Anthony Nicholas Fantano ( fan-TAN-oh; born October 28, 1985) is an American music critic and internet personality who runs The Needle Drop, a YouTube channel with a tie-in website and Twitch streaming channel. Self-billed as "the internet's busiest music nerd", as a social media influencer Fantano discusses and reviews music from a variety of genres online. He also runs the channel Fantano where he talks about events in the music industry solo or with guests and conducts interviews.
Fantano was born and raised in Wolcott, Connecticut. As a teenager, he became interested in politics through the work of the musician Jello Biafra, former lead singer of the punk band Dead Kennedys, calling him "pretty much [his] political idol". Fantano graduated from Southern Connecticut State University in 2008, earning a liberal arts degree concentrated in journalism, communications, and political science.
Fantano started his career in the mid-2000s as a music director for the Southern Connecticut State University college radio station.
In 2007, Fantano started working at Connecticut Public Radio (WNPR), where he hosted The Needle Drop. That same year, he launched The Needle Drop in the form of written reviews, eventually launching his series of video reviews on the YouTube channel of the same name in January 2009, starting with a Jay Reatard record. In 2010, Fantano removed older reviews that contained music clips in order to avoid violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. At the time, he was working on The Needle Drop at his college radio station, as well as at a pizza restaurant. In late 2011, he decided to pursue The Needle Drop full-time, but kept affiliation with WNPR until 2014.
Fantano was offered an album review show on Adult Swim but declined. By the end of 2017, Fantano had reached a million subscribers and diversified his content to include weekly "track roundup" videos, livestreamed Q&As, and video think-pieces alongside his album reviews. To earn enough money to pay his editor Austen Walsh, by November 2016, Fantano was recording more regularly on a secondary YouTube channel, "thatistheplan", on which he reviewed memes and recorded "often irreverent videos that don't fall into the record review format", according to Spin.
In October 2017, an article by Ezra Marcus in The Fader accused Fantano of promoting alt-right and anti-semitic sentiments in videos on his meme channel, "thatistheplan". Marcus criticized Fantano for the use of Pepe memes (which had recently been labeled an alt-right symbol by the Anti-Defamation League) and targeting feminists. After the article was released, multiple scheduled dates of The Needle Drop U.S. tour were canceled, with at least one ticket booking site for a Brooklyn tour date stating that their cancellation was due to the Fader article. Fantano produced a video response calling the article a "dumbass hit job". He disputed accusations of sympathizing with the alt-right and stated that the videos in question were satirical and that he was not a conservative. The article was deleted by The Fader in March 2018, with both parties saying that the claims were settled. In a later interview, Fantano acknowledged that there had been some "grubby, closed-minded, young, aggressive male" viewers on the "thatistheplan" channel and disavowed what he saw as the "toxic and problematic" side of internet humor, stating that the incident had led him to be more vocal in his advocacy for social justice issues. Fantano has not posted any videos on "thatistheplan" since 2019, with his last being a satirical video titled "Terminated" about YouTube's moderation.
In July 2019, Fantano made a cameo appearance in Lil Nas X's animated music video for the Young Thug and Mason Ramsey remix of "Old Town Road", appearing as a security guard for the Area 51 military installation (a reference to the "Storm Area 51" meme). Later that year he curated a charity compilation, The Needle Drop LP, which consists of tracks performed by "artists that have either been featured on the site or reviewed favorably in the past". Profits from the album were donated to The Immigrant Legal Resource Center non-profit.
Fantano garnered attention for his video on Kanye West and Ty Dolla Sign's album Vultures 1 in February 2024 titled "unreviewable 1". Declaring the record "unreviewable trash," he talked about West's antisemitic views, particularly those expressed in his music, and general attitude preventing him from fully critiquing the record; he also delved into discourse regarding West's fan base being generally hostile to criticism and negative reviews. The video subsequently received backlash from West's fans on social media. In October 2025, Fantano collaborated with the American comedy rapper Yuno Miles on the song "Take Me Back", also appearing in its music video.
Fantano made cameo appearances in the films Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie (2025) and The Moment (2026). In the former film he discusses the (fictional) career of musician Jay McCarrol in a (fictional) episode of The Needle Drop.
Albums are rated on a standard zero to ten scale, with Fantano deeming an album score of a five as "indifference", with scores above a five as him enjoying the record to varying degrees, and below five mostly disliking it. There are also additional qualifiers ("light", "decent", or "strong") with each number besides ten and typically zero. Fantano will also occasionally give a score outside of the standard scale, such as "NOT GOOD" for albums he deems unworthy of reviewing in full, believing the album to simply be "not good". Rarely, he gives unique scores to specific albums such as "NOT BAD" for The Future Bites by Steven Wilson and xperiment by Ken Carson, highlighting his exceeded expectations, and "NOT MUSIC" for Starface by Tyga, criticizing the album's use of artificial intelligence. Fantano also uses the color of his flannel to show his rating, such as the red flannel for bad albums and a yellow/golden one for great albums.
On occasion, Fantano has revisited albums and given them a revised or "redux" rating. This is typically a result of an album being reevaluated over time, or his updated perspective on it being noteworthy enough to talk about.
On September 15, 2022, Fantano uploaded a video on his second channel jokingly claiming that Drake had sent private messages to him on Instagram, specifically recommending Fantano a vegan cookie recipe. In response, Drake posted his genuine messages to Fantano on Instagram Stories, which stated that Fantano's existence is a "light 1" and that the "1 is cause [he is] alive". Fantano later spoke about the exchange on an Instagram livestream, stating that the video was a "shitpost" and that he had no "hard feelings" toward Drake.
On October 29, 2024, Fantano uploaded a review for Halsey's 2024 album The Great Impersonator which he awarded a 1 out of 10 and said that the album had "the worst case of 'main character syndrome' I've heard on any pop album in 2024". Halsey defended the album, citing it was inspired by her battle with cancer, writing on X, "Being a woman dealing with serious health issues often means being afraid of telling the truth about the pain you're in because you're afraid of not being believed or seeming attention seeking. He validated that fear to thousands of women." In 2026, Fantano responded on his YouTube page doubling down on his review, explaining that his criticisms were targeted towards the album's music instead of her personal struggles.
In 2024 podcast with The Gatekeepers, The Strokes lead vocalist Julian Casablancas criticized Fantano, saying, "He should stick to analysis when he's methodically and scientifically describing things. He does a good job of like, 'he used this studio and did this.' So he's good at that. When it comes to art taste, he's trash and knows nothing." In 2026, Casablancas referenced Fantano in the song "Lonely in the Future" from the Strokes album Reality Awaits.
The Needle Drop won the 2011 O Music Awards in the "Beyond the Blog" category. Rolling Stone included Fantano in their list of the 25 most influential content creators of 2024. On Complex's "Hip-Hop Media Power Ranking: The 2026 Edition", Fantano was ranked at #6 out of #25. In 2014, Nick Veronin of Wired said of Fantano: "Instead of deploying ten-dollar words to describe a riff or synth tone, Fantano relies on gestures, clenching his fists or contorting his elastic, expressive face. It gets at some of the more ephemeral qualities of music that written words can't begin to touch".