Image from Slate.com
I found an interesting article on Slate today. Written by Jonah Weiner it is titled Spinning In The Grave and it’s his take on the slow but steady demise of music magazines. Here’s some excerpts:
1. There are fewer superstars, and the same musicians show up on every magazine cover.
Say Beyoncé—or Kanye, or Kelly Clarkson, or any of the few musical acts that still command massive appeal—announces a new album. Rolling Stone may try to book her for a cover, but even if it gets a guarantee she won’t appear on the cover of another music magazine, readers will have plenty of time to tire of her face as it beams from the covers of “urban” magazines, women’s magazines, teen magazines, fashion magazines, and tabloids (to say nothing of gossip blogs, Access Hollywood, etc.). [More..]
2. Music mags have less to offer music lovers, and music lovers need them less than ever anyway.
Time was, record companies sent advance copies of albums to music journalists. They, in turn, offered a distinct service to fans with timely, expert evaluations of new music. In the early aughts, labels, frightened by online leaks, tightened their grip on advance music, and listening sessions became the norm for most popular acts. Often held without the complete CD, these sessions encourage partially informed, snap judgment. [More..]
3. Music magazines were an early version of social networking. But now there’s this thing called “social networking” …
Many readers who are otherwise passionate about culture have little time for music writing, irritated that it speaks in abstract, jargon-stuffed language about ostensibly mainstream entertainment. Movie and TV reviewers can talk about plotlines and acting; video game reviewers can talk about graphics and game play. Music writers are charged with describing more ineffable things, and the frequent result is a pile-up of slang and shorthand references, purplish gushing, and tedious emphasis on lyrics. [More..]
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Our editor at Stereo Subversion emailed me the original article this morning. I think the article has some good insight on the subject but I think the reason for Music Magazines’ demise is fairly obvious. I think everyone gets that the internet is killing print. I was surprised though that Weiner didn’t mention how a new Rolling Stone hit the stands with a special feature of Prince–practically the day before Michael Jackson’s death. Prince sat there on the cover on the news stands while MJ blew up the internet.
July 28th, 2009 at 2:55 pm[...] here: The Three Biggest Reasons Music Magazines Are Dying | pampelmoose … Posted in Talk About Music | July 28th, 2009 Leave a [...]
July 29th, 2009 at 1:43 amI don’t buy into the idea that the internet is killing print. As Clay Shirky has famously said – “the Internet is the largest group of people who care about reading and writing, ever assembled in history.” Music magazines that come out monthly are challenged but they could change their content to long form, intelligent interviews and articles, rather like the New York Times on Sunday Magazine. They could then use the web for the quick easy stuff. Doing nothing means going out of business because it is no longer about “how we consume.” We no longer “consume content” we ingest then add to it and send it further across the web in different forms.
July 29th, 2009 at 7:45 amI think you can’t overlook the huge impact transitioning from a per-page print ad rate to impressions-based CPM had on music mags, most of whom were late to the digital game and already light years behind popular music blogs who had the model pretty well sorted and a strong online audience on lock. The per-page ad rates – especially for niche music mags, which were coveted by advertisers who wanted to reach the influencer set – were incredibly inflated to begin with. The steady decline in those ad sales, meeting an unproven/untested CPM model, plus the rapid fragmentation of music reportage left many mags in an impossible situation of still needing to provide that highly curated POV but with no dollars to pay for it and no way to extend their voice. They slept at the wheel and ignored the trends for years our of pride, out of a lack of understanding, out of preserving the preciousness of their medium, regardless of what readers were clearly signaling in terms of ways they wanted to absorb and interact with the content and each other. Most print mag publishers are luddites, simple as that.
July 30th, 2009 at 11:28 pmIt’s not that the net is KILLING print,it’s that print is killing itself by doing exactly what the music industry is doing–sticking its head in the sand for as long as possible and not adapting to the new paradigms.
Last year one of the big fish at the Chicago Tribune went on television and admitted “I don’t know anything about the Internet.” The industry is full of these Jurassic Parkers and until they get wise, the air will be filled with the dying bleats of the print dinos sinking into the tar pits.
August 1st, 2009 at 8:49 am