#MUSIC SHELF MAGAZINE FREE#
#MUSIC SHELF MAGAZINE CRACK#

Survival has necessitated a more reciprocal relationship with readers. Across the May bank holiday, Dork hosted a livestreamed festival comprising 250 original live sets recorded in musicians’ homes to benefit the NHS Covid-19 appeal. Prior to lockdown, the publication was having its “best year to date”, he said, crediting its digital diversification and inventive online presence.

#MUSIC SHELF MAGAZINE FREE#

Stephen Ackroyd co-founded the free indie-pop magazine Dork in 2016, aiming at younger readers. Part of surviving as a music magazine in 2020 means expanding your offering. He says the publication had taken a hit during the pandemic, although its strong international subscriber base and online single issue sales had increased and it was otherwise doing well. The editor of Uncut, Michael Bonner, describes “the liberation of working in a smaller, more responsive organisation versus being a relatively small cog in a bigger, non-responsive wheel”. Last year, the heritage monthly Uncut and the NME brand and website were sold by Time Inc to Singapore’s BandLab. The only difference it’s made, says brand director Andy Biddulph, “is that there’s no bailout – we live and die by what we create and can monetise”.Ĭhristine and the Queens on the cover of Q magazine in 2018. “It is easier for a tiny company to run a magazine at a small profit than it is within the framework of a corporate enterprise.” The previously independent Rock Sound was bought by the small publishing company Syon Media earlier this year. Niche publications, especially, can thrive at smaller publishing companies.

Stuart Williams, the publisher at Future Publishing – home to publications including Classic Rock and Metal Hammer – said its 13 music titles were profitable in April 2020, “when half the shops in the UK were closed and the population was barely allowed out”.ĭifferent titles reach their sustainability threshold at different volumes, says Enders’ McCabe. Paul Geoghegan, the editor of global music magazine Songlines and managing director of Mark Allen Group music publications including Gramophone and Jazzwise, said the brand’s titles were sustainable before March. “Most of our issues in 2019 were actually up year on year.” “The huge drop-off that most magazines experienced in the early 2010s has, relatively speaking, flattened out for many brands,” says the editor of Metal Hammer, Merlin Alderslade. Every year brings headlines about shrinking sales figures.īut many British music magazine editors and publishers say they were thriving in straitened times, at least before the pandemic. Key titles have closed: in 2018, NME axed its 66-year print incarnation (the brand survives online). There are plentiful free online publications. Music magazines have “been on the edge of sustainability” for a long time, says Douglas McCabe, of the media research group Enders Analysis. “We’ve got a little way to go before we’re out of the woods.” “We’re not going to have a flourishing events industry to support us with advertising,” says publisher Luke Sutton. They don’t know whether the print magazine will return this year.

#MUSIC SHELF MAGAZINE CRACK#

The edgy, Bristol-based Crack moved quickly to produce a “dynamic” digital version of their summer issue for subscribers. “We undervalued ourselves quite a lot, which I regret.” Stubbs says he had felt embarrassed to ask readers to pay for a free product, even after they upgraded from newsprint to a glossy magazine in 2018. Two freesheets recently sounded the alarm over their future: Loud and Quiet and Crack launched emergency subscription packages, stressing they would close without reader support. A recent cover of Loud and Quiet magazine.

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