Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash

M: back to the "problems with monthly mags" that we have - everything is old news! you have a choice of thousands of interviews of everyone online - bands have their own websites etc etc etc there's no point in magazines anymore - even weekly is too late for me. i suppose there are still people out there that aren't into the internet so much and are happy to pay stupid money to get the bullshit news people have copied from online anyways...but as times goes by, magazines ain't gonna exist anymore, at least not as we know them. if they want to survive, they're gonna have to come up with something else for us to pay for, just like bands are having to do.

J: > in magazines anymore - even weekly is too late for me
This, and everything you said
> if they want to survive, they're gonna have to come up with something else for us to pay for, just like bands are having to do.
I think they make money from tour sponsorship as well, since yeah,they're effectivly obsolete.

M: I think they make money from tour sponsorship as well, since yeah, they're effectively obsolete. yeah and online stores and shit...but i just can't see how long they're gonna hold out actually selling the magazine. even with them offering free cds and shit - as soon as the copy hits stores, it goes online straight away. any super amazing content they can come up with goes online straight away....there ain't anything magazines can do. except maybe go online, do it for free and make their money from advertising, same as nearly all online free press. i give em 10 years at best. i could check some of the figures here [at work], market research into the magazine industry would be pretty interesting - to see the figures and shit. in fact i might just do that :D

J: :D
> there ain't anything magazines can do. except maybe go online, do it for free and make their money from advertising
I was gonna suggest that, it's all they can really do..

M: well metal hammer are owned by future publishing and just from wiki the sales for MH are 49,143 from jan-jun 07 - before the recession stuff, so i imagine current figures are down from that - compared to vogue uk which has a circulation of 220,000 it's not doing so badly.

terrorizer does 13,786 - classic rock, 70,301 (figures for this from 2009)...

hmm... i dunno, when you think 49,143 x £4 (i'm assuming its about 4 quid) = £196,572 per month, so about £2,358,864 per year, not including special issues, the fact that it may cost over £4 and all the other merch and sponsorship.,...

okay they're making pretty sweet money from it. and MH is a pretty big name of the future publishing books - classic rock is bigger, but their magazines generally focus on specialist press so the MH figures are actually pretty good.

this was a more complicated email than i intially planned.

J: > this was a more complicated email that i intially planned.
I know :D
Classic Rock used to be really good - yeah, it's monthly and the news is old, but it had good interviews in it and other bits, as you say, it's specialist. MH and Terrorizor are more or less the same, with T being the less mainstream per say.
But yeah, they still seem to be doing okay, and i'm sure a lot ofpeople will still buy them, it's just the cheap fuckers like you and me that wont :D

M: > it's just the cheap fuckers like you and me that wont :D

LOL i guess thats true :) i guess i just get caught up in what i do - i just don't understand why there's so many people out there spending money on stuff they don't need to. i also don't understand why there's so many companies spending so much money on protecting material they won't be able to protect forever - i don't get why they don't spend the money finding ways that they can move with the times.

like with illegal downloading - how many milions of fucking pounds have been spent trying to stop it when its essentially impossible to stop? why don't they just realise that and save the fucking money they're throwing at an unsolveable problem - and think of the ways in which they make money outside selling the music itself.

itunes was genius in the sense that at first, you had to download stuff from itunes to be able to listen to it on a ipod - everyone has an ipod, so everyone uses itunes, it's brilliant for making money - although even that couldn't last.

J: > don't understand why there's so many people out there spending money on stuff they don't need to
This.
> like with illegal downloading - how many milions of fucking pounds have been spent trying to stop it when its essentially impossible to stop?
Yeah, they never will, but they can't seem to grasp that and just admit defeat and yeah, do shit to increase revenue.
But a lot of people still buy music. we might joke about it, but people still buy lots.

M: i think we're kinda out of touch with that - because me and you never do it, i forget that people do actually spend money on stuff. i think there are a lot of people that see you downloading stuff and figure that you're taking money away from that band and so damaging the thing you like, in that sense,

J: say, for example, you were buying metallica records from when they started - every album they released was wicked - that goes for pretty much any other band at the time - you just get album after album of good shit. now it's like, they never release anything that's even worth buying. downloading might be killing it, but they're effectively killing it themselves with content.
also, downloading music is free - yeah, it's not legal, but it's free... it's a no brainer really, huh.

M: totally. like...whichever blog it was the other day that was saying how in 1985 - you have about 300 metal albums recorded. and 90% of those are fucking cool. ffwd to 2009 - over 10,000 different releases - and a good 70% EASILY are fucking bullshit. you think i'm gonna want to pay with those odds?

J: also most bands still going are doing the music for the money, yeah, i know, that's obvious and people who want to make money from music can, it's fair game, but to release horseshit for the money is not fair.

M: if i download your album for free and i like it, then in turn, i'll pay to see you play. and if you're really fucking good, i'll buy a t-shirt or some other kind of merch and that way, you could get up to about £40 off me. times that by 200 people and you got 8000, right there. and most people who charge 20 for tickets and 20 for tshirts are playing bigger venues than 200 people. you think of the o2 (don't know why i'm all figures obsessed this evening) - if it seats about 23,000 people - if you charge £40 a ticket, that's £920,000 - then if even half of them buy a t-shirt at £25 a pop, that's an extra £287,200 - so you've already made over a million fucking quid.

J: Yeah, you'll still go see bands play. I think also it's why a lot of bands release ltd vinyls still, because there's still a market for it. Although i think vinyl is dollar to press though :
> you think of the o2 (don't know why i've got all figures obsessed this evening)
Yeah, I thought that when i opend this email ;)
O2 is making bear cash tho :/

M: well with vinyl, you're selling something there that people can't just do themselves and its something that's actually cool - you can have pictures and fold outs and stuff. if you made a cd that came with some insanely awesome case* or whatever, yeah i'd still buy that, like people always buy box sets that come with some cool kind of crappy merch.

>O2 is making bear cash tho :/

fuck yeah, considering that most of their events are easily £40 upwards to go to - the foods costs DOLLAR, the shops/restaurants have to pay rent etc etc etc the o2 are fucking made, that place makes people haemorrhage money :O

*I hate AC/DC...but props to whoever came up with this. It's an undeniably cool cool idea to make some cash.