How long has Pitchfork been around? Has it always been online? What made you decide to start the zine?

I started Pitchfork in November of 1995 when I was working at a computer store. I'd been working in record stores but spent a lot of time on the internet. I'd never really written reviews before I started the site and it's pretty obvious if you go back to... pretty much anything I wrote before 1999. But I've been a music junkie since birth and was really inspired by a lot of zines. It was like, "these people love music and want to tell people about it, even if they can't write a sentence." I couldn't write a sentence, but it didn't stop me.

What is the traffic like at Pitchfork? How many hits per day does the site receive and how often is the content updated?

When we started out, my big dream was to get 300 readers a day. I was like, "man, that would be incredible!" The traffic started to grow when we started doing four record reviews every day, which I think was probably sometime in 1998. Last year, the readership quadrupled-- we had 2,000 readers a day at the beginning of last year, and now we have 12,000 a day. We track site stats with two programs-- one is this way-too-elaborate thing called WebTrends, and the other is a basic tracking script called Analog.

How many packages a week does Pitchfork receive from bands, labels and publicists? Is your house sinking in CDs?

It's sick, actually. We get like 500 CDs a month. I'm totally sinking in CDs, but I love it. When I worked at the record store after I got out of high school, there was this woman in the back of the store who was the general manager, Kathy Shedd-- it was like a small local chain of record stores. Her job was basically to, obviously, manage the stores and stuff, but it seemed like all she ever did was call publicists and get CDs and posters sent. Everyday the mail would come and it would just be like a huge mailbin of promo CDs. We all wanted Kathy's job. Now, it's weird, because I get way more stuff than she ever did. I don't even have time to listen to most of it.

When you get a package from a band to review what are some bare minimums you expect in the package? A one sheet? A real CD, no burned copies? A press photo?

We don't really work like that. I mean, we get a ton of stuff and we only have room to write about 80 CDs a month, so there a requirements-- like, we almost never review self-released stuff. But we could give a shit if there are, like, headshots or whatever. Press releases are nice because they give a little bit of background, and also, they're hysterical. I like the ones that really overstate, like, "these guys are like John Lennon crossed with Kevin Shields with Keith Moon on drums." It makes my day that much more enjoyable.

How many people are on the writing 'staff' at Pitchfork?

Well, I've mainly got the reviewers listed on the staff page and some of the people who do other stuff like help with maintaining release dates and doing HTML stuff. But there easily close to 50 people working on it. We have about 15 reviewers, like 15 news writers, Brian Roberts who edits the news section, and a bunch of Chicago-area interns. What's sad is that I've never really met most of the writers because they all live in different parts of the country.

What criteria do you look for when selecting writers?

I'm actually kind of picky. We get a lot of applicants. I think the kind of people I look for are people with a pretty extensive knowledge of the music first and foremost, but I like people who have some kind of personal style. I like the personality to come through in the writing, mainly because I don't want people to come around and get bored reading the same review over and over again.

Unlike some zines, Pitchfork is pretty selective about what gets reviewed. How do you select which records will and will not get reviewed? Do you choose or do you send CDs to your writers and let them decide for themselves?

About 60% of the records we write about are things we've actually had to seek out. The bigger independents didn't just start sending us stuff. We had to call and be like, "Come on, you know you want to send us CDs." Drag City and Matador were particularly difficult to squeeze promos out of. But we also a review a ton of stuff that just shows up in the mailbox. I just try to pick what I think is relevant to people and that's the stuff we write about. Sometimes writers will buy something and be like, "this is really good, i want to write about it." So it's sort of whatever we're into or feel like writing about.

How do you pick and choose which bands will be interviewed by Pitchfork? Do you have people soliciting you about interviewing their band? Is that a good tactic for a band or label to utilize or so you subscribe more to the don't call us, we'll call you methodology?

Actually, it's kind of off-putting to me when people are like, "do you think you're going to do an interview?" We don't do many interviews because I have my hands full with the rest of the site all day long, and if we do interviews, it's usually with bands that we really admire. I'd like to do more interviews-- I think running a feature every day would be incredible. I don't have the capacity for it right now, though.

Do you ever have press people, bands or labels writing you asking why you have not reviewed their releases? Does this tend to work for or against a band to write and inquire?

Yeah, it happens all the time. It's kind of sad, because I get about 100 e-mails a day now and I can't respond to all of them individually so a lot of people just get form letters now. But I mean, most people understand that there's a certain risk that the records they send might not get reviewed. We get a lot of people wondering "what's up" with that CD they sent us.

Negative reviews, your site is not afraid to "tell it like it is". Do you ever get irate people writing to you responding to reviews you have put up?

Oh, completely. We have the reader mail section, which we've kind of been neglecting lately, but we basically have all the reader mail that comes in and a ton of it is hate mail. The mail we get is maybe 20% positive, and then the remaining 80% is like Kottonmouth Kings fans. We write a lot of evil reviews, but we do it for the readers. When I flip through Magnet and Copper Press, it's always shocking to me how many positive reviews there are. People are always saying that the "indie music community should stick together." They're like, "why diss something that is born out of a love for the music?" Barry Manilow's catalog was born out of a love for the music, too, and I'm sorry, but I just can't get into it. It's totally missing the point of record reviews. We're here to direct people towards good music and away from bad music. What's good and bad is always subjective, but people come to us wanting an opinion. If we gave every band a glowing review, we'd be CMJ. And you know what reading CMJ is like.

I know that Pitchfork uses the "buy now at Insound" button. Do the zines really make any money off of these? Do people really tend to read a positive review of a release and then click through and purchase it at Insound?

Yeah, it happens quite a bit. It's actually great because it means we're turning people on to good music. We don't make a ton of money off it or anything, but Insound has more of the stuff we write about than anyone else, and they're pretty good guys so it makes sense to send people over there.

How strong do you feel the correlation is between the success of a band and the positive reviews it receives from music critics?

I think it really varies. If a band gets a lot of good press, it definitely helps. I mean, when Pitchfork gets behind a band, we really get behind them. The Dismemberment Plan is a great example-- those guys released emergency & i and we were all over it. We loved that record. I'm not saying we're at all responsible for their success, but I like to think we helped them out and maybe exposed a few more people to their music. It's always hard to know how much of an impact we have on that kind of thing. But it definitely doesn't hurt to have critics raving about your band.

A lot of people seem to be fairly condescending towards online zines and their validity, acting as if 'print' is the only true medium. How do you feel about that? Do you ever feel like your zine or its content is considered to have less validity due strictly to the fact that is online?

Well, I see where people are coming from with that. If you run a print magazine, you are dead fucking serious. You have office space, employees, distribution and a ton of overhead. What do you need for a website? You could do it on a 14.4 connection. We have enough traffic now that no one will host our site for less than $99/month. But I mean, there are a ton of webzines and a lot of them are really spotty. Not many of them are updated on a regular basis and the writing is usually pretty hackneyed and sub-par. That's been a really difficult thing for us to overcome, especially with advertisers. People are willing to take us a little more seriously now than they used to because people actually read us now. As far as the validity of what's being said, though, I think there's very little difference between print and internet. You're getting an opinion either way. I wouldn't trust Flipside or Punk Planet over Buddyhead.

Do you have any words of wisdom to pass down to aspiring bands out there trying to make the Indie kids love them? Is there any one secret to success?

It's times like this when I wish I was wiser. If there's any kind of "success key" that I've discovered, it's just sticking with what you love through the shitty periods. In the five years that I've been running Pitchfork, there have been a lot of really awful periods. In '97, I was working 14 hour days managing a room of mortgage telemarketers. At the end of the day, I'd drive an hour to get home and then work for two hours on the site. Being persistant is what did it for me. It was a pain in the ass, but it was what I loved, and now I get to do it full-time.