It occurred to me recently that I haven’t bought a physical music magazine in months, maybe over a year. I think the last one I bought was a copy of Rolling Stone before I boarded a flight to Las Vegas in January 2020. Since then, nothing.
I used to spend hundreds of dollars a year on magazines: Rolling Stone, Q, Mojo, Record Collector, Alternative Press, and a ton of others. There were always music magazines lying around the house and at least three on the coffee table at any one time.
But not anymore. Almost everything I get is online, either through a website on my computer, an app on my phone, or some kind of aggregator on my iPad.
To be fair, a lot of music magazines have stop publishing, crushed by the effect of the internet, and starved from advertising as record labels stopped buying space to promote new releases. A few gamely hang on, but you’ve got to wonder how much longer they’ll survive.
My question to you this week is, “Do you still read actual printed music magazines?” Here are your choices.
Do you buy actual physical music magazines these days?
— Alan Cross (@alancross) March 1, 2021
I’m not being flippant with that third choice. There are so many young people who have never held ANY printed magazine in their hands. They’ve never needed or wanted to.
I do miss flipping through new magazines. And although I hate all the new paywalls being put up by many publications, I understand why they do that. Maybe I need to start up again. Now all I have to do is find a nearby store with a newsstand that carries the surviving mags I used to read.
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