Whats The Worst Music Magazine In The World?

I'd like to see Blender - the CD-ROM version - resurrected. But that might just be dotcom nostalgia on my part.

I'm not much of a Relix guy myself....

I miss Rip magazine....it was good for metal. It also introduced me to Mission of Burma, strangely.

I wish they'd bring back New Times L.A. (okay, not music, but still...) Screw Village Voice Media.

I know it's not the done thing round here to confess to reading Q, but it's a guilty habit of mine, despite its being very deeply flawed. That said, has anyone else noticed the extent to which it has resurrected a lot of the features and slapdash nature of mid-90s Select magazine, but without the charm? Even their reviews are written in can't-really-be-arsed Select-ese nowadays.

It's everything you ever wanted to know
Blender megazine!
When the wind and rain are falling outside
I take an interactive ride
On a spinning carousel
That spins me down to hell
Or to the gates of paradise

I always wondered how the wind and rain could both be 'falling'?

It was especially galling because I wrote and sang the bloody thing!

Generally genre based mags are dud. Mags should write about a huge variety of different musical genres, like Q does.

Q seems to me to have gone downhill over the last few issues, not sure if there's been a change in editorship or something??

I did flick through the X-Ray magazine in Smiths the other day, and couldn't understand why anyone would want to buy it.

I know its not strictly a Music magazine, but I do like 'Word' mag, the journalism in it is excellent, and I like the fact that they concentrate on fewer articles in greater depth, although they sill insist on putting people like Dido on the cover.

It's like a bloody comic now.

Anyone who thinks Terrorizer is shit is a madman and plain wrong. Melody Maker 94-96 (my period) would be a nice return. and perhaps Lime Lizard, which I was too young for and which may well have been shit, but I like the free tapes they did.

Not stuff like "Dear Dimebag, i have a smelly discharge".

Please add any magazines you like to the discussion

Terrorizer is a fine specialist magazine, I just assumed some would have opinions on it.
Geir, you are so very wrong with your attitude.

It was good to see Marcello's Kevin Ayers re-issues piece given some level of prominence in a recent Uncut, fairly short though it evidently was... "Joy of a Toy" I must acquire; having had the wonderful "Whatevershebrings..." in my collection for years certainly induces an appetite for more.

But, indeed, I can only be rather aghast at a publication which relegated a brief (in itself a constraint which cheapens the writing) Marcello review of Girls Aloud's "The Sound of the Underground" to, IIRC, the August issue, when the record had been released a whole 2 months earlier! :-/

I sorta liked Raygun. And Bikini was okay too.

They're not a music magazine, they're a "youth culture brand." Remember?

Well, uh...yeah!

the current newsstand Blender is the same ownership, different format, so in a way it has been resurrected

Donut Bitch, I love Vice! I laugh a lot. I will never be able to repay the author of that article on muff diving for what he taught me.

and i liked whoever said up there that Rolling Stone is not even a "music mag." It is just a paler imitation of its sister magazine now, Us - a celeb rag w/ emphasis on music biz just like Us or People concentrates more on Hollywood. Whats really funny is that those lefty Hunter Thompsonish articles still get published in there with the intention of them being "anti-establishment!" or "countercultural!" or something, as if this was still 1971 and the fellow boomers eally need to be educated on What's Going On with the evil gov't and everything in case they're too busy smoking pt to keep up. I guess Jann Wenner is too pre-occupied w/ his boyfriend (he's allegedly a member of the media "gay cabal" !) to really care what gets published anymore, but last year the format changed because he hired the former editor of FHM to replace Robert Love. Makes perfect sense when you think about all the Britney covers

Mojo is up and down, but I really like the comp CDs they've been including lately.

I am pretty cynical about this in actually lifting that useless journal from its current status as probable out-and-out winner of this thread.

The vietnam indie rocker is pretty terrible but its published on rice paper.

How's that going to happen with a 14 year old editing it?

You're a moron.

*Nick Franglen of Lemon Jelly co-produced the new Cale elpee.

Also doing, amongst other delights, the Scott Walker box set and...ahem..."Kish Kash"...

(actually I'd like to hear the Cale too, but usually I'm pretty unmoved by him).

NME will unleash its brand new look next week (September 17) giving you not only the most hard-hitting news and reviews, in-depth features and sharpest photography in the world, but also an exclusive CD hand-picked by THE STROKES.

The new-look NME has undergone a complete redesign following months of extensive research, development and creative work which will all be unveiled in the next issue. The cover CD will feature tracks chosen by the kings of New York cool, The Strokes, and a rare demo version of 'Is This It'.

NME editor Conor McNicholas said: "Having just celebrated regaining the top spot as the UK’s best-selling music weekly, and the best festival coverage ever this redesign is another exciting move in the history of this world famous brand. It has taken six months of intensive research and hard graft."

He added: "No change has been introduced lightly, with every innovation focused squarely on our readers' demanding list of wants and needs. The finished result is something that the whole team is incredibly proud of and our readers will be pleased to see."

Amongst the completely new innovations that will be ingrained into the magazine every week will be your one-stop guide to everything you need in your life - 'The Agenda'. Every essential album, single, gig, film, and TV and radio event will be listed, giving you the chance to lap up as much rock 'n roll high (and low) culture as humanely possible.

Conor said: "We've made some bold moves, and we've added some unique new twists to the title. However, our sole aim has been to ensure that the NME not only maintains its position as being the first stop for music news and reviews, but also continues to deliver as the title closest to the cutting-edge of music culture."

The tracklisting for the CD will be:

Kings of Leon - 'Spiral Staircase'
Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers - 'Chinese Rocks'
The Ramones - 'Teenage Lobotomy'
New York Dolls - 'Trash'
The Modern Lovers - 'Pablo Picasso'
The Velvet Underground - 'I'm Waiting For The Man'
Bob Marley & The Wailers - 'Trenchtown Rock'
Peter Tosh - 'Arise Black'
Iggy Pop with Ric Ocasek - 'Old Mule Skinner'
Blondie - 'One Way Or Another'
Duran Duran - 'Rio'
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - 'Miles Away'
Patsy Cline - 'Walkin' After Midnight'
The Strokes - 'Is This It' (Demo Recorded at JP's House)
Jet - 'Get Me Outta Here'
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - 'In Like The Rose'
Franz Ferdinand - 'Tell Her Tonight'
The Cooper Temple Clause - 'Music Box'
The Coral - 'Boy At The Window'

Perhaps they should have asked the thousands who have STOPPED reading it their opinions.

They wont ever get close.

I will say it again, there is a significant amount of people SCREAMING for something to different to what the NME are currently serving up on a weekly basis - why publishers can't see this opportunity is a big mystery.

But something entertaining SEEMED to be going on - "le roi de l'en soi, comme un Raskolnikov ecossais de la domain du indie dance, Bobby Gillespie fait les disques les plus baggaterien de nos jours", something like that.

...and then regretted it imediately when it was the worst-selling issue on record until they did that Libertines cover in 2002.

Hey dave, are you related to that bloke out of Starsailor?

Stevie - Geir wont respond to you, he doesnt have a valid argument to back up his statement about kerrang readers. So he simply will ignore it. He never answers anything that may result in him losing an argument. See all the other threads he posts on.

haha. this pastiche is very good. it could be a quote

With Uncut, Mojo and others, the quite irritating tendency is to confirm the current tastes of their readers, and rarely to concertedly challenge tastes. They can also assume a kind of faceless, generic approach to reviewing; I just feel that settled, sedate tastes are being catered for... with an emphasis always on familiar names (no reproach at all to the quality of these records - ain't 'eard 'em guv'!' - but this month's Mojo opens its review section with Wyatt, Bowie, Costello and Cale...) and a support for reliable genre music.
With Carmody, Carlin, Penman, Reynolds & more... I am sometimes affirmed in my opinions, but perhaps far more often challenged, and made to think and to re-assess. Which is as it should be.

i sort of knew that was the case... it was a lazy jibe he threw in there. i respect the people i write for and if i didn't then i hope i'd have the dignity and honesty to go a kill myself.

Kerrang! readers are fine by me.

I'm a metal fan. Many non-fans view it is as a joke.

Kerrang is and always has been pretty good at what it does.

I think there might be a UK version too.

Conor McNicholas:

I decided there was no point in running it like a newspaper any more. Most of the kids who are reading NME now don't even know that Melody Maker ever existed," McNicholas explains - NME's target reader is 19 years old, although actual readership spans from about 15 to 35.

He is also keen to appeal to women as much as men, admitting that in the past the NME has been seen as a "bit of a boys' club".

There is little doubt that the current popularity of a new wave of guitar bands is benefiting the NME. McNicholas inadvertently invented the term "New Rock Revolution" to describe the movement - it was originally intended to be a throwaway cover line - and somewhat cockily claims that the NME has been the driving force in the success of some of these groups.

"The music scene was shifting, but the music scene wouldn't look the way it does at the moment if it wasn't for the way the NME has played it. All the bands that are knocking about that are exciting now - the Strokes, the White Stripes, Interpol, Polyphonic Spree, Yeah Yeah Yeahs - we wrote about all of them first."

"That's a pretty big boast," says Stephen Palmer, head of pop and dance music at rival publisher Emap. "You can amplify what's going on but you have to have something to amplify in the first place."

...will be tautology, redundancy, malapropism and hyperbole, apparently. And why stop at ingraining? Why not inlay, emboss, pummel or bevel those 'completely new innovations' into the magazine?

Conor McNicholas, editor of NME.

He's younger than Steve Sutherland and thinner than Danny Kelly, which can't be a bad thing. The key quote in the MediaGuardian piece is this:

"Previously I think the NME has been quite an arrogant product. It has been quite difficult to get into - it was almost a badge of honour once you had made your way into a world where there were lots of in-jokes and lots of references that were never explained. What I want to do is to make sure that we retain all of our authority, all of the things that make NME great, but just make the club a hell of a lot easier to join."

Now, there he's describing not just the essence of a niche product, but also the essence of indie and of 'subculture'. It's an initiation ceremony, a rite of passage, a 'badge of honour' to know about bands and music artists. You don't want your kid brother to be in the same club. That's always been the point.

It may be that this model of subculture as something scary and a bit dangerous is over. In a way that's refreshing. Nothing was worse, in a ringtone-sponsorship-pornopop world, than hearing S. Sutherland's public schoolboy sneer, lingering like a sort of Cheshire cat Nick Kent. I could actually like the humbleness of Conor's idea of making a 'club that's easier to join'. But isn't it a bit like having open day at the stables after all the horses have bolted? Isn't it a bit like giving everybody a university diploma just to be nice? Isn't there anything left which will make you a bit weird and different if you really get into it?

I hope he has more going for him than this, whoever he may be

Pierre Bourdieu's seminal book about taste, 'Distinction', to thread. Cultural capital (ie access to, and knowledge of, cultural goods) needs to be hard to acquire and master, because that difficulty, that ramped-up ledge (it might require knowledge, or it might need an outlay of money) is one of the things that allows us to distinguish ourselves from others.

A music paper seems to be distinguishing between one group and another, between one record and another. But in fact it's distinguishing one person from another, or the ignorant, uncool you that you might have been from the knowledgeable, cool you that you are, thanks to the information you're imbibing.

Now, to say that distinction can be distributed to all without distinction is clearly contradictory. It's a wish fantasy typical of our culture, which pays lip service to egalitarianism, open access and level playing fields while actually splitting itself into ever more specialised, esoteric in-groups who are ever more powerful and hierarchical.

One tiny example of that is the apparently-open job ad and resulting sham interviews, when the post has already been filled with a functionary from within the organisation. Shades of this in Steve Sutherland's slightly sinister IPC press release: 'I had the opportunity to meet with and consider the talents of many of the leading figures in British music journalism and was delighted to discover that the prime candidate for the role was already working with us at IPC ignite!'

I really miss "Graffiti", a truly eccentric Canadian mag. It first appeared in Sept '84 to coincide with the launch of MuchMusic, Canada's first music video network. Had absolutely the glossiest layout ever, which served to hide a totally irreverent interior - they once devoted two pages to "Rating the Rock Critics", which was just what they did! (Thumbs up for Greil Marcus and Chuck Eddy; thumbs down for Christgau, Dave Marsh and themselves!) Front cover subjects ranged from Iggy Pop to Barry Manilow (!) to Wayne Gretzky (wearing his then-brand new Kings uniform, boo hoo). Regular features included Celebrity Word Association, Celebrities Rate the [current] Hits and video reviews: The guy rated current videos as "Fun" or "No Fun", depending on the amount of skin and virtually nothing else! I miss that mag.

Nah M8 is by far the worst dance magazine. Although it isnt as bad as it was during the happy hardcore scotland years.

Whatever one's thoughts on the Chili Peppers or Mojo, by the way, that CD is superb

This is their top 100 album list (no particular order)

Nick Drake – Way to Blue: An Introduction to Nick Drake
Elliot Smith – Either/Or
Jeff Buckley – Grace
Ryan Adams – Heartbreak
Beach Boys – Smile
Velvet Underground – Velvet & Nico
Travis – The Man Who
Teenage Fanclub – Grand Prix
Cocteau Twins – Heaven or Las Vegas
Massive Attack – Blue Lines
Portishead – N.Y. Live
Moby – Play
Stereo MC’s - Connected
Flaming Lips – The Soft Bulletin
Aimme Mann – Magnolia (Trilha Sonora)
Bob Dylan – Bringing it All Back Home
Neil Young – Rust Never Sleeps
Lou Reed – New York
David Bowie – Reality
REM – Automatic for the People
Manic Street Preachers – Everything Must Go
Oasis – (What’s the Story) Morning Glory
Pixies – Purple Tapes
Smashing Pumpkins – Siamese Dreams
White Stripes – De Stjil
Weezer – Maladroit
Strokes – Is This It
U2 – Achtung Baby
Stone Roses – Stone Roses
A-Ha – Hunting High and Low
Black Crowes – Southern Harmony and the Musical Company
Stone Temple Pilots – Tiny Music
Nirvana – Insesticide
Mudhoney – Superfuzz Bigmuff
Bon Jovi – New Jersey
Def Leppard – Pyromania
Hear N’ Aid – Vários
Helloween – Keeper of the Seven Keys pt. 1
Queens of the Stone Age – Songs for the Deaf
Hellacopters – High Visibility
Thin Lizzy – Jailbreak
Big Star – Radio City
Beatles – Rubber Soul
Birds – Turn, Turn, Turn
De La Soul – 3 Feet High and Rising
Bruce Springsteen – Nebraska
Pearl Jam – Yeld!
Jon Spencer – Extra Width
MC5 – Kick Out the Jams
The Stooges – The Stooges
Love – Forever Changes
Led Zepellin – Phisical Graffiti
The Who – Who’s Next
Yngwie Malmsteen – Rising Force
Ramones – Rocket to Russia
Sex Pistols – Never Mind the Bolocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols
The Clash – The Clash
Public Enemy - It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
Beastie Boys – License to Ill
At the Drive-In – Relationship of Command
Alice In Chains – Dirt
NIN – Pretty Hate Machine
Ministry – Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste
Iron Maiden – The Number of the Beast
Guns N’ Roses – Appetite for Destruction
Faith No More – The Real Thing
Ozzy Osbourne – Tribute to Randy Rhoads
System of a Down – Toxicity
Van Halen – 5150
Manowar – Sign of the Hammer
The Darkness – Permission to Land
Trainspotting - Trilha Sonora
Chemical Brothes – Exit Planet Dust
Madonna – Madonna
New Order – Technique
Prodigy – The Fat of the Land
Rage Against the Machine – Rage Against the Machine
Bad Religion – Recipe for Rate
Slayer - Reign in Blood
Pantera – The Great Southern Trendkill
Black Sabbath – Heaven and Hell
AC/DC – Highway to Hell
Metallica – Master of Puppets
Motorhead – Ace of Spades
Kiss – Alive I
Hanoi Rocks - Bangkok Shocks, Saigon Shakes, Hanoi Rocks
Pink Floyd – The Piper at the Gates of Down
Primal Scream – Screamadelica
Bjork – Debut
Radiohead – Ok Computer
Depeche Mode – Music for the Masses
Jesus and Mary Chain – Darklands
My Bloody Valentine – Loveless
Pavement – Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
Suede – Suede
Rolling Stones – Let it Bleed
Sly & Family Stone - There’s a Riot Going On
T-Rex – Electric Warrior
Wilco – A.M.
Van Morrison – Moondance

Jesus, it is worse than NME's!

Saw this pathetic new UK based rock rag on the newsagent shelf:

Zero Magazine
http://www.zeromag.co.uk/

Conceptually weak - think of the worst elements of Classic Rock and Kerrang combined.

Hey, Terrorizor is okay, it does it's job pretty well I'd say.

My vote is definitely the NME.

dave q more otm than ever

Wow!

Does anyone like Paste Magazine?

qft

artrocker pay though? not that it matters to the writers there, they'll do ok.

NME is bull too. And Blender's god-awful. And Q sounds awful just form all these lists i keep reading

I guess NME and Q are the worst. But at this point, most UK music magazines I come across are pretty 100 percent garbage

Is this a good thread for Music magazines struggle as traditional format dies?

Q is turning into... er, Uncut, it looks like. WOW.

In a world where you can listen to anything you want online before buying it (yeah yeah, lol "buying it"), does a reviews section serve any purpose anymore? Yes of course it does. I've discovered loads of random amazing stuff by browsing mags absent-mindedly. Whither the unexpected?

Is "Clash" a cross between the old-style NME and/or "The Face" if they'd continued focus on Music with Fashion, rather than the other way around?

or just "crap"?

I dunno.

The name alone should tell you enough.

Face it, we killed music magazines.

I mean, just look at the cover of the current Kerrang! next time you're in Tesco's; and they wonder why they're losing readers?

“Q is for people who like music but like other things as well. It's like Top Gear. I know nothing about cars, but that is unmissable. They can take something that's about cars and put a different spin on it. We want to do that with music.”

oh dear.

Well, as long as we eat them afterwards, it's ok. (xpost * 2)

This week, bored/away from home, bought NME and Clash.

At least Clash was, um, entertaining.

The NME had "PART TWO" of their Oasis interview, which was one page as opposed to five, of irrelevance.

oh dear.

― synaptic knob (grimly fiendish), Friday, 26 September 2008 12:30 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^took the words right out of my mouth

I give Q three months max before it folds, or merges with Empire.

Basically, Q is like Top Gear, i.e. its for people who know nowt about cars/music.

Which is fine. I watch Top Gear occasionally for that reason.

and I don;t buy Q, for the same reason.

Does Q actually do the 'music mag for people who know nowt abt music' thing objectively well these days then? I've not read it for a few years, but in - certainly the early to mid 90s, I think its appeal was fairly obvious and it was well put together

I don't think it was their MO back then, but the people running it then have gone (to "Word"?), Mojo etc have moved into the 'historical' area, Uncut does the "we do both kinds of music, Americana and owt else", so what's left?

"Collectable" (i.e. buy both) 2 Oasis covers, this month, Q mag.

merges with Empire

Assume that that's what the last bit of the piece is hinting at but it's never really seemed like there's a lot of people who want to pay three pounds whatever for a 50% music, 50% film mag

This is probably the only time a thread has ever actively needed Geir's input.

When did Future pick up Metal Hammer? Was not aware they had any non-gearporn/howto music mags.

Last time I read Clash it was all over the place: chinstroking pieces about Autechre and Basic Channel with mean and moody photos and starkly TDR-esque design vs jaunty sub-NME neon-and-Union Flags pieces about how the Subways are like revolutionary man complete with utterly inappropriate comparison points, grammatical errors, total lack of fact-checking. I guess that's better than just the latter, but still. It made me feel a bit funny and I never made it as far as the reviews section.

http://ichlugebullets.wordpress.com/2008/09/22/in-celebration-of-angry-young-man-joe-mofrad/

^^^a journalist from Clash Magazine, yesterday

The correct answer would be either King Size or Mixmag, but with none of those present it would be Kerrang.

Rolling Stone is dangerously near though. It was relevant once, but today it isn't what it used to be anymore.

rolling stone hasn't been relevant since at least 1976, Geir. well, ok, it may have remined relevant as a boomer lifestyle kinda mag beyond that point. But insofar as happenin' music was concerned, NO.

Mixmag has the best cover CDs. (There's text? Oh, I don't usually get that far.)

*remained, that is. argh!

xp

It's "for" the exact same people who bought it as "radicals" back when...

There are plenty of magazines for people who know nothing about music.

The problem is that there are no magazines for people who do know something about music.

The problem is that there are no magazines for people who do know something about music.

― Couldn't care less about bikey Jasper Milvain I'm afraid (Marcello Carlin), Friday, 26 September 2008 13:29 (17 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^basically this. Is it really so ridiculous to think that a kinda "London Review of Music", hardback spined, sombre design, would sell 20k tri-monthly with great scope for top-end advertising?

No it isn't, as I proposed on ILM back in 2004 or whenever it was.

Isn't that what that Faber/Domino thing is meant to be.

I would love a London Review of Music coz I love the London Review of Books--it swallows up my train travelling time--but the LRB only gets by coz of art council funding.

Yeah, funding for music magazines is taken up with SIX HUNDRED FUCKING GRAND ON CLASH MAGAZINE

might need some good London bands first

Don't thing it needs sombre design though. LRB is still rocking the old NME size innit, keeping it real.

lol, forgot that Clash bullshit.

Is it really so ridiculous to think that a kinda "London Review of Music", hardback spined, sombre design, would sell 20k tri-monthly with great scope for top-end advertising?

Isn't that the Wire?

(ducks)

Doesn't need London bands either, of course.

Lasttime we talked about this I was a bit disappointed that people didn't get in touch and say what a great idea, how about drawing up a business plan, costing it and taking it to likely-looking investors?

I mean I could do this all myself but I'd like other people in on it to make it more of a collective process, bring their individual expertise and so forth.

More like the kind of magazine that The Wire could still be, instead of a glorified Dazed and Confused for old Industrial/Goth fans with pretentious photographs taking up acres of pages which could be better used for copy.

rolling stone hasn't been relevant since at least 1976, Geir.

That may be true. It was very relevant when they more or less "invented" the rock critic and the rock "canon" in the late 60s though.

Why does nobody ever tal kabout Record Collector magazine, it's great.

Isn't Record Collector mainly about how that blue vinyl Kuala Lumpur Edition from 1978 is now worth 1000 times as much as it was when it was originally released?

Nah, RC and Classic Rock are the only two success stories (Plan B as well, I suppose) of the past half-decade. RC has expanded into a more writerly direction now.

Is it really so ridiculous to think that a kinda "London Review of Music", hardback spined, sombre design, would sell 20k tri-monthly with great scope for top-end advertising?

Stevie T has been talking about a LONDON REVIEW OF POP for years!

Record Collector was always pretty good just coz their entire thing was to concentrate on bits of genres and careers that are more obscure--coz those are the high priced records innit. They've had to adapt a bit coz ebay has taken away the revenue that they used to get from pages and pages of classified ads at the back.

I like FACT. The design is maybe better than some of the writing (It's square! It has a colour-coded reviews section!), but it covers stuff I find interesting.

The Wire seems to be flawed, but it has much of worth, actively trying to cater for the more neglected sorts of music.

Every time I pick up the Wire I'm pleasantly surprised by one or two pieces (usually a couple of reviews and one of the feature articles). But for the most part the writing is either amateurish, ill-informed, or both.

I like FACT except there's even more people-writing-about-stuff-they're-involved-with-in-other-ways than normal.

I get a free subscription to the Wire and still can't be bothered reading it.

London Review Of Music > London Review of Pop since 100% less chance of getting tangled up in Modern Review/Popjustice-style ideological corner painting into.

I like FACT for what it is but equally it's very insular and not about to change many people's approach to music, exactly

xpost yeah '...Pop' did make me think of that hueg POP! magazine I've never actually read

I don't think either of these magazines is yet ready to beat the other in a fight, since neither of them actually exists.

http://www.leftoffthedial.com/captainfeel_cover.jpg

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/familyguy/images//1/1e/Buzz_(150_x_255).jpg

^Pinefox

which one will be more LONDON?

The telling thing about Record Collector is when I first started buying it around 1987, half the magazine was taken up with the rare record listings, now of course it's just a few pages at the back.

Gone will be the traditional pattern of album reviews and band interviews, with sport, film and computer games filling large parts of the magazine. There's even a TV column.

Isn't this exactly the way Q started, interviews with TV/film people, pieces on other aspects of popular culture, consumer goodies.

I was once berated for my "ludicrous opinions" by a gang of Q journalists at a wedding when I drunkenly thought saying the arctic monkeys were shit would be a fun way to start a conversation with a Q journalist.

Advertising needs to be quality, both financially and aesthetically - not quantity.

Requests for doffing critical cap in exchange for ads - NO DEAL.

London as centre of CRITICAL QUALITY rather than focus - must NOT be Smoke but with records.

Hmm, the high-end advertising is beginning to make it sound like this http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/node/912

Ugh!

Unfortunately it started off with Sasha Frere-Jones so I didn't go any further. If I'm not mentioned then it's inaccurate and misleading in any event.

Why Q is going to the wall - it abandoned its heartland readership.

Fatal flaw of all music magazines - looking for more, younger, more fickle readers.

But if they're fickle they'll just keep moving on; they won't necessarily stick with you.

Meanwhile the content and approach are modified so much that the heartland feels deserted, abandoned, betrayed - the magazine has taken them for granted and they slowly disappear, leaving the ship rudderless.

Intelligent Life actually made me burst out laughing when I saw it on the WH Smith shelves. I give it four issues.

xp

Meanwhile the content and approach are modified so much that the heartland feels deserted, abandoned, betrayed - the magazine has taken them for granted and they slowly disappear, leaving the ship rudderless.

― Couldn't care less about bikey Jasper Milvain I'm afraid (Marcello Carlin), Friday, 26 September 2008 15:17 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Which is why, as stated above, Classic Rock is one of the few magazines that has, from an editorial/sales viewpoint, "got it right".

Plus, due to the age of its readership, it doesn't need to worry about "carrying the brand"

Ie, Connor Mack is a fucking dreadful magazine editor but when it comes to brand ambassadors he's probably top five in the country.

The motto must be - establish QUALITY first, then establish BRAND.

Too many useless magazines try to do it vice versa and fall at the first hurdle like Colin Jackson when it mattered.

No hype until the magazine is proved good enough to warrant it.

Then reputation builds up demand - enabling secure brand establishment.

Long-term success of LRB proves that people will be attracted to a good and extensive read if it has SUBSTANCE.

The motto must be - establish QUALITY first, then establish BRAND.

Rong. You need decent quality from the very first issue but unless you work out who you're aiming that magazine at and what you want it to stand for you're going to end up with an incoherent mess of a first issue.

Unfortunately in music magazine terms, 'establishing the brand' usually means 'treat readers like idiots'.

Which is why I worry that most music magazine pitching sessions will eventually devolve into a Lee McQueen "our target market shaves his balls" style discussion.

It should be aimed at those who want to read it and also (eventually) those who didn't know they wanted to read it.

It should not stand for anything except quality of writing - as with LRB, it should stand as a thing in itself rather than a batterable symbol of transient ideology.

Advertising does not necessarily have to equal hype.

Q is the worst music magazine, and the new look is useless too

Q magazine unveils stylish new look
http://news.q4music.com/2008/09/q_magazine_unveils_stylish_new.html

Angus Young in short trousers, it's not 1985 anymore folks !

you think they don't already? you want to try working in my office, chum. oh wait...

(xpost to dom!)

Holy shit will you look at that cover

http://images.q4music.com/content/q/theqdaily/other/qissue160.jpg

What the hell is that?

Why have they stolen fonts from The Face circa 1999?

And are ACDC really the right band to relaunch Q with? Surely they should have stuck to Coldplay/Springsteen/U2?

Logo's too big as well.

In conclusion: merged with Empire within a year.

Alternative blue plaques (Q nominated sites of real national interest)

ARGH

David Quantick patrolling the streets of London dressed as a schoolboy?

Readers, if you're had it up to your eyeballs with this - try the London Review of Music.

It should not stand for anything except quality of writing - as with LRB, it should stand as a thing in itself rather than a batterable symbol of transient ideology.

see, that's what Word was going for at launch, but now it seems to have settled in to a far older target audience than I expected or wanted, i.e. there's still no music mag for me anywhere!

The London Review of Music - Music writing that believes in Bangs, not Beadle.

That doesn't really work and smartarses will say yes what about Jeremy J Beadle late lamented author of Will Pop Eat Itself but you see where it's going.

I love the concept of Marcello sitting here going 'WE WILL HAVE NO BRAND VALUES' while sitting here, erm, establishing brand values.

Must strive to avoid either/or trap, that's true.

I just want the message to be conveyed that LRM won't be about sending musicians and writers out on stupid Game For A Laugh-type stunts and won't treat its readers as having the intelligence level of an 18-month-old Down's infant.

Wait what's the difference between that brand new look Q cover and all the others?

Bob Dylan, U2, REM, they're not cool, but they sell magazines.

It should not stand for anything except quality of writing - as with LRB, it should stand as a thing in itself rather than a batterable symbol of transient ideology

yes, but who's going to fund that these days? publishers are all irredeemable cunts understandably concerned about the bottom line and the bottom line only, and are so caught up in the kind of focus-group (shaved) bollocks that dom mentions that there's no way they'd take a punt on something as EDGY and RADICAL as, umm, a really solid music magazine packed full of beautiful writing.

the only person who's likely to publish such a thing is a bored millionaire who can afford to take the risk. but why is he or she going bother, when there's a wealth of EDGY and RADICAL music writing spattered across the web? sure, 99.9% of it is utter fucking shit, but with a bit of time and effort you can track down the odd gem. and i fear the kind of person who'd buy this proposed magazine is already putting in that time and effort.

personally, yes, i'd love such a thing. but i'm old. and i'm a hack.

all of which is a long-winded way of saying: music magazines fucked; publishers almost entirely to blame; is anyone really surprised?

which came first - front cover variations or people who really give a fuck about the picture on the cover when it comes to deciding whether to buy it or not?

Wait what's the difference between that brand new look Q cover and all the others?

The background isn't white, foreground doesn't feature "Bono's face".

Well, we could all sit in our armchairs arguing the case for never getting our arses off them or we could do something to change the situation.

This is why I need other people to come in and get involved.

Nothing's going to change unless we TRY.

Remember - investors can only say no but they don't necessarily say only "no."

Also only one story on the cover, as opposed to that plus sidebar full of tiddlers (though that may be the indecipherable pink lines down the bottom, I can't actually tell).

Anyone got Felix Dennis's mobile number. We could always tell him that we'll publish his bloody awful poetry.

Also, wtf does "All new look issue" even mean?

"All new" I get. "New-look issue" I get. Allnewlookissue? That's not even English.

All new! Look! Issue!

OK, fair enough, I'll go somewhere else and ask people who might have some genuine interest in doing something like this. I ought to know better with ILM but I never learn... :-(

ac/dc is always a good idea

xpost

seriously, if i hadn't just begun an MSc, i'd be saying, fuck it, you might be right. as it is, i am time-poor and cynicism-rich. sorry.

Being constructive, I would suggest if you're going to pitch it to anyone who's going to put actual money into it, you shouldn't show such disdain for, like, actually marketing it or promoting it.

My gut feeling is the LRB does so well because there are more people who want to read lengthy essays about, say, David Foster Wallace, than there are people who want to read lengthy essays about dubstep or Lil Wayne or the Pet Shop Boys. You're going to need to come up with a compelling argument that a sufficiently large audience exists that wants to read this sort of thing, and something more than "if the quality is high enough, people will read it".

ie the LRB does well and survives as a realistic commercial proposition because of the obvious existence of a large community of people across every university English department and elsewhere who are reading and thinking at this level. That is not immediately obvious with pop (although if you were to throw in classical and jazz you'd widen that net to a large extent, but I'm not sure this is what you're talking about).

I'd love to read something like this, and if I were a wealthy man, would gladly invest. Sadly I'm not, so all I could give would be moral support.

Speaking personally, I would want it to look good too. I don't think it's enough just to have good written content, great photography and illustration have an important part to play in any journalistic endeavour and in positioning a brand. If it's just the words people will read it online. If they're going to purchase it, especially in such an image driven field as the music business then it's got to look good as an artefact too. Also something any prospective (music business) advertisers would demand too.

The big difference between LRB and 'LRM' is that the audience for LRB are already of the mindset to continue with the print medium. The audience for 'LRM' may need that little extra to go offline and into print.

How many more times do I have to say that I AM NOT OPPOSED TO ADVERTISING IN PRINCIPLE I AM OPPOSED TO HYPE before it sinks in?

I KNOW it's got to be marketed and promoted. I'm not stupid. I don't live on a cloud.

All I am saying is that there are better and cleverer ways of marketing and promoting something like this than other failed music magazines have done over the last 4-5 years. Ways which flatter the prospective readers' intelligence rather than flatten it. Which is why I need other people on board who are good at coming up with ways of doing this.

One thing's for sure; I'm not going to any of the Dragons' Den lot since their patronage of Hamfatter proves beyond question that they know fuck all about music.

the real problem facing music mags at the moment is record company ad depts have much less money than before, and are now spending it on websites and (moreover) tv ads where they used to on magazine ads. that's what'll close magazines in the near future, much moreso than ailing circulation figures.

although the two go hand in hand, perpetually ... i mean, if there was a sudden massive rise in music-mag circulation, you can bet ad departments would be scrambling to get a piece of that.

but fuck me, that's an unlikely if, isn't it?

i think its more to do with the kind of return they get from the different media - a tv ad with music and video clips 'sells' the band more effectively (or not) than a print ad with photos and review quotes, and promotional budgets are so tight now that the money needs to be spent in a way that is more reliable to pay back.

but this industry is hell of cyclical, so who knows. but i still think the labels need to get healthier before the magazines will. its tough out there at the moment.

One thing's for sure; I'm not going to any of the Dragons' Den lot since their patronage of Hamfatter proves beyond question that they know fuck all about music.

This makes no sense, Marcello. They don't have to know a tin pot about music to invest in a MAGAZINE.