Two Print Passings
Sad news reflecting a tough time for print periodicals: two favorite music magazines, Resonance and No Depression, will cease publication, citing falling ad revenues and generally untenable business climate. It's a huge challenge to do something like this, and to keep a publication alive for 14 and 13 years, respectively, seems to me like a huge success. Along with Punk Planet, which wrapped up its own unbelievable run earlier this year, both Resonance and No Depression served as models of what might be achievable with Signal to Noise. So I applaud you guys and wish you the best with whatever you do next.
In their own words:
http://resonancemag.com/editor.html
http://www.nodepression.net/blogs/letter/
In their own words:
http://resonancemag.com/editor.html
http://www.nodepression.net/blogs/letter/
posted by Grrrrshon at
4:05 PM
3 Comments:
R.I.P.
And long live STN...
Bill Barton
unrepentant printaholic
Resonance was doomed ever since e|I and Grooves bit the big one; they were of a similar demographic but Resonance seemed to be moving out of the IDM/electronica area as of late.
Another publication we lost fairly recently was Side-Line, which folded after the founder/editor had a "viral cardiac attack"(!). It had published as a print magazine since 1989.
Not sure if David's comments, re: Resonance's demise, was in any way hastened by the death of my own publication, e/i, nor of Grooves. It is, again, simply symptomatic of a larger disease plaguing the magazine industry, coupled with the continuing evolutionary patterns of the Internet, and how (sorry) we, as a society, seem to now want our art: disseminated through pixels, underscored by commerce, convenience, and hence devoid of true value and soul, this is a road fraught with pitfalls that few take any moment aside to grasp and/or consider.
I'm tempted once again to replay my own travails as an independent publisher (twice christened, twice burned), but it's simply another sad story. The biggest problem with e/i, as hindsight now illustrates, was it being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Of course, the same circumstances that killed it are much like what killed No Depression, Resonance, and scores of others, despite my best efforts. Apparently, as much as I attempted to "reinvent" (I should say instead "tweak") the wheel of the modern-day music magazine (by altering its innate structure & layout, and by readjusting how its contents flowed throughout), such changes seemed to matter little to whatever small readership e/i had and sought to accrue. Beyond the assaultive forces that battered the magazine—paper/postage economics, too few working hours in the day, overwork/exhaustion/frustration—the truth was that the publication never really gained an audience; whatever public existed that the magazine courted remained mostly indifferent to the very existence of the magazine. Is this again just the same problems of Internet vs. print? I question why one format must for some reason obviate the other, rather than co-existing peaceably, but most folks seem perfectly willing to glean what they wish to glean from keyboard & screen. So much for future shock.
Ergo, all this being said, I applaud publisher Pete G. for soldiering on. I only hope that he can continue to prevail in an ever-increasingly hostile publishing environment—at the very least, I'll enjoy being with him on the ride.
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