“Don’t know your bluegrass from your elbow?” These magazines might help sort it all out.
Okay, music fans, here’s one for you: What do Neil Young, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and The Smiths all have in common?
They all grace recent covers of print magazines in the music category, as pointed out by Alan Geere in inPublishing.
Geere compiled and analyzed the summer issues of several music titles, including Classic Rock, Kerrang!, Mojo, Q, Rock Sound and Uncut, breaking them down by number of pages, quality of material, circulation stats and contents.
For example, he had this to say about Mojo: “The contents on pages three and four lead to a beautifully constructed run-down of the cover-mounted CD. Letters, ‘What goes on!’ bits and pieces, some sumptuous interview reads, especially with nearly man Terry Reid, and a superhuman effort to find ‘The 50 Greatest Smiths Songs’. Oodles of reviews, including books, and a crossword with a £1,400 guitar as a prize.”
About Q, the self-proclaimed “world’s greatest music magazine,” he notes: “A card poster insert with Radiohead on one side and Coldplay on the other tells you all about the target market for this loveable beast of the magazine rack. Contents with big page numbers on page three then straight into the Coldplay love-in, which feels a bit bitty thanks to some invasive pull quotes. A 27-page celebration of Neil Young might seem excessive, but the insightful ‘exclusive’ interview (sorry, he’s talking to everyone who’ll listen) is worth the wait.”
As it happens, the music magazine industry saw six new titles launch in 2015 (Source: Statistica.com), showing that even though most music is in digital format these days, fans still love to read about it in print.
Rock on!