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Like a high quality, fairly thick one with good quality writing, interviews and essays. Maybe with a Cd or something.

and I'd have it about not just music but also cover art, music video, books, studio and gear stuff and a bit of industry and business stuff

I think I'd make the lead piece an interdisciplinary essay on a relevant topic (drawing lines through the history of art, music and general pop culture to arrive at a topical present day trend, mood or sound for instance)

Plus a lead interview or '72 hours with' the cover artist

A quarterly would be good

Also, I would like the adverts to be separate from the magazine proper - a pull-out supplement - but people would read it because it would also be where all the live listings, classifieds and what not would be

Ad sales rates are based on positioning in relation to certain articles/features - I doubt advertisers would be interested in being in a separate pullout supplement.

For me it's all about the quality of the writing. I used to buy MM religiously in the 1980s/early 90s regardless of who was on the cover, as I knew the writing would be good. Chris Roberts, David Stubbs, Paul Lester, Stud Bros etc - didn't matter who they were writing about, they were always intelligent, controversial and entertaining. Music writing like that is harder to find these days.

There would need to be Print exclusive content alongside stuff which links to online. I think the idea of the DiS end of year zine would be great, something almost like a coffee table magazine which could even attract a lot mire people to the site.

I reckon you'd get a fair bit of play out of this for little more than the development costs. Obviously people can access the site from their smartphones but to have the latest reviews delivered to their handset in time for the daily commute would be great. Get the formatting right, make it free to download and carefully manage some ad space and you're laughing.

but maybe that isn't relevant anymore, as the internet can serve that purpose.

I'd probably go for a monthly or bi monthly magazine. A really unpretentious yet reasonably serious style of writing, also quite a few in depth and well informed articles on the music industry itself, cause I find that stuff really fascinating. Similarly, articles on certain lyricists, on class issues in alternative music, on songwriting. Lots of interesting stuff which isn't completely obsessed with the past or a certain band/songwriter's legendary status, although yet still regards such a thing ie. not totally forward looking/has a good appreciation for music generally.

It's sad that in an internet age, when space isn't an issue, we actually end up reading articles with much lower word counts than we would in a magazine. I want to LEARN stuff, not just read opinions.

That often turned me onto some good reviews/features I missed during the week in favour of the boards.

it would focus on a chosen band each issue and that main feature band / artist would be at the core of that issue with other articles spinning of that artist so you would get a kind of highly detailed overview of that artists place in the musical environment. These would go from articles that cover the heros of the genre, to unsung heros, to those on the very fringes of the scene, to future stars, to influences in popular culture.

So if aphex twin was releasing a new record you'd have a big feature on that and then maybe something about Kraftwerk or Reed Ghazala, and then maybe an interview with three trapped tigers or 65dos about mixing up electronica and rock music, and then an interview with some local promoter who just puts on electronic stuff and their experiences and then maybe an interview / feature with some proper POP music producer who utilizes aphex type effects in pop music and then maybe something about how the core values IDM type stuff gets reflected across over mediums - like a feature on an visual artist who cites warp type stuff as an influence.

they the rest of the mag would be a kind of top picks of reviews from the last quarter and wouldn't follow the theme template at all.

that the purpose of music journalism is to introduce me to stuff I haven't heard, and to shed new light on stuff I already know. Sites like DiS, Pitchfork & Quietus are great for the former, but I seem to be missing out on the latter. The likes of Uncut & Mojo focus too much on the mainstream definition of classic rock, but for me the classics are Kraftwerk, New Order, Public Enemy, Smiths, Cure, Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Wu-Tang, Pavement, Velvets etc, and any monthly publication that took such acts as their touchstones (rather than the usual Dylan/Springsteen/Beatles axis) would get my cash.

My favourite music mag back in the day was France's Les Inrockuptibles (back in the late 80s when it was monthly) - a very clearly defined aesthetic, witty, intellectual writing, beautiful design, and plenty of meaty articles, essays, interviews & reviews. I guess in terms of seriousness it was reminiscent of Wire but applied that same intellectual rigour to a much more diverse range of music and rightly figured that Happy Mondays or Nick Cave were as deserving of serious treatment as Philip Glass or John Coltrane.

I was a religious MM / NME purchaser in the 90's when I was really getting into music (and had the money to buy it) but really lost interest when MM folded, sticking to purchase of the end of year issues for the top 50 lists and CDs.

Since I got into DiS and Pitchfork, I don't even purchase the end of year issues any more. Having said that, I subscribe to Word, onto which I moved from UNCUT. The responses to readers' letters in those magazines indicates that they only sell well with the 'classic' artists ThirstDog mentions above. I think Select was the last magazine to make a living on more alternative artists.

I think from just these points alone, for a DiS magazine to sustain the depth and breadth of coverage that we all enjoy, a monthly would be simply unsustainable in sales terms (I'm not sure how Wire does it). But an annual, providing the more enthusiastic music lover with an indepth review of key genre developments, representative artists, and must have records would be something I would purchase as a memory of the year gone by.

The app (don't forget Android!) would be a real winner though. I do most of my DiS browsing on my phone.

which has amazing hand drawn covers like this http://www.littlewhitelies.co.uk/the-magazine
and the whole thing is presented really beautifully. I would probably have to make it monthly or quarterly to account for the extra cost.

I would still have reviews but I think they're much less important than they used to be nowadays when people can just stream or download music themselves and make up their own minds so I'd have more a focus on interesting features and stuff. I would also do something each week on older albums that aren't very well known or don't get the credit they deserve just because I like finding out about them and the 100 Greatest Albums You've Never Heard list was the best thing the NME have done in ages.

Re: DGquarterly - love the "slow news" concept - it's difficult to make sense of any event without deliberate rumination.

'nowness for nowness' sake' culture that permeates much of online and published content these days. In years gone by I've fell victim to trawling through endless blogs just to feel like I was keeping up. Of course, a lot of the music wasn't up to much, but was hyped up for the sake of 'exclusivity' or the (understandable) desire for a given blog/publication to be first to break a band.

I think other posters above have outlined really great suggestions about long-form articles and pieces that don't just look upon music as an isolated entity - quarterly would be excellent, something to learn from and really 'sink your teeth into'

take a look at this http://drownedinsound.com/news/4143498-new-dis-site-coming-soon--your-feedback-is-very-much-welcomed