The second annual Pitchfork Music Festival kicked off yesterday in Chicago’s Union Park. Pitchfork Media’s founder and Editor-in-Chief, Ryan Schreiber, spoke to the press during the proceedings. Here he is speaking about his site’s soaring influence and popularity:
Q. Speaking of hipster kids, do you feel that your website reaches out to anyone besides the hipster kids?
A. You know, It’s really difficult for me to know at this point who we’re reaching. Because there came a point with readership where we were at like 30,000 readers a day, back in 2000, 2001, and that’s like what a Yo La Tengo or a Built to Spill record would peak at in terms of album sales. And so it was like, God, it can’t really get much bigger, can it? And it just has continued to get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. So in a way I hope what it’s doing is sort of inviting people in, and saying “Look, there’s an alternative to everything you’re force-fed through MTV, commercial alternative radio.” As common sense as that seems to us, there’s still a lot of people out there who just totally aren’t aware of it. So hopefully we can be sort of a conduit for their discovery of music. ‘Cause you know, there was a time when I was totally unaware of it, and it just took the right time and I just needed the right experience to get in.
[via Muzzle of Bees]