Google started life as a research project just fifteen years ago, Facebook celebrates its mere seventh birthday this year and Twitter is barely out of short trousers and for the music fan, the Internet really has changed everything. An invaluable resource of listening, discovery and information, the days of waiting for a magazine to update you on your favourite bands are gone. Now we simply use a website, a social network or a blog.
But is this really a good thing?
It’s easy to adopt a contrary viewpoint and fetishise physical magazines but former big names, Melody Maker, The Face and Smash Hits have all fallen by the wayside. This may not seem like big news, but Melody Maker alone led to the formation of Depeche Mode, Suede and The Jimi Hendrix Experience. It’s true that magazines used to fail in the pre-Internet era too, but magazine readership has been decreasing for a good while. Last year, circulation of the NME fell by 17.3%.
So, now the value of magazines as a source of news has all but disappeared, they’re more of a niche interest. David Hepworth launched Q, Mojo and The Word Magazine (as well as The Rocking Vicar), and has observed a staggering change in the role of the music magazine:
“The economic basis of the music magazine used to be: readers who needed to buy them to keep up and advertisers who needed them to reach record buyers. Both groups have gone away. In their place you have: readers who like to read and advertisers who need to reach this valuable minority. It's not the same.”
So, how do music magazines buck the trend? Why should people pay for writing when the Internet is full of music websites offering their content for free? One idea is brand extension; you’re not just buying a magazine, but entering into something much bigger. For example, as well as a monthly magazine, The Word gives away cover mounted CDs with each issue, releases a weekly podcast and has a thriving online readers’ forum. These extras don’t directly generate money, but they do make readers more likely to continue to buy the magazine. This is the Holy Grail for magazine publishers: subscriptions from content. David Hepworth explains:
“We really value the site, the podcast, the Twitter feed and all the other means of interacting with the readership but the only one we can get any kind of revenue for at the moment is the magazine. I think they make people feel closer to the magazine, which is good.”
Equally vital to a loyal readership is a consistently high standard of professional writing. So it’s no accident that the biggest music magazines don’t make all their content freely available online. Most UK newspapers make their content available for free via their websites but expect people to pay for the physical edition too. Unsurprisingly, this seems not to be a sustainable business strategy, and advertising revenue isn’t filling in the gap. We’re in very real danger of welcoming a generation that believes all recorded music and quality journalism is and should be free. Eamonn Forde is a freelance music journalist and is worried:
“I think people need to know that it [art] has to be paid for, whether that’s by handing over money in a newsagent’s or a paywall payment every month. But the culture of free, where everything’s free and everything’s going to be paid for by advertising, what you’re going to get is that all culture’s going to be like Metro.”
Metro is a free newspaper distributed throughout the UK, where it’s typically found in train and underground stations. Thanks to the fact it’s free, it’s advertising heavy and features lighter news items, rather than hard-hitting, factual reporting. We can assume Forde isn’t a fan: “It’s going to be this say-nothing, kind-of-press-release, unquestioning, uncritical smug culture and that’s bad for culture overall. I think quality products should come with a quality price tag. I think Metro is like an early warning from history and there is the thought that we get the culture that we deserve. But if that’s culture, then creatives will go somewhere else because they have to make money.”
So, if newspapers and magazines need to make money to stay in business, but their readership expects at least some content for free, how does the professional writer feel about their work being given away?
Jude Rogers is a freelance journalist who writes about music for The Word, The Guardian, The Times and website The Quietus. She recognises not everything can be free, but having your work widely available has its advantages:
“Everything can be linked on Twitter, which is really helpful to spread your work around. I love the fact my stuff’s on The Guardian and people can read it and if you want to pitch your work, you can say, ‘Look, here’s my stuff on The Guardian‘.”
She also has first-hand experience of the News International paywall, which charges for access to their titles:
“I did an interview, last summer with a Tory MP called Louise Bagshawe who also writes trashy, holiday, chick-lit novels, and she came out with some really juicy stuff and I thought everyone would be talking about it, but it was behind the paywall. It’s frustrating when people can’t read my stuff; in a professional capacity I’m more than happy for people to read it for free online.”
It would be a little premature to read physical newspapers and magazines their last rites just yet, but it is a fact that the current trends don’t look good and need to be addressed. A combination of professionalism, goodwill, advertising and innovation is just about enabling the industry muddle along, but surely that can’t last.
For the print media, the Internet has been a cures and a blessing – opening up limitless possibilities while making awakening the industry’s darkest fears.
Of course, there is a future for newspapers and magazines. This is the information age after all. But whether that future lies with a website, behind a paywall, downloaded to a slate or transmitted directly into your readers’ cerebral cortex is a long way from certain. There’s a bewildering wind blowing through the business but when the storm subsides, someone will have put their finger on the new model and how to make it work and pay. That person is almost certainly working in the media right now. We can only hope they realise their greater purpose very soon.
Joe Rivers, March 2011
But is this really a good thing?
It’s easy to adopt a contrary viewpoint and fetishise physical magazines but former big names, Melody Maker, The Face and Smash Hits have all fallen by the wayside. This may not seem like big news, but Melody Maker alone led to the formation of Depeche Mode, Suede and The Jimi Hendrix Experience. It’s true that magazines used to fail in the pre-Internet era too, but magazine readership has been decreasing for a good while. Last year, circulation of the NME fell by 17.3%.
So, now the value of magazines as a source of news has all but disappeared, they’re more of a niche interest. David Hepworth launched Q, Mojo and The Word Magazine (as well as The Rocking Vicar), and has observed a staggering change in the role of the music magazine:
“The economic basis of the music magazine used to be: readers who needed to buy them to keep up and advertisers who needed them to reach record buyers. Both groups have gone away. In their place you have: readers who like to read and advertisers who need to reach this valuable minority. It's not the same.”
So, how do music magazines buck the trend? Why should people pay for writing when the Internet is full of music websites offering their content for free? One idea is brand extension; you’re not just buying a magazine, but entering into something much bigger. For example, as well as a monthly magazine, The Word gives away cover mounted CDs with each issue, releases a weekly podcast and has a thriving online readers’ forum. These extras don’t directly generate money, but they do make readers more likely to continue to buy the magazine. This is the Holy Grail for magazine publishers: subscriptions from content. David Hepworth explains:
“We really value the site, the podcast, the Twitter feed and all the other means of interacting with the readership but the only one we can get any kind of revenue for at the moment is the magazine. I think they make people feel closer to the magazine, which is good.”
Equally vital to a loyal readership is a consistently high standard of professional writing. So it’s no accident that the biggest music magazines don’t make all their content freely available online. Most UK newspapers make their content available for free via their websites but expect people to pay for the physical edition too. Unsurprisingly, this seems not to be a sustainable business strategy, and advertising revenue isn’t filling in the gap. We’re in very real danger of welcoming a generation that believes all recorded music and quality journalism is and should be free. Eamonn Forde is a freelance music journalist and is worried:
“I think people need to know that it [art] has to be paid for, whether that’s by handing over money in a newsagent’s or a paywall payment every month. But the culture of free, where everything’s free and everything’s going to be paid for by advertising, what you’re going to get is that all culture’s going to be like Metro.”
Metro is a free newspaper distributed throughout the UK, where it’s typically found in train and underground stations. Thanks to the fact it’s free, it’s advertising heavy and features lighter news items, rather than hard-hitting, factual reporting. We can assume Forde isn’t a fan: “It’s going to be this say-nothing, kind-of-press-release, unquestioning, uncritical smug culture and that’s bad for culture overall. I think quality products should come with a quality price tag. I think Metro is like an early warning from history and there is the thought that we get the culture that we deserve. But if that’s culture, then creatives will go somewhere else because they have to make money.”
So, if newspapers and magazines need to make money to stay in business, but their readership expects at least some content for free, how does the professional writer feel about their work being given away?
Jude Rogers is a freelance journalist who writes about music for The Word, The Guardian, The Times and website The Quietus. She recognises not everything can be free, but having your work widely available has its advantages:
“Everything can be linked on Twitter, which is really helpful to spread your work around. I love the fact my stuff’s on The Guardian and people can read it and if you want to pitch your work, you can say, ‘Look, here’s my stuff on The Guardian‘.”
She also has first-hand experience of the News International paywall, which charges for access to their titles:
“I did an interview, last summer with a Tory MP called Louise Bagshawe who also writes trashy, holiday, chick-lit novels, and she came out with some really juicy stuff and I thought everyone would be talking about it, but it was behind the paywall. It’s frustrating when people can’t read my stuff; in a professional capacity I’m more than happy for people to read it for free online.”
It would be a little premature to read physical newspapers and magazines their last rites just yet, but it is a fact that the current trends don’t look good and need to be addressed. A combination of professionalism, goodwill, advertising and innovation is just about enabling the industry muddle along, but surely that can’t last.
For the print media, the Internet has been a cures and a blessing – opening up limitless possibilities while making awakening the industry’s darkest fears.
Of course, there is a future for newspapers and magazines. This is the information age after all. But whether that future lies with a website, behind a paywall, downloaded to a slate or transmitted directly into your readers’ cerebral cortex is a long way from certain. There’s a bewildering wind blowing through the business but when the storm subsides, someone will have put their finger on the new model and how to make it work and pay. That person is almost certainly working in the media right now. We can only hope they realise their greater purpose very soon.
Joe Rivers, March 2011
