It’s sort of amazing that Rolling Stone lasted as long as it did, and I think it’s numbers were still respectable 7 or 8 years ago. The last decade has been rough for them.
If you are a “rock n roll” magazine, you have to cover youth culture. At the same time, youth culture today has nothing to do with rock and roll, and Millenials are not buying magazines.
They probably could plug along for a few more years writing cover stories on Springsteen and the next Stones retirement tour, but eventually your audience is literally going to die.
I still try to stay somewhat in touch with “modern” music, so I would get annoyed when I was a subscriber when they spent so many pages on, like, Led freakin’ Zeppelin.
At the same time, with new acts, you don’t get the same access as they used to get. So you are writing a story on - I dunno - Justin Bieber based on a two hour interview in a hotel conference room.
The Almost Famous says of touring and traveling with an act are dead and gone. No publicist in his or her right mind would allow that.
Exactly. Rolling Stone was trying to appeal to a demographic that didn’t buy magazines.