups and logging super easy.

You can create reviews for albums, songs, and even standalone articles. Installation guide is provided for running locally or deploying to a server to host it as your own website. All is done in an admin gui with easy login setup. You can customize the name of the blog as well as all colors in the admin gui.

It was just a side project since I was happy with how it turned out for my own blog. Feel free to hit me with any feedback or star it on Github if you'd like! If you'd like installation help I'd be more than happy to help. It's by no means anything fancy.

You can find it on my github, check out the README description for examples. Link here: https://github.com/lawi22/ditchfork

This is the review I could find with the most user ratings:

So they alienated most of their core readership for, what, $280/month?

TL;DR: As announced a couple of months ago, starting 2026 readers will be able to comment on reviews and rate albums themselves. Today, Pitchfork announced how that will work and it will be subscription-based. Prices are $5/month or $50/year. Pitchfork is also limiting access to the reviews catalog to subscribers, and only 4 new reviews can be read by non-subscribers per month. So, how do we all feel about it?

Okay great, you want a paid-subscription model for user reviews.

But I can't even see the scores and reviews now? What a terrible idea to roll out both changes at the same time.

Either charge for the scores or charge for the reviews, but my intelligence is insulted that they want me to accept both changes at the same time and pay for it. No thanks.

I was a little surprised how quickly this narrative built online and feel like this explanation is very reasonable to me considering he follows like 10,000 people on instagram lol. Does not seem terribly discerning in that department

I recently watched blustre’s YouTube video where he ranked his top 10 albums of 2025, and Heavy Metal was in his 10 spot. However, he admitted he enjoyed Getting Killed but not nearly as much and only returns to a few songs. I thought this was surprising because, although I prefer Heavy Metal as well, I feel like most people’s biggest complaint about it Geese is Winters nasally vocals, and those nasally vocals are especially prominent on Heavy Metal. Anyway, which album do yall prefer? Anyone love Heavy Metal but don’t enjoy Getting Killed, or vice versa?

They have detailed reviews of such obscure artists, but not a single mention of the band with a 4x platinum album. I'm not saying they're amazing or anything, but it's just strange to me that Pitchfork hasn't bothered to comment on them at all. Am I missing something?

I'm 100% guilty of not giving new music a "go" because of the arbitrary number assigned to them by a Pitchfork reviewer.

I did panic a little at first once the paywall went up and I couldn't see the review scores, but a couple of months on I'm SO much happier using Pitchfork as a bit of a noticeboard for informing me about new releases and not gatekeeping whether they're worth listening to or not.

I have a subscription and I want to democratize exploring the site again. If you have anything in particular you want to read for free, send me the albums or tracks. As many as you want. If anyone wants to help design a site, I'm not a coder but I can store them on google drive that retains the articles' hyperlinks for now. I'm not familiar with Discord but if someone thinks I should attempt to provide this service there, I'm willing to learn.

I am curious to hear back from the community on this one. Pitchfork have decided to shoot themselves in the head, again, with this $5 paywall thing. Normally when a website introduces a paywall they are hiding EXTRA features behind it. They don't hide their biggest asset behind it i.e. Pitchfork's scores. Looking at the amount of reviews on each album it isn't even a lot. I think I saw one that had about 36 reviews on it. My question is when did all this bad decision making start? Was it when Schreiber left? Was it when Puja became EIC? Long before that? Genuinely curious to know if their is a consensus on when the site started dying.