For more than a quarter century, Pitchfork was a kind of Rolling Stone for the millennial generation, a bible for audiophiles whose authority was summed up by its simple slogan: “the most trusted voice in music.”
That changed for many readers in January when Pitchfork’s parent company, Condé Nast, enacted a sweeping round of layoffs that included removing its editor in chief and folding it under GQ, the men’s magazine.
Nearly a year later, five former Pitchfork journalists are getting the band back together to start a new online music publication, Hearing Things. The site, which launches on Tuesday, aims to capture the original independent spirit of Pitchfork while tuning out the stan armies that worship huge artists.
The founders of Hearing Things are tacking against major trends in both the music and publishing businesses. Magazines like Spin and Rolling Stone, once dominant cultural tastemakers, have been pushed aside by recommendation algorithms on Spotify and TikTok. Digital advertising is migrating toward juggernauts like Amazon. The biggest artists monopolize the cultural conversation.
But the founders are betting they will catch an encouraging tailwind for the media business. A crop of scrappy, worker-owned publications have sprung up in recent years, subsisting on support from die-hard fans. They include Defector, a sports and pop-culture site created by Deadspin veterans; Hell Gate, covering New York City; and 404 Media, a tech publication founded by alumni of Vice’s Motherboard.
Readers of Hearing Things won’t be getting a remixed version of Pitchfork. The founders have jettisoned a few of that site’s hallowed features, including the 0-to-10 album scoring system (“That’s their thing,” said Ryan Dombal, one of the founders), and Pitchfork’s sometimes-stuffy tone.
The business approach is also different: Advertising is no longer the main event, part of a plan to avoid chasing clicks. Instead, Hearing Things will sell subscriptions aimed at people eager to learn about music and musicians they might not have heard of before.
Most of the publication will be free to read. But it will offer several subscription tiers for those who want a deeper experience. A basic subscription ($70 a year) includes unlimited access to the site and the ability to comment on the site. The highest tier, Super Deluxe Remastered Hi-Fi Membership ($1,000 a year), includes a handmade mix CD or cassette or streaming playlist made by a Hearing Things editor, as well as quarterly hangouts with the staff.
“The search-engine-based model changed the incentive to write about the Taylor Swifts of the world, and it made the internet a worse place,” said Jill Mapes, a founder. “One thing that I learned at Pitchfork is it is very hard to get people to click on a headline about an artist that they don’t know. Why can’t you create an environment where people are primed for that because that’s what they want?”
Hearing Things is backed by Vaughn Millette, a former music promoter. Mr. Millette, who declined to be interviewed for this article, invested an undisclosed sum in the company and owns half of Hearing Things, with the rest of the ownership split equally among the five founders.
The site came together slowly over the past year. In January, two days after he was laid off from his job as a features editor, Mr. Dombal received an email from Mr. Millette praising his work and asking whether he would be interested in starting a new music publication.
Mr. Dombal was reluctant at first, he said. He had no idea what he wanted to do next. But the two eventually met over a chicken sandwich at a Brooklyn restaurant.
“I was just very candid about what I would want to do,” Mr. Dombal said. “The idea of independence was really important to me.”
The pair began fleshing out an agreement, and Mr. Dombal started recruiting. Ms. Mapes, who had also been a features editor, was recruited next, followed by Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, Dylan Green and Andy Cush, who had been contributing writers and editors. After Mr. Cush received a recruiting call from Mr. Dombal, he started to cry tears of relief, he said.
“After the Pitchfork layoffs, there was like this real sense of despair,” Mr. Cush said. “About ever having a place to do the kind of work you feel like you’re good at and that you’re interested in again.”
In the months since, they have been writing and editing articles and building the website. The company has also started to map out episodes of a podcast, “Waste or Taste,” which will run every other week.
The founders of Hearing Things said they had no plans to take on additional investors. Mr. Dombal, who worked at Pitchfork when Condé Nast acquired it in 2015, said he would be unlikely to sell his stake — even if a major magazine company was interested.
“We all want it to be successful, but independence was another thing that was appealing to me,” Mr. Dombal said. “Even at its height, I don’t think music journalism was ever a crazy moneymaking business, no matter what form it took.”
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