It’s official: Pitchfork, the tastemaking indie rock criticism site, is launching a web TV channel in April that hopes to fill the void that MTV and VH1 left when they ditched music for the deranged promise land of reality television.

But unlike television, Pitchfork.tv will be on demand. Users will choose what they want to watch from the daily refreshing content pool that includes full concerts, interviews and music videos — all for free, using the same ad revenue model that the currently use on their site.

As Pitchfork tries to create an empire Vice-like in its scope, it raises some tough ethical questions about straddling the journalism/commercial divide. Chicago Sun-Times’ Jim DeRogatis asks these questions in an interview with Pitchfork founder Ryan Scrheiber:

“Wait a minute, Ryan: Pitchfork has gotten to a position over the last 12 years where it has a lot of power now… If Pitchfork champions a band, that 9.4 rating means something — it means a lot. Now, what band is going to deny you the right to videotape them and show that content for free on Pitchfork.tv if its’ worried about not getting a good review on the Web site? What band is going to say no to playing the festival, even if it has a better offer somewhere else, and what band is going to reject letting you include them on a videogame soundtrack?”

But to me, the question of whether Pitchfork.tv will succeed in taking music television to the web is just as if not more interesting than the ethical questions.

To me, Pitchfork — even when doing what the do best (reviews) — has been losing currency for a while I think because they have become over broad. Maybe it’s just a resentment over the strange power their wield over a band’s success or failure, or my failed experiment in chosing what albums to buy according to what Pitchfork rates 8 or above (I ended up very disappointed.) But it’s a site I rarely visit these days.

I think that the TV thing would work better as a niche, to have a greater sense that the content is curated and that I will get what I am looking for. I don’t care about an interview with indie rock giants like Vampire Weekend. There could be a way for Pitchfork to curate a number of niches and help people navigate so they can find what they want. For example, I’d be interested in just music videos made by feature filmmakers or visual tours of different DIY spaces around the country, or footage from old concerts back in the ’90s — and I’d like to be able to find that kind of thing easily — but am not interested in mainstream pop culture coverage or, for example, SXSW shows. If their pool of content feels too inundated with stuff I’m not interested in, and there’s not a good way to navigate the archives, I am not likely to keep coming back.