A nice piece in The Atlantic on the demise of the much-loved Word magazine:
But the recently announced demise of The Word, a nine-year-old British rock monthly, hurts more than most. The Word did something that seems beyond most of its competitors now: It breathed. Even at its most list-tacular, there was nothing assembly-line about it. When it puts out its final issue this week, the best music magazine anybody published in the last decade will be officially dead.
If you’re looking for intelligent life on planet rock, many Word contributors now write for the revamped Q magazine, but it isn’t looking too clever: the current issue has a subscription deal offering 12 issues for just £12, which to me looks like a panicky move to protect a magazine on life support. If you haven’t seen Q recently it’s well worth your time, and at £12 for a year it’s a steal.
Of course, the problems don’t just affect music magazine: the internet, the economy… you know the score. More than ever before, subscribing to the magazines you love isn’t just about saving money; it’s about ensuring that they can continue to delight you month after month – and these days subs can be for digital issues as well as, or instead of, dead-tree ones.
Here are a few links to some of my favourites:
.net  |  PC Plus |  MacFormat  |  What Laptop, Tablet and Smartphone  |  Tap! |  Edge |  Private Eye
(Those subscription links aren’t an affiliate thing; I’m not getting any cash if you take out a sub to anything)Â
Comments
0 responses to “Word magazine is dead, and Q’s gone a funny colour. If you love a mag, subscribe”
I used to buy Q quite regularly, and have their review of his first album to thank for getting into Vast, but I got out of the habit when they went through that period when EVERY SINGLE ISSUE was a fucking list for what seemed like a squllion years. They kept doing lists for far longer than they had lists to make, and so started to compound the boringness with desperation. “The 100 greatest EPs by bands with transsexual bassists EVER!”
Really? What Laptop, Tablet and Smartphone is an actual favourite? Not just of you, but of anybody. It sounds like a made-up guest publication from HIGNFY and that’s from someone in a household that regularly gets The Ringing World!
Thinking about it more, it should really be a pamphlet. One week it just says Macbook Pro, iPhone 4S, New Ipad and the next say Nexus Tablet, Dell Latitude X200, Samsung Galaxy S3 and then reverts.
Pfft. It’s a fine publication, and not just because of the stellar freelance cast :-)
Yeah, it really lost its way a few years back, laddishness and lists. It’s really good now, though, to the point where I enjoy it even though I’ve no idea who many of the acts actually are :)
I’ve noticed they speak highly of Katy B. On that, at least, they’re right.
Is what laptop, tablet and smartphone monthly? I mean even if you assume you buy three months worth while weighing up options (And who even does that?) and replace each device in a discrete cycle each year, you still only need 9 copies a year to have everything covered. Exactly how obsessed with being on top of these devices do you have to be to subscribe to it?
(and I grew up in a household that regularly received “assistant librarian” a magazine so obscure and specific it once made the guest publication spot on have I got news for you’s headlines round)