"Blender, the music magazine, is dead. Its owners folded it this morning, eliminating about 30 jobs in the process.

 

We heard a rumor of this this morning, but Ad Age got the full story. Blender and Maxim were formerly owned by wild British publisher Felix Dennis, but he sold them for a quarter of a billion dollars in 2007, in a spectacularly well-timed disposal. The new owners, Alpha Media, could never really make its new acquisitions soar. They had heavy debt and declining income. And Blender, in particular, lacked a distinct identity—see this month's cover, for instance—and in its field, that can be (and was) deadly.

 

Paid subscriptions fell 8% [from 2007-08] to 768,000, while newsstand sales declined 18% to 44,233.

 

Ad pages at Blender also plunged 31% last year and another 57% from January through April, according to the Publishers Information Bureau and Media Industry Newsletter

 

Blender editor Joe Levy is now the new editor of Maxim, and Maxim's former editor Jim Kaminsky is leaving for undisclosed reasons"

 

Please send no flowers.

 

The question now is what other music magazines will follow and either cut down on the number of issues per year or die.

Makes sense to me. I love music magazines and never purchased a subscription to Blender. I must not have been the only one.

I never read it either

But what other magazines do you see folding in the next few months due to the credit crunch?

Never heard of it.:dozey:

You wouldn't have Markie cos it being an American magazine.

You wouldn't have Markie cos it being an American magazine.

 

No great loss, then.............................. :rolleyes:

:whaaat:

 

But the 2nd part of the thread is open, what magazines do you think might not last it to the end of the year, either by folding or by reducing the number of issues per year (from monthly to bi-monthly)

How relevant is the physical copy of a music magazine?

I personally rarely purchase a music magazine. I bought Rolling Stone when Thom Yorke was on the cover but that is it.

The only one I read regularly is a free monthly Canadian music magazine called exclaim.

 

Sites such as pitchfork have 4 or 5 album reviews a day, concert reviews, and news as it happens. So I wouldn't be surprised to see other magazines downsize or limit their distribution.

Very true. Print media is pretty much obsolete.;)

I still prefer printed media, the internet is all good but organizing a magazine is an artform to get people to read it.

I don't have a clue in terms of which "other" magazines will fail. I am not privy to the financial information and, therefore, can not really draw any conclusion.

 

I have a subscription to Rolling Stone and Spin Magazine. When I am at the newsstand, I enjoy thumbing through Q Magazine.

 

I would miss music magazines if they go out of business, too. To me, surfing the internet is not the equivalent of thumbing through a magazine, even if the information is the same.

 

Most importantly (to me at least), would be the loss of the magazine cover. Even if I don't buy the magazine, I enjoy seeing who is on a magazine cover and reading the cover captions. It is one way that I am able to determine who is receiving a lot of "buzz" in the industry.

 

I also enjoy getting autographs on the covers of music magazines. A signed magazine is a great collectors item, and my room is littered with autographed magazines. Not to say that "collector geeks" such as myself make up the lion's share of their revenue, but I would certainly miss it.

I'm going out on a limp and say that by the end of the year the NME will become a fortnightly magazine

I still prefer printed media, the internet is all good but organizing a magazine is an artform to get people to read it.

 

Especially now hardly anyone does anymore.............................. :rolleyes: