Why Music Magazines Are Really Dying
If you’re a music and writing nut, you’ve no doubt combed through Jonah Weiner’s Spinning in the Grave article at Slate about the recent ongoing death of music mags. It’s a good, thoughtful article (disclaimer: he used to edit me at Blender), but it’s also incomplete, missing out on some fundamentals of why these magazines are crashing and burning.
Mulling over print-based magazines’ demise has been going on for years now, with some thoughtful pieces popping up recently. Culled as an except from his book Say Everything, Scott Rosenberg’s How Blogs Changed Everything (Salon) talks about how blogs not only reshaped the whole media landscape, but also how they’re akin to phone technology in their reach, influence and social capacity. One point that comes up briefly there, and is worth exploring more is that blogs are part of Web 2.0 media. In other words, instead of the static pages that dotted the early web landscape, they’re interactive with the user.
The whole idea of an interactive web is passe because we’re so immersed in it now, but when you think about it, it’s really a big break from the old model. It’s not just the way that users can participate in it, but the way that it’s constantly updated, even by the second (which you rarely saw in the early days of the web). Print media is closer to the old web model and for that reason, maybe more than any other, it’s dying out now.
The root of the problem is that we’re so attuned to the web model now and so used to having instantly updated information that print media seems old and frozen in time, even if it’s the recent past. The permanence they offer is mostly lost on a readership that doesn’t mind clearing out their shelves of magazines and papers. Content-wise, it’s tough to keep a news scoop long enough before somewhere on the web breaks it first. That leaves think pieces and investigative work as some of the last bastions that print have to offer, but even there, the online world is making headway (i.e. Talking Points Memo). That’s not to say that print is necessarily doomed but that it might become a niche, localized market more and more.
But the key for publications’ survival is the online world and the problem that Vibe, Blender, No Depression and other brands had was that they weren’t serious enough about their websites (though No Depression is trying to make up for that now and admitted off the bat that their lack of web presence hurt them before). It’s not impossible for publications to live in online and offline worlds—Ad Age had a good article about Complex Magazine and how they’re leveraging their online presence but not giving up on print—but it ain’t easy either and there’s not a lotta time to make up for it now or race to find new ways to do so (Spin and Rolling Stone are trying to play catch-up now but it remains to be seen if it’s too late and it doesn’t help that Rolling Stone ain’t blog friendly).
Despite the surrounding bloodshed, another music pub that’s doing just fine is Pitchfork, as a recent Forbes article noted. It isn’t just that they found a good niche (indie rock) and exploited it. They definitely did, but there’s another big difference between them and the print pubs that recently tanked. Pitchfork‘s secret of survival is that they were already equipped to handle the online environment—that’s all they’ve done. As such, Pitchfork was better equipped to figure out staffing requirements, budget/costs, etc. for their site because they never had anything else to work with—compare that to print-based mags which constantly struggle to figure out these things. That also meant that it was easier for Pitchfork to expand to suit its own needs while not having to work about balancing any offline version of their work.
Back to Weiner’s article, he does make a good case of what’s missing now in the music world—an abundance of super stars and access to them—but misses the point on what the web can and can’t offer. As far as the gatekeeper model goes, he’s wrong to say that it doesn’t exist in the brave new 2.0 world just because everyone downloads music for free now (which isn’t actually true). If you wanna punish yourself, listen to every single album that All Music Guide and Pause & Play lists coming out every Tuesday. I’ve done it before and it can be REALLY painful. On other hand, you can also find out a lot of gems that you might not have known about otherwise. Most consumers don’t have the time, patience and commitment to sit through all of that so that they still rely on music nuts who do take the time to listen and note the good stuff that’s out there. These nuts aren’t just columnists but also bloggers and DJs (on Pandora, Last FM, etc..) who can lead you to aural goodies. And even if you don’t need someone to tell you want to buy if you ain’t paying the case, you’ll more than likely want to hear what’s downloading, if only because you don’t have time to download and listen to everything that’s out there (no one does actually but some do more than others).
Weiner’s point that music magazines don’t offer the connectedness of social networking is kinda true, but also misses another point. The magazines have, so far, been dumb not to take advantage of social networking, instead giving up and letting Facebook dominate and not making enough of a presence there and elsewhere. But you wanna know what else has little/nothing to do with this kind of interactive online community? The music taste makers that are out there now. Blogs, by their very nature, are controlled by one or a few people and you the outsider mostly (or usually only) get to participate in the comments section. How interactive is that? Ditto for Pitchfork was better equipped to figure out staffing requirements, budget/costs, etc. for their site because they never had anything else to work with—compare that to print-based mags which constantly struggle and other online publications (like PopMatters). So why are these places still hubs of influence and web traffic despite that? Most likely, it’s because they’re good sources of material and can point you to (and let you know download) goodies, which goes back to the still-necessary gate-keeper model mentioned above.
So what’s the answer for music magazines to stay afloat? Close up their online shop and reinvent themselves as an online destination? That might be kinda harsh but at the very least, the lesson is to work the web as hard as you can, even if you think you’re doing that now. The online world ain’t a place that stands still for anyone, not even venerable, long-standing publications. If you’re not innovating, making waves, drawing in users, trying new ideas (and occasionally failing), then you might as well be looking for another job.
Comments
This article needs to be proofread. It’s very hard to read with so many typos and grammatical errors. Did anyone look it over before publishing it?
Comment by Sarah — July 29, 2009 @ 5:44 pm
Interesting take; think yo are entirely right about the underwhelming web efforts dooming the music magazines. But that is built into their nature: they couldn’t countenance the democratization of the Web because it undermined their basic purpose—namely to control the discourse around pop music and drive sales for their advertisers.
I wasn’t impressed with Weiner’s article because it mimics the entitled attitude of the magazines, the presumption that the listening world needs them to make its way in a fractured music-industry landscape. We really don’t—as you note, we get much better advice from a healthy variety of sources now. The idea that teens ever needed to walk around with a copy of Spin in their pocket to gain entree into a hip subculture is sort of ludicrous. Those magazines, when they had a monopoly on music discourse, did very little but cater to the payola-like needs of the record labels that paid their bills. As the labels lost power in the industry, their lackeys, the magazines, lost their significance as well.
Comment by Rob Horning — July 29, 2009 @ 7:12 pm
Interesting comments. Sarah’s is actually interesting because it points up one of the things that’s missing in nearly all online publications and which can (and should) be a major component of a print magazine: editing. I think this post is fine as it is—for what it is—but were I thinking of printing it, Jason and I would have a little talk and I’d go through it with the red pencil after he’d made some of the changes I’d ask for.
I also agree with the many people who’ve read that article and noted that they don’t need the likes of Rolling Stone and Spin to help them make purchasing decisions. The real problem with old-style print magazine is what they choose to focus on and what they don’t focus on. That’s what need the re-think. If the content of a print mag is good enough, people will save it and refer to it again, because it’s in a convenient format.
And of course another thing Weiner never acknowledged is that there was a huge hike in 2nd class mailing costs (lobbied for by Murdoch and Time Warner) that made it cheaper to mail a large-circulation magazine than a small-circulation magazine, and that at about the same time that went down, the price of paper itself rose precipitously. So the problem isn’t just the Intertubes.
Comment by Ed Ward from Montpellier, France — July 30, 2009 @ 7:13 am
I thought I did proof it before but I guess I didn’t do a good enough job. As Ed said, that’s part of the problem with the online world, especially blogs- when you’re your own editor, you don’t always pick up on your mistakes (you sometimes just read over what you said and think ‘that looks fine!’).
To some extent, extended blog posts like this are held to the same standard as articles though others think ‘it’s a blog so there’s gonna be mistakes.’ I don’t buy that though- if you’re gonna put your thoughts out there in a blog and share your thoughts online, you should take pride in that and go through what you say. I’ll try to be more diligent about that in the future (not to mention proofing what I wrote about again).
Comment by Jason Gross — July 30, 2009 @ 1:48 pm
This is an interesting discussion. Personally, I lost interest in Spin and Rolling Stone years ago because they wasted time focusing on mainstream crap (especially Rolling Stone). Even Alternative Press has fallen into that trap too often of finding the “next big thing”. I still think that print magazines have an important place in the music business, but see promise in specialized magazines like Jack Rabid’s The Big Takeover. The writers for that mag are discussing what they love, which actually pushes readers towards new artists and hidden gems. In the online scene, sites like PopMatters that cover a variety of genres work out better as single sources of information. The key is finding out whom you trust and going there, regardless of whether it’s a print or online resource.
Comment by Dan Heaton from St. Louis, MO — July 30, 2009 @ 2:17 pm
Dan’s right: niches is where print can live. The postal rate increase killed a bunch of niche magazines, from No Depression to a lot of dance magazines, from what I can tell. For news and opinion, online is the way to go, and those magazines have to factor that in, too. But there are just too many advantages to print to think that it will go away: graphics, portability, ease of immediate retrieval, among others.
Comment by Ed Ward from Montpellier, France — July 31, 2009 @ 4:50 am
To be fair though Sarah, you really should proof the material on your own site too.
Comment by Jason Gross — August 2, 2009 @ 11:19 am
Jason: What site is that? I work in book publishing, not online.
I’m sorry for my earlier comment—I didn’t realize you were your own editor here, or that PopMatters considers itself more of a blog than a magazine. I wouldn’t have nitpicked.
Anyway, I do agree with your article. I canceled my music mag subscriptions in favor of AllMusic/Pitchfork/blogs because they offer such good writing and coverage. Sure, it’s a nice bonus that they’re free, interactive, and constantly updated, but the web 2.0 factor isn’t the only reason these sites have drawn readers away from print mags. It’s about content. Not that print is dying because its content is bad, necessarily; it’s dying because online content has gotten good. <i>So</i> good, in addition to its other advantages, that print alone can no longer compete.
Niche magazines may kick around for a while, but eventually they’ll move to the web too. That’s just the inexorable direction of media. Paste, for one, is making a pretty strong transition. Although their business model has <a href=“http://www.pastemagazine.com/savepaste”>hit some bumps</a> in the recession, they’ve maintained a <a href=“http://www.foliomag.com/2009/donation-campaign-saves-paste-now”>loyal readership</a> because they provide good content, both in print and online. I don’t think the mainstream old-media mags have the same chance—not unless they can offer content that’s consistently better than their web competitors. And with writing talent moving to the web almost as fast as readers, that seems unlikely.
Comment by Sarah — August 4, 2009 @ 5:29 am
@ Sarah
PopMatters doesn’t consider itself a blog. We just happen to have three blogs that are self-edited by the writers: this one, Marginal Utility and Peripatetic Postcards.
PopMatters is a magazine and everything else goes through editors. We’re sorry when typos get through anywhere, especially on the edited portions, but it does happen. I see typos all the time in the Guardian, so even organizations with staffs many times our size have some of those problems.
Comment by SysAdmin — August 4, 2009 @ 5:34 am
I see. Thanks for clarifying.
(Apparently my attempt at HTML markup didn’t work. I wish I could edit that…)
Comment by Sarah — August 4, 2009 @ 6:55 am
Ha! With the Guardian, typos are a *tradition*! Why do you think people in England call it the Grauniad?
Comment by Ed Ward from Montpellier, France — August 5, 2009 @ 5:11 am
Just wrote about this story.
http://newcicada.blogspot.com/2009/08/reo-speedwagon-wisdom-hey-rolling-stone.html
Comment by Heather from Maryland — August 8, 2009 @ 1:37 pm