The Swarm

October 27, 2008

The Pitchfork Recession?

TDS Editors

What happened?

UPDATE: Pitchfork’s Ryan Schreiber (from the comments below):

Not sure how Alexa clocks traffic, but Pitchfork’s internal metrics (Google Analytics, Mint, etc) show us up for the year to date: We’ve tracked nearly 6 million visits and 17 million page views in the past 30 days alone, which puts us just slightly above last May—the month Alexa registered as our ‘08 peak. Hope this helps.


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Previous comments include

#1 marah says:

do you think it has something to do w/ the fact that now they own pitchfork.com, and people just go straight there? Their stats have gone way up this year.
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/tra...

#2 ? says:

#1 - there's nothing there

#3 thelink says:

uh oh...

#4 Gordon says:

Pitchfork.com. According to Alexa: Livestock world! Sounds like horse manure runs rampant there.

I think what's happened is that the site has stopped providing anything remotely like news, their album reviews have become predictable, and people like me who used to read them daily now check them every few weeks.

#5 President Garfield says:

Alexa is garbage and means nothing. Ask any web producer and they will tell you how inconsistent Alexa is with legit metrics like Google Analytics or SiteMeter

#7 Ryan Schreiber says:

Hey folks,

Thanks for keeping up. I check TDS pretty regularly and it's a great resource. Happy to say, though, our traffic is as strong as ever. I noticed that dropoff on Alexa, too, and that a lot of other sites show similar drops starting in June (including TDS).

Not sure how Alexa clocks traffic, but Pitchfork's internal metrics (Google Analytics, Mint, etc) show us up for the year to date: We've tracked nearly 6 million visits and 17 million page views in the past 30 days alone, which puts us just slightly above last May-- the month Alexa registered as our '08 peak. Hope this helps.

#8 SeanDiS says:

yeah they're not alone, it's either the way the numbers are compiled (and DiS gets 4 times what these kindsa sites make out) or some blip with the data sources

http://tinyurl.com/DiSvsSgumvsIdolato...

#9 Matthew says:

Alexa's numbers are useless. They are only tracking usage by people who have installed the Alexa toolbar and then they extrapolate from there. Kinda like Neilson does for TV. It's a stupid system to use for online and as such should be diregarded.

#10 bob says:

long live pitchfork! fuck your ass

#11 alex says:

hey ryan

how is the new .TV venture going? i love it. has it expanded you reach?

alex

#12 marah says:

#2 - look at the number charts.
Traffic Rank for Pitchfork.com:
Yesterday
1 wk. Avg. 250,243
3 mos Ave. 562,642
3 mos change up 1,204,927

#13 2RealEstateMidgets says:

Yes, because every little waning in Pitchfork's fortunes is grounds for some righteous snit in which their defenders revel. A little taste of failure would give Pitchfork perspective. So you lose some readers. Big deal.

#14 Love Hater says:

Maybe the numbers are slightly higher, but at some point the people reading Pitchfork will realize how bad the writing actually is and look elsewhere. The reviews don't follow simple high school journalism standards. Schreiber, it's called fact checking, pass it along to your 'writers'.

#15 re #14: says:

uh, where is the writing better? music blogs? give me a break. i find that most of the people hating on pitchfork's writing haven't even bothered to read it in years, and are still angry about the brent dicrescenzo era.

#16 opinion says:

it just became predictable and boring. It seems every time I open pitchfork its the same thing. Not hating on it, I really used to like it, and I go back all the time to see if I can find something different, but its just not cutting it anymore...

#17 Ben says:

Seems to me that there has been a huge loss of previous content on Pitchfork over the past year. While it still has daily news, reviews, etc., the archives appear to be gone. The list of "Best New Music" only shows the past four or so. Although I would like to check the site daily, it isn't always practical, but when I had downtime, I would go back over the moths I missed. From what I can tell, that is no longer possible and I have checked the site much less frequently as a result.


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