YouSaid · the spoken record

Ryan Schreiber

lines on the record: 101
first: 2022-06-06
most recent: 2022-06-06
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“With that much money in my hand and was determined, I was like, look, I love doing the creative side of this so much that I like never focus on the business. I'm going to not give myself an opportunity to mess up like I'm going to have to work on this as a business. I did have one advertiser who had like actually reached out to me and said, hey, we want to advertise at the top of your site. How much will it cost?”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And at the same time, eBay had just kind of come out. And I noticed that people were selling music and selling bootleg things, CDs. And you could get, I mean, just absurd amounts of money on, you know, the auction blocks eBay for things that you could just go buy at your local record store practically. So I just started selling this stuff that I already had in my collection, kind of like whittling it down. And what can I get rid of and what's worth a lot? And through doing that, I made, I don't know, probably five grand. But I moved to Chicago.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I had made road trips, a series of road trips to Chicago, where like, I mean, the very first road trip I took, and I'm like in the city for the first time. I mean, I'm not actually in the city limits for 30 minutes before I decide, like, oh, this is exciting. I would love to live here. I wonder if I could figure out how to do this. You know, and so I actually just started saving up.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not even close. No, I had not the first idea about how or why to do that. And in fact, I don't think we were even incorporated officially until like 2004. It was a very long time.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The first and second sort of group of writers who kind of came on board ended up becoming sort of like pitchfork lifers. I mean, most of these people weren't way better writers than I was. So I was like, oh, this is incredible. You know, people want to write about music. It's a good way to get experience or whatever. And so Mark Richardson, who became the editor-in-chief for many, many years and probably one of the most well-known names associated with pitchfork.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Looking for writers, you know, send a submission, send your examples. And I got kind of amazing, like huge number of submissions, even as early as 1998. And in fact, a lot of people.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The first writer who started writing was my best friend at the time, still one of my best friends, Jason Joseph's. And it was just like a hobby for us. It was fun. I was like, I'll give you some CDs and you write about them. He's like, okay, great. Because again, the reviews were so short. Like it was effortless. And it was clearly all kids. You know what I mean? I don't think we had a writer who was older than 24 at that point.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. And I would go, okay, this is what their distribution is. You know, this is the audience they're reaching. This is what they're charging for a full page ad. Oh, wow. They charge.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I actually, in some cases, went right there. Their sales department and be like, oh, I'm interested in advertising. Can I get a cop? And just like learning and figuring out how they did it.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you know, look, it didn't take a lot of foresight to see that people were going to be logging on in mass numbers in short order, that that was going to be happening. There was already like it was growing just at an insane pace, exponential. And so, you know, I'm looking at like how much time I spend online versus how much time I read magazines. And I'm like, well, look, if, you know, all of these, when all of these magazines transition online or have an online presence, like, you know, I was already asking myself those questions. Like, am I going to continue to buy the magazine? just going to do this. But for me, I was also like, well, look, they have advertising in magazines. We can have advertising on websites. So even though I knew that I did not yet have a readership enough to support actual real ads, but I did start looking at how other zines and, you know, sort of the like mid-tier kind of indie magazines like Magnet.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, exactly, you know, mom, don't answer the phone. My setup, my tape recorder, okay, but to her great credit, she paid that phone bill every month and was, I didn't hear about it until many years later.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think so. I mean, I definitely was one of the few people. My parents did not understand the internet. They didn't understand what I was doing in my room on my computer all day. I was telling them about it. They would get strange phone calls like, hey, Ryan, somebody is calling you from. Sony music”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so I'm calling people, you know, at dinner or like after work. And there's this child asking them about their 15-year adjustable rate mortgage or whatever, you know, and so the way that it actually worked was that it was totally commission-based. So you set an appointment with them, you got $5 if they came in for the appointment, you get an extra $10 if they ended up submitting to a mortgage proposal or to submitting a mortgage, you'd get 25. If they closed, you'd get $50. So like off one call, you could reasonably make like, you know, almost $100. I started to actually make kind of like really good money doing that in the evenings, and that would free me up to.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Course, and I needed to support myself in some way. And when I did apply to the job and I got in really easily, I mean, this is a room full of like 30 or 40 people who come in from 5 to 9 p.m. We do cold calls from these cards that we get issued from the mortgage company. And we just call these numbers. And the idea was to call them ask them, you know, a series of questions about their home. I mean, I was such a kid. I know I sounded young.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I was very fortunate to be able to establish pitchfork at a time when there was zero competition, there was nothing on the web for these artes. So again, by the time that people did start to log on 1999-2000, these search results would lead so many people to pitchfork. And that really helped it get a strong footing.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Started writing two reviews a day after a while. At that point, it was really uncommon for websites to be updated daily. I mean, at this point, you know, 1995, 96, when I started publishing, almost everything out there was static. There were just a few publications like McSweeney's, I think, was already around. There were a couple of others that would update and they'd have something every day. And of course, I'm like, oh, well, these are the ones that are kind of becoming established and like getting a reputation. If we start, if I start doing something every weekday, I can build a daily audience. And, you know, but I mean, when they're like that, when they're that short, that quick, they're just so easy to knock out.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let me tell you, when you read it in that voice, it gives it a lot more character than I think it leaps off the page with naturally. So thank you.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I came up with pitchfork. I was watching Scarface as teenagers do, and there's a scene in the movie where Al Pacino is being interrogated by the feds or something. And they noticed this pitchfork tattoo on his arm. And they're like, oh, what does that mean? That means assassin. And I'm like, oh, that's cool. That's cool. Like I needed a new name and I needed a new name pretty fast. You know, I'm like living in rural Minnesota. I kind of like the angry mob connotations, which at that time were not so tea party affiliated. It was more just general angry villagers kind of vibe. But I liked all the connotations. And I thought, you know, it sort of like, it's sharp. And I really wanted pitchwork to be more aggressive in its review style, to be harder on music. And I don't know, have a higher bar.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, scared the hell out of me, you know. This is from a lawyer. What's going on? I guess, you know, I'll just change the name. We'll kind of just circumvent this entirely.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, they were called turntable media, and I think they did make sort of magazine CD-ROMs or like they did video interviews and things like that. I remember like, oh, I don't know, six months into me doing it. And they sent a CS into CIS, which.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That came from reading all the music publications that's where I got, you know, I mean, I read so much. I read. Every piece of music press that I could get my hands on from the time that I was 13. So by the time that I was 17, I had kind of a pretty strong handle of at least the terminology and the handy rock critic cliches or turns of phrase or You know, so I had a really strong knowledge just from self educating 24 7”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Start writing about it. Yeah, once that started to happen, I started to go, I have so much music here that I can't cover myself. Maybe if I put out like, you know, a post on the website, I can find other people I can send these CDs to. They can write about it. And maybe we can like. really amp up our output and that's what happened.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, when it came to music, I knew that I knew what I was doing. I knew that I knew what I was talking about. Even if I didn't necessarily have the skill set yet, I was like, there's only one way to do this, you know, and that's dig in. So after the first couple of interviews, I hit on an artist whose new record was coming out but hadn't been released yet. And when I asked her to do the interview and I had set the interview up, they're like, oh, do you want to hear the record? I'm like, well, isn't it not out for another month? They're like, well, we'll send it to you. I'm like, you'll just send it for free. Like you'll just send it to me for free, like before it's out. And once I found out that that was, that was what happened at music publications, that you'd get on a mailing list and they just send you piles of free music. Everything that's not out yet or stuff that's just come out across every genre and listen to whatever it was I wanted to listen to and then like”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but like, I mean, the music press at that time was also so irreverent. And just, you know, I mean, it was, that was sort of Gen X slacker culture.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Often I wouldn't talk that much about the music. I want to know, again, I just kind of wanted to have a friendly conversation. And so I would kind of come up with a list of questions in case there was not necessarily any form of chemistry. But often there would be. Some of the questions were also just joke questions. I think I asked Ken Coffee of the butthole surfers, do you have any naked pictures of your mother, which he said, no? And I said, do you want to buy some? And that was the end of the interview.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, for me early on, and I got to actually meet him at something like the state theater in St. Paul before his show. And like I'm sitting down with David Byrne, like asking him about. Yeah. Soup peas eating or whatever, you know, and”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Seriously. And so, yeah, it would take a while. And then she'd finally come back, though, and she would have two of the three phone numbers for me. And at first, I didn't even know what department I'm looking for. I'm like, so I have a zine and I want to do like an interview with this artist. Do you know who I talk to about that? They're like, ah, you want publicity. Hold on. And so I would finally get in touch with a publicist and I'd be like, I mean, all I would want is like, can I get 10 minutes on the phone with this person? It doesn't have to be big. You know, like I had no interview skills at that point anyway. And I was kind of novel. I mean, there were definitely interviews that I got really early on. Like I did get to talk to David Burr and early on, like 1998. Wow.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I actually called the record labels because I didn't know how to reach the bands, you know. I mean, nobody had a website at that point. Not even the labels had websites. So, in order to get in touch with the label, what I would do is I would call the Minneapolis Public Libraries information desk. And I would ask them Can you find is there a phone number for Matador Records in New York? Is there a phone number? For an up records in Seattle or in Washington. And I would hang on the phone for like a half an hour while this wonderful librarian lady would go and look through, I don't know”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was actually the big draw for me at first. My first interview was with Low, believe it or not. But they at that time were just, you know, a local band starting out. Duluth, Minnesota, who would come to the city all the time and play.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You would have found first, you would have found interviews because the first thing that I did was try to talk to artists. I was like, you can't have a zine without interviews. Yeah.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you don't even really need to know that, frankly. I just wanted to make sure that we had images and, you know, that it was visual as well as text. And then I started to see other publications kind of popping up online.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So while I was working at the record store, this was 1994, I had already been on local bulletin board systems, these services that you could call up that a person would host a computer and it would be sort of like a local regional message board. But in 1994, one of these people introduced me to the internet. He was online already and showing me all, you know, websites and showing me how everything worked. And he had made a website. And I was like, how do you do this? He's like, it's actually really super easy if you know Photoshop, which I'll teach you, and you know five HTML tags and you have an FTP client, I'm like, this is, this sounds complicated. He's like, no. So he actually walked me through it, and it didn't take long to learn. So I basically just started learning that software.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. But there would also be, oh, they got David Byrne, and people who were less successful. I saw that they were getting that kind of access and they were just Local zines. So I knew that there was a way”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I was actually really drawn to the idea, but I just had no, I mean, working in a record store doesn't, you know, I was fortunate to be able to live at home while I did that. So my expendable income, I could, you know, whatever was. There was not much. It's certainly not enough to support even something like creating 200 300 copies of something to distribute around town of out of reach for me. So yeah, there was always kind of like an instinct like, oh, I could do this. Look at these kids doing this. They got like 10 minutes on the phone with like, you know, Ian Mackay.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But at the same time, you could always kind of detect, oh, well, if you're into this or that, you might like this, blah, blah, blah. I was like, where's the negativity? Like we're all music fans too, you know, and music fans have we just, we have strong opinions. That's like kind of the, you know, that's one of the most fun things about engaging and having conversations with other music fans is this heated debate about, you know, what matters, what's good, what's not. And having not seen any of that in a lot of the local zines or the indie zines, I was like, we need to shake this up.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was I very into zines. You know, most of them were really interviews with artists and record reviews. I mean, you know, the indie community was very like, there was a deep camaraderie. Like we're all sort of outsiders. We're all kind of in this together. And we also port kind of people. So there wasn't a lot of negativity in the reviews, which I think in hindsight, you know, kind of a nice thing. Yeah.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, that's another thing I would do. I would go to like the local borders or Barnes& Noble where they had just infinite magazines of every subject. And the music magazine section was so deep. I would just sit and read. I would like listen to my headphones, sit and read. I mean, really, I actually loved Q at that time. Q was so sardonic. Just really thick too. I mean, they did so much coverage. Their captions on all their images were hilarious. It was so biting, and that I think that kind of UK sensibility of the UK music press was one of the things that really influenced me to kind of be cattier or more vicious early on.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I wasn't. What's so funny is I was not like I would sometimes have to go back and work the headshop counter. And they would, they're just slinging terminology. And I'm like, they're like, give me that dugout and that one hitter. And I'm like. Could you just point that out to me like I was insane? Yeah, so we had people who were like into all kinds of music working there. Lots of personalities. Of course, we were all snobby, you know, like I didn't think we were like snobby to the customers. You know, that's sort of a record store, a record clerk stereotype. And for a good reason, because I've been, I know I've experienced it to like no end also, right? Like. On the other side”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, it was a lot like that. It was a lot like that. The store itself was a record store slash headshop. It was one of these, you know, with a counter in the back. Lots of grateful dead stuff around Pink Floyd, incense burning like the whole nine.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I did. I graduated, and then I applied at this very cool local record store. And I was very adamant about my application and like calling, did you get it? You know. And they got back to me a couple weeks later and they said, hey, we really appreciate your enthusiasm, but you need to have some prior record store experience to get this job. So I said. Where can I get that? Where can I get that where I can also get a job? But the Mall of America had just opened. So I went down to the Mall of America. I applied at the music land store. I was in like that and worked there for the minimum amount of time six months before I went and reapplied the other, you know.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, in a sense, it's hard to be too nostalgic about it. I think the art of the mixtape is like one of the main things I'm more nostalgic about because there was such a, you're like handcrafting an object. It's not just like a collection of songs that you're putting together on a tape. It's like the whole package.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yep, you would time it. And, you know, yeah, press that on pause to sit by the radio and wait, you know, wait for that song.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I would. I was sneaking it and it was, I was sure very conspicuous. And I would guess that probably they'd seen me do it, you know, once or twice. Turned a blind eye. Sometimes I did get caught, and they were like, You can't do that. Come on.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But eventually I kind of was like, okay, this has a tape deck on it. So eventually I started bringing in tapes and making mixtapes in the record store from”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Constantly. Oh my god. It was like the only place I ever went. And I would spend hours, hours of the record stores. I got to know all the people at the record stores. You know, I'm like 15, 16, like asking them for recommendations. And I like this. What should I listen to next? And how's this? Have you heard this new album By the Cure? How's that? And just constantly digging and looking at all the artwork. And they had like actually at my local record record store in Minnotonka, we had at that time it's no longer there, but there's a big record store chain in Minneapolis called Cheapo. And I just all my time there. They had listening station in the back”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I was really Music is such a big part of the culture there, and alternative music in particular was very. Very well nurtured in the city at that time and very appreciated. We had FM radio stations in 1990 that would play Jesus and Mary Chain and I mean YouTube and Nick Cave and I mean stuff that a very rare format at that time. And those were stations that like honestly kind of taught me here's a way to take music that is really subcultural and really kind of deep into alternative culture and make this presentable for sort of a wider audience because a lot of independent alternative music was also quite experimental.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, completely unathletic. I did play piano, kind of a sport, a musical sport. But I knew that I was going to do something in music. And unfortunately, just going to public high school, the programs weren't amazing. Most of the programs that you could take, I took, but it wasn't teaching me anything I didn't know. I was very much a self-learner when it came to music. And I mean, and then socially, things got much better in high school, but I was still definitely on the fringe. And there was definitely a point where I considered going to college, but I didn't have nearly have the grades. Like I kind of barely graduated.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“School was very hard for me. I was neither a good student nor was I at all socially adept. So I was definitely, you know, kind of a loner. I was also sort of a sort of textbook ADHD case. So I was always sort of acting out a bad combination in general. But at the same time, I was actually also really fortunate because my parents actually really instilled a lot of self-confidence in me. If I would get rejection from my classmates, I always kind of had a sense it's like, we're not close. You don't know me. You don't know what, you don't see the parts of me that I see.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“From the earliest point in my life before my memory, my mom tells me about how putting music on would make me just like if I was like throwing a tantrum or crying in the crib or something like that. She figured out that if she put on music, like I would just be silent and listen. So even though they weren't, you know, they weren't very into the arts or music or anything like that, they were, you know, casual music fans. We had some country music records around some like three dog night and captain and Tenille and whatever else they liked. But once they saw how enamored I was of music and that I would just sit in front of the stereo all day and just listen and listen, they just started bringing me records. And I wasn't really particular about the records that they brought. It was sort of a quantity over quality thing at that point. I just wanted to.”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They asked me to name a price. And so I went, oh my God, I wonder how much. So I just pulled out the biggest number that I could think of, which was $500 a month”
2022-06-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT