Condé Nast Buys Pitchfork Media

Condé Nast – which own titles like Vanity Fair and Vogue – have purchased music publication Pitchfork for an undisclosed fee.

Terms of the acquisition were not immediately disclosed. Pitchfork staff will now report to Fred Santarpia, Conde Nast’s Chief Digital Officer and the lead behind the acquisition.

Still no word on whether females (millennial or not) like music, and/or whether old Pitchfork articles, reviews, and lists will eventually be paywalled.

“Pitchfork is incredibly fortunate to have found in Condé Nast a team of people who share our commitment to editorial excellence”, says Schreiber.

“Nobody made any official proclamations, but it seems as if the concept of selling out has lost its meaning”, wrote then-Pitchfork columnist Chris Dahlen back in 2005, “The kids treat it as a quaint idea, and the music veterans who used to live or die by it are fading away”.

Pitchfork started in 1995 as a website devoted to independent music, and has grown to become an influential publication and the organizer of several large music festivals, including an annual one in Chicago, where Pitchfork is based.

Conde Nast has acquired a handful of new media operations over the years including Ars Technica, the technology news publication, and Reddit, the popular and sometimes controversial social news service. That said, the deal makes sense: Magazine publishers like Condé Nast are desperately trying to figure out how to survive and make money in the post-print world, and Pitchfork gets the resources provided by a giant media company.