Back of the Q

[Various Artist]

It's sadly the end of an era for UK music magazines as Q's editor announces the pandemic has forced its closure after 34 years:

https://twitter.com/TedKessler1/status/1285204044529770496?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1285204044529770496%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.officialcharts.com%2Fchart-news%2Fq-magazine-to-close-after-34-years__30274%2F

[Guy Profumo]

Shouldn't this be "End of the Q"

(I stopped buying it when they stopped featuring REM, Madonna, and Robert Smith every issue)

[Gangster Octopus]

I never started...

[Benjm]

This is a shame, but I haven't been a regular reader for years so am more part of the problem than a mourner of standing. There was a period when it became very thin and list based. I bought a few recent issues and Ted Kessler has turned it around and made it a more satisfying read again but to no avail, it seems.

[Patrick Thistle]

I only ever bought it if there was a free CD on the front. And usually not even then.

It feels like music magazines are real relicts now, from an era when information was curated and controlled. But there is no need for the middlemen any more. We have direct access to musicians on social media. And they have direct access to us.

[Satchmo Distel]

I bought it for a couple of years, 1994-1996. I recall the reviews being good and Mark Ellen was a funny writer. Switched to Mojo when that started, then along came the Internet and my magazine buying in any sphere reduce to just WSC.

[Jah Womble]

I only ever bought it if there was a free CD on the front. And usually not even then.

It feels like music magazines are real relicts now, from an era when information was curated and controlled. But there is no need for the middlemen any more. We have direct access to musicians on social media. And they have direct access to us.

There’s always need for ‘middle men’. If you don’t know an artist exists, who’s going to enlighten you? It’s better that way for both parties - after all, the artist in question isn’t scouring the internet thinking ‘oh, he looks like he’d be into our stuff’.

There’s still radio, of course, but there aren’t enough broadcast stations pushing the envelope in daytime.

[Benjm]

Mark Ellen and David Hepworth always seemed to live in a parallel universe in which people give a toss about Nick Lowe.

[Fussbudget]

Spotify's algorithm and payola playlists are the new middle men, aren't they. I'm not sure that's an improvement.

[Jah Womble]

It absolutely isn’t.

[Satchmo Distel]

And selling maybe 2,000 copies of a physical single in a week no longer gets you into the Top 40 because 95% of that chart is weighted towards streams, of which a large proportion are from playlists or recommendations. Initial chart exposure that hugely influential acts got through minor chart placings for Anarchy In The UK or This Charming Man - peaking at #38 and #25 respectively IIRC - could not happen now. Even download campaigns to get a certain track into the chart usually fail unless backed by a daytime TV or radio celebrity. John Peel would have very little impact.

[Jah Womble]

The Pistols found other ways of gaining media exposure, of course.

But yes, loyal fanbases managed to push less-likely acts into the Top 40 on a regular basis: The Smiths benefited from this, but their sound was sufficiently radio-friendly to sustain itself after that initial breakthrough. Less commercially-viable bands made a career out of the '1-2 weeks in the Top 40'-phenomenon: The Wedding Present and New Model Army come to mind. Nevertheless, this often garnered them a slot on TOTP - which occasionally prompted further sales from a wider audience.

Any such possibility is indeed now pretty-much impossible.

[gjw100]

I seem to recall that when David Hepworth was forced to shut down the much-missed The Word magazine back in 2012, it wasn't falling sales that did for them (the circulation figures were actually pretty healthy and they had an extremely loyal fanbase) but rather the serious decline in advertising revenue. Record companies, car manufacturers, producers of electrical goods etc were no longer prepared to take out glossy double-page spreads to advertise their wares, and this was the financial life-blood of such magazines.

[diggedy derek]

This is a sad loss. I wasn't a fan, and didn't read it, but any loss of printed music media diminishes us all.

[Patrick Thistle]

There’s always need for ‘middle men’. If you don’t know an artist exists, who’s going to enlighten you? It’s better that way for both parties - after all, the artist in question isn’t scouring the internet thinking ‘oh, he looks like he’d be into our stuff’.

There’s still radio, of course, but there aren’t enough broadcast stations pushing the envelope in daytime.

Yeah, ok, fair enough. There are other ways that influencers influence these days. Anyone can review music on YouTube and gain a following. The magazine game always came across a bit elitist and there were a few critics who seemed a bit drunk on their own critiquing skills. Now there is a bit more freedom about how to discover new music. If you like a particular genre, then there are twitter feeds and streaming sites catering just for you. Once you find a band it's a lot easier to find out as much about them as you want than relying on them getting coverage in the music press.

[WOM]

This was one of the few music magazines I read back in the day. A friend gave me bags of them and I was in heaven for months. Some really good writing and, of course, absurd Q Lists.

[ad hoc]

I read it a bit when it started. Was never a subscriber but I appreciated the space they could give to things (especially album reviews as I was always more of an album buyer than singles). Drifted away for a while and when I came back to look at it every issue seemed to be predominantly about Oasis, so I never bothered again

[WOM]

Mojo was another great one for long, retrospective articles and histories.

[Sporting]

So what's still surviving?

[San Bernardhinault]

I read Q a fair amount in the early to mid 90s. It introduced me to lots of things I was unfamiliar with, often because the writing assumed I’d know all the references, so I eventually searched some of them out.

Then I started reading Mojo when it was launched because it was meant to be more intelligent and more mature. I realized that just meant more pompous, pretentious and long winded and gave up on it.

[ad hoc]

So what's still surviving?

Apart from diggedy derek 's mag, very little I suspect

[WOM]

The idea of kids sitting around on beds reading music mags sounds downright antiquated. Like, I dunno, sitting at your kitchen table doing a plastic model of an airplane.

[Benjm]

Mojo and Uncut are both still going. Uncut I haven't read since it went big on alt.country sometime around the turn of the century. Mojo can be good but still relies upon a small roster of cover stars to drive sales, with the attendant risk that if you're not interested in that month's big feature you're unlikely to buy it on impulse. The need to find a new angle on already exhaustively covered acts results in stories along the lines of 'June 1968: seven days that shook The Beatles' that are strictly for the anoraks. It does cover some current and new music but very much in the shadow of the heritage stuff.

[Sporting]

Apart from diggedy derek 's mag, very little I suspect

What mag is this?

[ad hoc]

https://www.thewire.co.uk/