Boards

in fact the only time in years I've got one was last year when Sonic Router got in Clash Magazine. My news agent is so lame though, I have to drive an hour to get to my best one with a nice selection... and that was Boarders thats closed down now. I'd read them more if I could get them easily but I cant so I've given up really.

the wire is the only physical magazine left that i love.
plan b and hip-hop connection gone recently and further back jockey slut and seven. nothing great replaced them, doubt it'll happen either, hope the wire hangs on in there.

Nice, chunky features, without so many of the horrible day-glo hyperbolic soundbites they used to churn out.

I work for a local newspaper, and love print media, especially when it covers stuff like music, especially when it does so it an attractive way - something like Stool Pigeon (which I haven't been able to pick up in while) is a beautiful, well crafted artefact, and I have piles of different titles stacked all over the place.

But then again, I'm old fashioned - I rarely download, and still buy lots of CDs, which probably anyone younger than me (and I'm "only" 22) wouldn't bother with any more. Anything that leads to better content - intelligent, well written, passionate, aimed at a literate audience - should be encouraged whether it's coming through the internet or off a page.

I can't imagine why someone would want to use some eBook instead of simply buying a paperback, but that's probably what's going to happen. Everything will be digital publishing soon.

Magazines, newspapers, etc...they're all dying. Everybody gets their journo news from the internet and that's not likely to ever go back. What's a bigger concern for me is that the internet has devalued writing to the point where nobody can make a living from it. We're probably destined to have a bunch of hacks being the purveyors of all our information in the future.

the iSlate's price, which is going to be prohibitive for the casual reader/consumer - it's going to take a while (as in, years) for 'eMags' to take off, once the price of full-colour readers come down and the iSlate start having a few rivals.

Here’s my two pence’s worth as stream of conscience nonsense! Having worked in magazines myself for many years, I can see that the mainstream publishers are frickin clueless when it comes to addressing how the digital landscape work. Believe me, I’ve sat in plenty of meetings where the saviour of music was announced as…er…Lilly Allen!. LOL! Not only do they not know how to retool their offerings to be relevant to the 21st century music lover out there, they persist in really boring editorial content that is not helping their cause. So what I am saying it’s not just technology changing the way we consume media, there is an inherent lack of creativity, innovation and ambition from mainstream mag publishers which are compounding the problem and making magazines even less relevant than they are now. The only mags I think are any decent is Mojo (cos I’m old) but that’s a backward facing retrospective mag and most of it’s readers are of the age where they are comfortable with print. Clash I rate too as I like the writing and design. Don’t see Stool Pigeon enough to have a strong opinion on it one way or another… in fact I think I have only managed to get my hands on it once or twice ever...Don’t get me wrong i love reading mags, but I think we are an exciting point where the power is being taken from the old media barons by the teams of agile, independent free-thinking people with creativity at the heart of what they do and profit comes second. I am a strong believer that the cream always rises to the top. The print costs of mags as you know can be prohibitive to many people getting their ideas realised, with online not the case anymore. As everyone knows the trend for mags is that circulations are only going to go downwards and there will be no single dominant title(s) and this in itself and some of these technological developments you mentioned mean it will be much easier for say, me, two of my mates to put something out there and get people to potentially look at it. I think that’s pretty exciting personally. The one major drawback of online is as you say the experience of how you consume the content. With mags, you get a more luxurious feel; bigger more lavish photospreads and you get time and space to be able to look at a lot of words and be able to take it all in. Hopefully the new tablet tech will give us an experience closer mags and combine it with the interactivity of online (see it/hear it/experience it) but personally, I am waiting for one device that can do EVERYTHING!

A compendium of righteous avant scenes, past, present and future of all things music, art and general coolness that was so weighty and all inclusive that it took ninety days to properly digest until the next volume lands on your doorstep.

I recently subscribed to ALARM "Music And Art Beyond Comparison". It's a book form quarterly published in Chicago. I had high hopes for it but I found the first volume I received extremely boring and laughably predictable. There are hardly any adverts in Alarm but they spend the first 30 pages advertising Alarm and their stupendous staff as if that was why I subscribed to Alarm in the first place- it wasn't. Then there is about 4 pages of music related book reviews which are all pretty shit. The crux of Alarm is about 20 short articles each a little expose on a specific artist. The articles are all the same word count to the letter, each with a little background on the artist and 2-3 down home photos with out deviation- I think the feature artist "OM" had 5 pages of copy and a whopping 4 photos. Sprinkled in with the band articles were a couple obligatory "ART" articles; mostly boring art and boring artists except for the article about "Pirate Press' a small company that makes vinyl for artists. The last 20 pages of a garden variety "reviews" section of little blurbs about current releases, presumably the albums Alarm likes that have come out since the last volume. From endpaper to endpaper: ALARM is anything but "ALARMING, it's excruciatingly iboring (I just can't put it another way that say's it any better). Boring format, boring writing, boring art, boring photograph, boring illustrations. The magazine has no vision or dash it's like freaking zombies put it together.

I do think there is a future for print media but it has to be stellar, vital and completely indispensable.

there is increasingly no point in writing about music without providing at least a link so that people can listen for themselves. Whether the iSlate or the Kindle or whatever other form of portable reader comes along can handle this is up for grabs. The future of music journalism is as likely to a podcast as much as a version of the printed word.

It seems to me that 2010 is set to be the year of the e-reader with the addition of colour e-ink to many products this year they are set to go beyond the limited features of the Kindle and give digital publishing a real shot in the arm. These gadgets are, just like the iPhone going to be hugely expensive but this is going to bring a huge opportunity for publishers because as the iPhone and Kindle showed once people have forked out £300+ on a device they will pay to get great content on it.

I expect we will see premium content on all of these devices, the question is more whether it will be sustainable. We've seen a race to the bottom (in pricing) over the last decade and there will always be someone willing to do it for free.

what are people's favourite magazines? and favourite journalists? and what is it that you like about them?

... i've been thinking about this in terms of business magazines recently (revisiting my mag's non-existent online strategy) and mobile web/tablet publishing is just part of that. I think - along with the paywall discussion, my view is 'wait and see'. There's huge potential in the form - esp for business mags, imagine being able to do immediate updates and cascade it across the tabletweb over 3G/wi-fi? - but there's a whole load of uncertainty that's gonna need to bed down before the possibilities really crystallise.

that as press advertising continues to decline the cost of producing music magazines will become more expensive - large features, interviews and articles that need a lot of research will be dropped for shorter and easier stories. If you look at any music mag five years ago they had album after album taking full page adverts, now all that spend has gone, paginations are down and the pages of full of other products - once booze advertising is made illegal in a couple of years all the magazines will be hit again...the future doesn't look bright, just look at the state of the publishing industry, advertising and coverprice revenue down as people go online for news and views it will become harder and harder to justify publishing a print magazine.

But the (admittedly slightly glorious) harikari of Sleazenation's transformation into 'Sleaze' and subsequent quicksanding of THE GLORIOUS JOCKEY SLUT along with it was the worst printed music mag loss, and pretty much the end of any regular One-True-Mag reading for me.

I keep thinking that I should probably settle down into a comfy subscription to Wire, but tbh I've never bought it, and on the numerous times that I've given it a browse in Smiths it's failed to do anything for me.

Having said that, here's a decent interview with the Wire head honcho: http://www.stackmagazines.com/blog/slightly-strange/

where you can buy a sub and then read it all on yer iPhone, and GQ has released their newest issue as an app I guess with the intention of releasing a new one with each issue. Stuffed if it gets stuck unapproved by apple though.

I still think there is a future for magazines, of any sort, because of the future of technology. The Internet will certainly kill print media, but it won't kill quality writing (I hope). There have been some good points raised here, but I'd like to highlight what I see (or would like to see) happening.

The Kindle, the Sony Reader, Asus Eee Reader, The Nook (by Barnes & Noble), the Intel Reader and very possibly the Apple iSlate (or whatever). There are a whole host of eReaders out there and more being created every year. People haven't stopped reading books and I don't think they ever will, it's just the format they read them in will change. This can also be true of magazines and newspapers.
We've already seen both take a huge hit because of the Internet, though, so how will the proliferation of eReaders help this industry? This is not easy to answer, since no one can see into the future. I'd like to agree with Sean here and say that eReaders, or iSlates, or whatever they'll be named (technology in other words), can rescue media (which seems bizarre after technology threatened to destroy them). I think people still look for quality writing, whether it be from a book they're reading or from a music review. It's just that it's become increasingly difficult to find good writing, what with every man and his dog writing a blog about anything that they find interesting. What I think will be different about these digital readers is that the way information can be presented and disseminated will change. For a start, a bigger screen will help anyone wishing to read. It's all well and good using smart phones, which increasingly resemble tiny laptops, but their small screen real estate is not conducive to reading articles of great length. Laptops, while having better screen size, are still a bit more cumbersome than these digital readers promise to be. Not only that, but with multi-touch technology fast becoming the norm with regards to user interfaces, the way that people can interact with digital readers will change rapidly and improve reading experiences.

This will, I hope, give rise to a slew of people wanting to create specialised digital reader magazines, able to properly use the devices' unique qualities and provide a creative and new way of reading and consuming media (whether they will be free or subscription based remains to be seen - can the differing content and methods of interacting with the new media generate a significant amount of people to, not abandon the Internet versions, but come across to the digital reader versions in enough numbers?). Someone already made a point that quality will rise to the top, and with new ways of reading and consuming articles, then I don't think this will change.

The other massive advantage given to these eReaders will be the way that information can be presented (again touched upon by Sean and a few others). Good writers will always engage their audience and they will have a format to recommend further reading, listening and watching - links to books, other articles, music, movies, images etc can be added to broaden the readers horizons, adding value for the reader and giving the writer a new and improved platform to communicate from.

I think there's huge opportunity for these devices to re-invigorate the public desire for magazines, of any sort. I'd certainly love to read something well designed, creative and eye-catching, available whenever and wherever I am and, most importantly, with good quality writing. I'd buy that and I'm sure a load of other people would, too.

As someone else mentioned above, conde'nast now do entire issues of GQ for the iphone; pics, articles and all.

And since getting an iPhone, I read more articles than I ever did. The guardian/new york times apps are great and I'm constantly perusing them on the tube, bus etc. (I've never been so caught up on the news ). It's had a massive impact on my reading habits. I'm just waiting now for a decent music site to come up with something similar.

As an ex-magger myself - i got out to switch to online music publications - I personally believe that collectability and long reportage are the only thing that will save the print mag.

Loops is something I will be buying again, and again, and again, because long format explorations of music are so annoying to read online.

The likes of Q are going to be demolished, as bite-size, digestable reviews and lists are what the internet is FOR, so they suddenly lose their point.

Likewise NME, Kerrang, Rocksound (how are they still managing to stay afloat? Good for them though) et al.

It's sad, but exciting, and I reckon the tablet is going to be crazy good!!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/rorycellanjones/2010/01/is_publishing_about_to_have_an.html

is just a netbook with a touchscreen - not as exciting as the Apple fanboys would have you believe.
If I've got to pay for it I would go for a physical magazine/newspaper every time. Reading long articles on a screen is a bit crap.

...for anyone who finds it hard to track down a copy where they live, there's actually now a digital edition which you can read online/download. You can turn the pages and everything:
http://issuu.com/thestoolpigeon/docs/024

It's a film magazine that all music publishers should be looking at as the way forward.

i don't see music magazines competeing directly with the online music press. When it's online there's 2 major winning points I can think of.

1) It's cheaper (no printing, transport etc... costs involved
2) AND THE BIG ONE - It's a constant stream of news which can reach thousands of people the moment it breaks.

I think the future of music magazines (if there is one) will be either something like:

1) highly specialised detailed monthly prints (like SOS, Tape OP etc)
2) More like a book in format (large, detailed)

And finally: instant coffee tastes like dirt.

www.getagig.info

Exactly - convenience usually comes at the expense of quality...

that's been bugging me - surely the iPad is a backlit screen, and will thus cook yr eyes in their sockets the same way as a laptop screen? how can that be a paper replacement?

'electronic ink' (or whatever) that could be read for long periods of time with no discomfort (or need for screenbreaks) was s'posed to be eReader's selling point, surely? did i miss something?

Unless they go regional and start a fanbase that will come back to them then they are screwe. I mean, who really reads NME or Q anymore? Just marketin cak! :)