On why Altered Zones is Pitchfork’s *younger* ‘sister site’, and the fundamental difference between music producers and consumers who don’t remember music before the web, never knew it was something you paid for, and aren’t as concerned with the rating of certain music as ‘bad’. I like this, but I have some big issues with this and want to return to it: 1. Altered Zones has its own set of problems, heavy among them the double-standard to which they hold DIY music. Baby bands at AZ get heaped with over-the-top praise, which at once unfairly removes them from helpful critical influence and subjects them to fame for which they aren’t prepared. As a result many are left in the dust of the Next Small Thing. 2. These music producers and writers don’t remember music before the web? I think this is patently false and that they absolutely do remember it; they generation that doesn’t isn’t reading Altered Zones yet. And what about those music producers sampling and being influenced by music that happened before the web (the 90s, the 80s)? 3. I don’t think Pitchfork is incapable of critically assessing the bands on Altered Zones; they just don’t have the time and energy for it. Which argument means I also don’t believe Altered Zones is not a filter for Pitchfork. How many bands debut on AZ or an AZ-affiliated blog, move on to the Forkcast, get a feature, and then get a bona fide Pitchfork Review? Several. Pitchfork’s own ‘The Week at Altered Zones’ pretty much is a filter by definition.

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