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 crisis in mag land: part one
Have magazines bin and gone? Last week, Jockey Slut and Sleaze joined The Face, Bang, Trash, X-Ray and Muzik, by securing a plot in the dead zone. The music, film and style titles that survive increasingly resemble yesterday’s chip-shop wrappers, driven by the whims of advertisers, record labels, film distributors and their own blind desperation to be “the first to get it”, be “it” a band, actor or trendy piece of sportswear. Magazine racks look rather silly really, as hitherto “quality” music, film and style publications jostle with, and increasingly resemble, mega-selling celebrity publications. Mag Land is a drooling fool, fawning at mediocrity and taking the intelligence of readers in vain. How many times a year must we read the recurrent tripe of headlines like “The Best Band/Film/Shoe In The World, Ever” before we start sticking forks in our eyes and running out into the street screaming? The industry has become stale, and the time could be ripe for some young bloods to rethink the concept of music and style magazines and freshen up the racks.  As X-Ray and Bang bowed out a few months ago, the NME prided itself on seeing off the competition - despite a substantial decline in its own sales over the past decade - and Q endeavoured to sex up its hitherto highbrow act by slapping Christine Aguilera on the cover in a bid for brash pop cred. Meanwhile, dad-rock music monthlies Mojo, Uncut and Word continue to corner the “quality music mag” market aimed at the “50-quid bloke” (thirtysomethings who spend that much on CDs and mags each week). Elsewhere, the nebulous nature of the “style magazine” - a spurious amalgam of music, fashion, lifestyle, film and everything “cool” - has become a publishing anomaly, a mongrel breed with a dwindling readership. Hence the demise of The Face, Sleaze and ill-fated Ministry Of Sound/Condé Nast style mag Trash, which launched in July 2003 and promptly folded after one issue.  With the music coverage in Britain’s broadsheets now rivalling music magazines in terms of critical nous and breadth, The Observer confidently launched its Observer Music Monthly last September and it’s surely only a matter of time before other broadsheets follow suit. The impact of the broadsheets’ comprehensive music, film and style coverage is significant while the popularity of websites has also ushered in new competition for magazines. And yet, is it too easy to say that broadsheets and websites have led to so many publications shutting up shop? Or is it that many mags have nosedived because they offered little else than was already out there and simply outlived their usefulness?
Stuart Turnbull
Stuart Turnbull is ex-Music Editor of Sleaze. Next week, he looks at alternatives to the traditional music/style mag.
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