Pitchfork Scraper

Scrape album reviews and ratings from Pitchfork, the leading music review publication. Extract scores, review text, Best New Music picks, genres, labels, and more.

Features

• Search for artists, albums, or keywords
• Browse latest album reviews with pagination
• Best New Music filter for BNM and Best New Reissue picks
• Full review text extraction via JSON-LD structured data
• Scores (0-10 scale) from Pitchfork's rating system
• Rich metadata: genre, label, release year, review author, publication date

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
searchQueries	string[]	[]	Artist names, album titles, or keywords to search. Leave empty to browse.
maxListings	integer	100	Maximum number of reviews to scrape per query.
scrapeDetails	boolean	false	Visit each review page for full text, score, label, and BNM status.
bestNewMusic	boolean	false	Only browse Best New Music reviews.
proxyConfiguration	object	-	Optional proxy settings.

Output

Each result includes:

Field	Description
albumTitle	Album name
artist	Artist or band name
score	Pitchfork score (0.0-10.0, available with scrapeDetails)
genre	Music genre (e.g. Rock, Rap, Electronic)
label	Record label (available with scrapeDetails)
releaseDate	Release year
reviewAuthor	Review author name
reviewDate	Publication date
reviewText	Full review text (available with scrapeDetails)
dek	Review subtitle/summary (available with scrapeDetails)
bestNewMusic	Whether tagged as Best New Music
bestNewReissue	Whether tagged as Best New Reissue
imageUrl	Album cover image URL
url	Full review URL
searchQuery	The search query that found this result
scrapedAt	ISO timestamp of when the data was scraped

Usage Examples

Search for an artist

{
    "searchQueries": ["Radiohead"],
    "maxListings": 20,
    "scrapeDetails": true
}

Browse latest reviews

{
    "maxListings": 50,
    "scrapeDetails": true
}

Best New Music only

{
    "bestNewMusic": true,
    "maxListings": 30,
    "scrapeDetails": true
}

Multiple artist search

{
    "searchQueries": ["Taylor Swift", "Kendrick Lamar", "Billie Eilish"],
    "maxListings": 10,
    "scrapeDetails": true
}

How It Works

1. Listing mode: Parses server-rendered review cards from Pitchfork's reviews listing pages. Extracts album title, artist, genre, author, and date from the HTML.

2. Search mode: Uses Pitchfork's search page (/search/?q=) which returns server-rendered results. Extracts review links and visits each for full data.

3. Detail extraction: On individual review pages, parses:

   • __PRELOADED_STATE__ JSON for score, Best New Music status, label, genre, release year
   • JSON-LD Review schema for full review text, author, dates, and images

4. Pagination: Follows head.nextPage from __PRELOADED_STATE__ to scrape multiple listing pages.

Notes

• Scores are only available when scrapeDetails is enabled (requires visiting each review page)
• The listing page shows ~96 reviews per page
• Best New Music listing shows ~30 reviews per page
• Search results are limited to what Pitchfork's server renders (~12 unique results per query)
• For comprehensive artist coverage, use both search and browse modes