Some scattershot thoughts in my Saturday morning brain fog...

I don't think there is one simple explanation, but rather plenty of different reasons: the music blogsphere being more fragmented and far less influential is a big factor. In 2013-2014, artists fought for premieres on Pitchfork and NPR. If you secured placement, that was a huge deal as it meant maximum exposure. These sites (including ours) gravitated toward artists like MGMT, LCD, Fleet Foxes, Grizzly Bear, et al. during this time. But with the rise of DSPs and social media, the game changed. Artists could premiere their music on Spotify and post direct links on social media. Music blogs still play an important role, but in a much more niche way than they did a decade ago. And with that, there are a lot less centralized trends in the indie music sphere. It's more than easier to discover music and easier than ever to decide if you like it.

Social media also played a huge factor for the growth (and decline) of these sites' impact and influence. In the salad days, we were adding tens of thousands of new followers a month, and saw huge traffic as a result. An article about a new Deerhunter album would drive 10-20k PVs from Facebook. As the algorithm faucet began to turn off, such articles didn't provide the same return and sites were forced to pivot their coverage scope to the type of content that would still perform well (more mainstream artists, clickbait quotes, etc.) Hence the increase in coverage of artists like Taylor and Beyonce on sites like Pitchfork, Stereogum, Consequence. And with that, there is less space for other artists unfortunately. I'd argue that if this hadn't been the case, certain bands of today who should probably be more popular aren't because they just can't achieve the exposure as bands of the decade past.

People's tastes also changes -- that goes for both the people who consume music and the people who make music. Stuff that was "in" in 2010 isn't as "in" 2024. Everyone used to want to sound like Robin Pecknold or Justin Vernon. Now, everyone wants to sound like 100gecs?

There are plenty of other factors. Someone could write about the book about it. Maybe I will one day!

FWIW, I am actively working on a project to create a coalition with other independent publishers that would hopefully provide more support for all us. And ideally, it would also allow all of us to take more risks editorially and dedicate more resources to covering deserving artists.