Former Sleater-Kinney member Carrie Brownstein’s NPR blog, Monitor Mix, ranges from really smart to uninteresting prompts for reader response. What comes up on your iPod? What song can change your day? Today’s post is a lengthy round table discussion with the heads of indie labels on the impact of the digital marketplace, and it’s well worth the time as it sheds some light on consuming habits, downloading and purchasing tendencies, and the issues created by singles.

As interesting as it is, what stopped me cold is a discussion of the power of Pitchfork.com and its reviews:

Carrie Brownstein: Aside from putting out good music, what’s the single most effective thing a label can do to get people to buy their music?
Gerard Cosloy: Not sure what the single most efficient thing would be (other than, you know, the Pitchfork 9.1), but getting people excited is never easy to quantify or predict.
Carrie Brownstein: Does a Pitchfork 9.1 help?
Maggie Vail : Absolutely.
Gerard Cosloy: Sadly, yes. A Pitchfork 9.1 is more influential to the audience and the retailers than a Rolling Stone or New York Times review.
Carrie Brownstein: What does a Pitchfork 4.5 do?
Portia Sabin: A 4.5 can kill a record. Unfortunately.
Mac McCaughan: Agree on the Pitchfork thing, though I do think that a 9.1 helps more than an average number hurts.
Robb Nansel: I’d be inclined to say a high Pitchfork number helps; a low Pitchfork number is irrelevant.
Gerard Cosloy: There remain great things that aren’t even on the Pitchfork radar.
Mac McCaughan: Impossible!
Gerard Cosloy: The Beatles.
Chris Swanson: Cold War Kids were killed on their debut and did quite well.
Gerard Cosloy: Just having a number next to a review discourages anyone from reading.
Mac McCaughan: Yes, and often the review will be enthusiastic and then the number is like “6.9” and you’re like, “Thanks for nothing.”
Portia Sabin: There’s a difference between getting an average/decent review and being a band who is loved by Pitchfork. We have two bands who are doing well despite being basically ignored by Pitchfork right now.
Chris Swanson: Anything under a 7.6 or 7.7 is a non-review.

Jagjaguawar/Secretly Canadian Records’ Chris Swanson’s last line struck a resonant chord. Periodically, someone here at OffBeat or a reader has suggested or requested that we grade the CDs we review. I’ve always resisted this because as a reader, my experience is exactly Swanson’s. Who reads reviews of moderately graded albums? Who reads about the sevens, the three out of five stars, the B minuses and C plusses? It’s like the album doesn’t exist; people are more likely to read pans. No one forgets that the Dismemberment Plan’s Travis Morrison got a 0.0 from Pitchfork for his Travistan album.

And as Merge Records’ Mac McCaughan says, the text may be nuanced and say many positive things, but the grade’s easily grasped and becomes the bottom line regardless of what was written.

As a writer, that’s a logic that has spoken to me for years. You spend time writing a review and trying to write something that in both detail and tone reflects your feelings – which are rarely simply positive or negative – towards an album, and your efforts are completely undermined by the grade.

So for now, to know what we think about CDs at OffBeat, you’re just going to have to read the reviews. But, at least you’ll know what we really think, and not the approximation grades represent.