Is SPIN really circling the drain?

"Ur criticism of 3 Dors Down was complete Bullsiht..."

In the near future every pop culture magazine will be so short and snarky it really *will* be like reading ILM the magazine.

Spin has been in trouble for a long time, but his hiring will only hasten its demise. It was Ap's second-in-command who did all the heavy lifting. AP has no interest in the international web (or at least he didn't when I worked for him)— if he thinks he can get young uns to add Spin to their diet of MYSpace, he is sorely mistaken.

check this out this interview with Mediabistro…he didn't get it then…

Do you think that the Internet is inhibiting the sale of CDs?
People don't want this stuff for free. There are a few people in colleges and stuff who get a thrill out of downloading stuff illegally, but most people will pay 60 cents for a song they download. It's only 60 cents, and most people are more than happy to pay for it. Before record labels endorsed music licensing, people were downloading music for free because there were no other options. It was a great piece of technology. I mean iTunes is successful, and that seems to be the way things are going, record companies are finally realizing that they can be involved in websites that charge for tunes and still be financially viable. Regardless, the CD will still exist, just in reduced circumstances. It will perhaps be similar to movies. You can experience a movie in a variety of formats—at the cinema, on DVD, or VHS.

http://www.mediabistro.com/articles/cache/a991.asp

I was shocked--shocked--that it went for $5M although given that it's bleeding $3M per year and the subscriber liability noted above, I had no idea things were this bad.

I don't find the Pemberton move at all unpredictable. I wouldn't want to work for him, either--thanks for chiming in Veronica, so I don't have to relay my own stories.

Who else got booted there today from the staff (other than the publisher and EIC yesterday)? I heard some names that were likely to be gone by the end of the week...

I'm sure that he will fire most Spinvolk— I predict he will attempt to staff it with Brits, altho' I doubt the new owners will be willing to spring for multiple green cards. he'll have to staff it with Americans—if they know of his rep, they would have to be masochists or truly desperate, and there sure are a lotta people like the latter these days. the freelance pool will be almost exclusively british.

he does need a consigliere, like Blender's CM, but one who will be loyal and not say to the owners "he does nothing; I do everything, fire him." he has been a consultant since being fired from Blender, so he may very well have learned something, altho I doubt it.

I can only assume that hiring AP is a huge signifier of the short term brand strategy of the new owners. Which is sad, because that mag needs some serious babying and given the long term outlook of music glossies, investors are probably not going to have much patience watching that thing bleed cash.

Is Blender doing 12 issues a year yet?

i can't think of anyone currently on-staff who would do well under ap. spin has definitely lost its way (really? another my chemical romance cover?) but ap is not the one to right it. yr right don about the long view. last fall they had an issue with two great travelogue pieces: simon on grime in london and caramanica on houston hip-hop. finally spin read like something other than How to Live in NYC on Drink Tickets. i really felt like that would be a good (if expensive) direction to go: the music travelogue. clearly that will not be the case.

I wouldn't be so sure they overpaid or that they got had; Hartle Media are not strangers to the magazine world at all and run the Northwest sales offices for SPIN and Popular Mechanics. It's just that hiring AP is not really a vote of confidence that they are going to nurture this thing into something special over the long haul. Hiring him makes it look more like a flip getting ready to happen.

SOLD.

So they paid $850,000 for the right to try to recoup $5 million in standing debt. E.g. "We can make it work." There hasn't been a full ad in SPIN in over a year - everything is either a co-brand tie-in or a huge discount. And I think I saw maybe three, four ads in that span that weren't explicitly music-related. Once upon a time SPIN had ads for clothes, food and movies. My question is, why do you throw the editorial staff in the blender when it's so clear that ad sales killed the mag?

Andy Pemberton, 2006: "I think the world could use a younger version of Rolling Stone."

But but but I said that already upthread! (It is nice to see you agreeing with me though. ;-) )

and all the articles would be 6,000 word travelogues with tons of photos. scott would do the 'scott page', which he could fill with whatever he wanted, and his baby rufus would do the DJ chart every month. jess would have a drum'n'bass column, and woebot would have a ten-page full-color laminated gatefold pullout every month to fill with whatever his heart desired. i would write the "berlin page" every issue, with lots of goofy photos of 6 am clubbing action. simon r. would have a column to enthuse about his favorite early ardkore records. matos would do a cdr-go column every month. and every issue would come with a mix-CD curated by optimo, encased in an edible sleeve printed on blotter.

BTW phil, check yr email...

(mark s will write the style guide, with special entries for "haha," "nu-god," and "roXoR")

ahahahahahaha

I don't know why I find this so funny. Future Art Brut song title?