I know some people can’t stand the comparison between the media industry and the music industry and it’s been pointed out that the history of the recording industry and the way consumers use music prevent direct comparisons but follow me for a second on this one.
There used to be two basic types of buyers for records. The core buyer is someone who will consume anything the artist puts out and will listen to every single track of a record over and over. Then there’s the casual buyer who likes one or two songs on the record but is forced to buy the whole thing because that’s the only way to listen to those one or two songs.
Magazines are the same way. Some are bought by people who will read cover to cover and back again (I remember reading the ads in Powder Magazine when I was obsessed with skiing because I’d already read every last caption and sidebar and it was still 29 days till the next issue came out) and some are bought by people who wanted to read one or two stories but still had to buy the whole magazine to do it.
So, then the internet came along and the distribution for music suddenly got easier and that one song you wanted to listen to but didn’t want to be forced into buying the whole album for was suddenly easy to find and download for free at first and now for 99 cents or less. It’s interesting to note that a common practice in the recording industry was to make a couple hit songs with a producer to trick consumers into buying the whole album.
When are magazines going to finally figure this out? People who used to read one story per issue now read none, because a comparable story can be found online for free. Advertisers seem to have already figured out that most people aren’t reading the entire magazine.
But, here’s the rub in the whole deal. An album of music used to be worth $12 and now it’s worth $1 or $2 to some people and $12 to others. It’s possible that still adds up to whatever amount you would have made previously if the $1 or $2 purchases are ten times what they would have been because you brought in people who were reluctant to buy the whole album for one or two songs. But, it’s entirely possible the profits are 1/12 of what they used to be.
None of us care if you make one million dollars instead of twelve next year but you’d better realize pretty quick that people aren’t buying into the packaging anymore and all shit you stuff in there for advertisers because pretty soon it’s going to be zero. The future of magazines is producing singles.
25 Comments
You are way smarter than me. Excellent analogy.
I think you’re missing at least one complication to this, and that is that some people just like to read a physical sheet of paper. Take me for example. I am a graphic design and photographer, embedded for hours a day on my computer. I despise reading the newspaper and magazines online. I already spend enough time on my machine. Walking down my driveway every morning to pick up the newspaper, and read it while I enjoy a cup of coffee is something I don’t want to give up just because online is free. The same with magazines. Reading these lengthy materials online, while cheap, is annoying and tiresome. You have to wade through ads, popups, some require logins, hoop jumping, and some require a paid subscription anyway.
To each his own, but I will always prefer a pulp magazine that I can read anywhere versus staring at a pixelated screen. Perhaps if I didn’t already spend so much time on a computer, it would be more novelty and fun, but as it is, I try to spend as little time glued to here as I can. Cheaper or not, there is more to life than a computer screen.
@J,
Well, I think you qualify as a core reader and if they are smart they will continue to produce a pulp magazine or newspaper for you to read. I think advertisers will realize people who are devoted to a publication are worth spending money on as well.
@2:
And some people like vinyl.
Print will always be around, even if it’s a specialty product, however digital is definitely the future of mass market content delivery.
@dude, @2,
“And some people like vinyl.
Print will always be around, even if it’s a specialty product….”
I don’t think this is really true because of one fact: The cost of doing either of those analogue things will eventully eclipse what the consumer is willing to pay. Would @2 still love reading tomorrow’s bird-cage-liner if it cost $50 a month, rather than $20 a year? How about $100/month? He’d better be designing some killer graphics for that guilty pleasure.
I buy a magazine for the plane every now and again, or carry one of the many that litter my office (literally!) because I can’t convince advertizers that I don’t read most of them. The few I do pay for almost all have more and better content on their website, and I’d be just as happy to forego the pulp experience. I have spent the extra money saved on a better display and a better OS and pop-up blockers. Sure, there are still animations on some of the ads that slip through, but I can place a calm, blank window over them or push them off the edge of the screen, just as easily as I can shovel all the blow-in cards from paper magazines into the recycling bin (or the post box for those with Business Reply postage!).
I’m also what you’d call a core user for magazines. Besides liking the convenience of reading in bed (where my laptop will never go), I like being exposed to articles that I might never have sought out online. There’s value in the serendipitous discovery of information that I think gets lost in online newspapers and magazines. Yes, there are things like Digg and StumbleUpon and links in articles, but that’s different from the experienced judgment of an editor who pulls a variety of content together.
For straight and focused research (like PC Magazine, going web-only next year), the web is definitely a faster and more convenient medium. For insightful commentary and thoughtful long-form articles (like The New Yorker and The Atlantic and some stories in Outside) I still strongly prefer print. But I may be a 54-year old dinosaur.
What are the implications for photography? For my business licensing images to print magazines? Probably a downhill slide.
Really great analogy. I hope the media/journalism industry can figure out a way to go from fee to a small fee like the record companies, but I’m not convinced it’ll happen. The singles/album breakdown is perfect, too. You could also call it signal/noise or content/filler. It’s great for photographers, because good photos are, by definition, good content. But then there’s the little problem of time and money needed to create it, though the analogy might still hold up. Photographers will be toiling away on their own at their own expense, just as musicians record songs in their garages or at a friend’s studio. The big media names, who can reach millions in a way that the photographer’s own website/publishing platform can’t, will be curators more than producers, just as record labels (now iTunes) are now more like a distribution conduit than the force behind creation. That’s all well and good for some photography, but conflict journalism, following the campaign trail, and other high-cost or high-risk photography won’t be able to survive in such a model. The local nonprofit/watchdog model in the recent NYT article or championed by http://www.spot.us/ can’t really handle that problem, either, as I see it.
I like the analogy, and I think it’s already happening when I see some of the parity titles in the shelter, news, finance and mens interest magazines being shuttered.
But here’s an extension of the analogy that I’m really interested in: I buy most of any music I want from iTunes for the same reasons you explain, Rob. BUT, I also just bought the Metallica “Death Magnetic” CD because of what Turner Duckworth did with the packaging – it was too good to not buy and own so that I could go back to it over and over and really dig into the tactile and visual experience of it.
I think that’s where magazines that are going to survive on the newsstand will find the elements of their success: offer something that can only reward the reader by actually picking it up and buying it and taking it home and spending some time enjoying it.
And you can’t really do that with, say, PC Magazine.
Which just folded.
Hurrah. We’ve been talking about this in my household for a long time, mostly while my husband mixes vinyl records on his turntables and I read The New Yorker, the only magazine I have ever subscribed to (and ever will), in between surfing on our laptops. I needed one page from the NYTimes newspaper on Monday and I now have this lump of ugly paper I can’t bear to throw out for a week so I feel less guilty.
>> The future of magazines is producing singles.
The analogy is good, but how exactly do you produce those singles? It looks like the article doesn’t have a happy-end… ;-)
@Peter,
Exactly how it looks in a magazine: A story with pictures and an advertisement.
right on!
“It’s interesting to note that a common practice in the recording industry was to make a couple hit songs with a producer to trick consumers into buying the whole album.”
Now that made me laugh. Don’t believe any group and producer sit down together and say, “Now all you got to do is write two hits and we will fill the rest with boring material so that they will buy the whole album.” Let me assure you, if recording artists had it in them to make 10 great songs on an album they would. Inspiration though is a difficult thing to come by.
@Craig Brewer,
I would disagree with you slightly. It’s not good business to release an album where every song can be a hit single. If every song gets released as a single, the public gets tired of the artist quickly. Saving some of the stronger songs for a future album helps insure some good material for the next album — very handy when an artist hits a creative dry patch. There is also the problem of setting the bar so high with one album that an artist’s future albums are a disappointment.
– CJ
The beginning of the end . . .
Ziff Davis is making PC Magazine electronic only. I think the editorial photographer is going to have to involve in telling stories via movies with interviews(that they do on camera) cut into small segments with bits of content ie. a long shot of the person interacting with something. Either that or a short series of still images over dubbed with the sounds of the interview or the subjects environment. I’m thinking NPR type audio with slide show.
Just my thoughts, Tustin
http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/magazines/ziff_davis_medias_pc_magazine_going_all_digital_101141.asp
@Tustin,
A magazine for people who love computers. I’m surprised they lasted this long.
As a member of the younger generation I thought I’d weigh in. I do the vast majority of my reading online. My laptop definitely follows me into bed, and I also use it to watch TV and movies. I think the internet offers a tremendous potential for serendipitous discovery, far beyond what magazines ever offered. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t exchange links to articles with friends via email.
The magazines I want are ones that are beautifully made collectors’ items….Blindspot, Big Magazine, Alpinist (which just folded but was an incredible climbing mag). The content in these magazines is substantial enough that you want to refer back to it years later, and they all look good on a coffee table. There’s something nice about possessing something, especially in a world where everything is transient and electronic. Bookstores still do well, despite the prevalence of libraries. Sometimes it’s nice to step outside the stream of crappy information, but “25 Fitness Tips” isn’t going to get you there.
I have three random thoughts on this:
A) Last night, I was sitting at the counter at my local coffee house, and the local newspaper (already read) was lying on the counter. I picked it up and read through the sections as I drank my coffee. This occurred to me as I read: I liked how, as I was scanning the sections, that I was reading articles that I’d never go to on the web. With the web, I have my bookmarks now, and they’re very tight and refined and selected and I rarely venture outside of those bookmarks, so now, there’s very little chance that I’m going to stumble on something that’s outside of my predetermined interest area. This cannot be a good thing. So in this way, I welcome the randomness of the printed newspaper.
B) As far as magazines, I bought several the other night at Borders. When I got them home, I noticed that there was hardly one article that I sat down and actually read. Of course, I’m biased, because I’m a photographer, but I wondered how many other people simply scan the photographs, and never read the articles. (The only time I really read an article is if I buy in an airport, and I’m trapped and held hostage for two hours in flight). But I just find, so much of the time, there’s such a “formula” for most magazine articles, that by the third paragraph, I just put it down and move on. (Maybe I’m reading the wrong magazines). But it does make you wonder, why aren’t there more magazines that are pictures-only, and maybe with extended captions?
C) Rob, ever since reading your post months ago that listed Production Costs for a glossy magazine, it’s just amazed me that any of them can stay in business. I’d certainly welcome a “magazine” that was printed on newsprint as well; I’m more about the photo ideas and concepts than I am about counting every shadow detail in high-quality CMYK. I’d rather see a newsprint magazine than no magazine at all.
I wonder what the price on these single stories would be… if they were pro-rated to match the total price of a $4 (avg) magazine, each individual story would cost about .50 cents or less, assuming there are at least 8 or so ‘sections’ (not just stories… people also spring for the gear/clothing/restaurant/etc features as well). Not a bad price, very accessible for the reader.
But then again, if I were interested in at least half of a magazine, I’d still rather pony up an extra couple bucks to buy a hard copy.
“The future of magazines is producing singles.”
Yes, I think the analogy is very good and we will probably go that way.
I remember only a few years ago, when many where saying that an “i-tunes” model was impossible to implement. I don’t see any major tech. problems for making that happen with magazines too. Go to the magazine on-line, buy the articles you are really interested in. Download/read them anywhere with the increasingly portable devices. Read them in a computer with a nice screen if you are interested in the photograps.
Good for the trees too …
This is a good analogy, I like it. One important difference is that a music customer already knows one or two songs on a record before they buy it. With a magazine, the customer probably hasn’t seen any of the stories or photos in the magazine they’re buying. (It happens occasionally, but relatively few magazines are sold because they contain “hit” stories.) Subscribers are actually paying in advance for magazines that haven’t even been made yet. So print magazines have always had that pressure that recording artists are feeling now: To persuade customers that material they haven’t seen/heard yet is worth taking a risk for. The digital migration adds even more pressure to stay consistently good (and maintain a brand, and draw an audience that’s valuable to advertisers).
I dunno…if your magazine generates original content that isn’t replicated online, they will come. The books I write for are growing like crazy. On the other hand, we have almost no advertising, because we do fuck-all for advertisers. Survival of the unyielding.
Would it be a print or digital single? You mat well see something like an iTunes for magazine articles soon, people are trying to build it.
Spot on, as usual. However, some magazines pick a theme, and write a series of articles on a particular topic that might be of interest to a majority of their readers. Such was the case with PDN’s recent photo book issue. Vanity Fair’s Hollywood issue springs to mind, too. I think that themed issues have a very real chance of thriving in a singles world, and I’d like to see the strategy employed by more publishers.
An interesting analogy, but I can’t see it working. Physically it’s damn near an impossibility, with printing, shipping, and distribution likely costing more than the 50 cent “excerpt” price. Not to mention the issue of deciding which stories are special enough to warrant standing alone. Then you’ve gotta find space on newstands, etc. But I’m guessing you weren’t looking at this as a dead-tree possibility.
Problem is, it’s been tried online — and when was the last time you paid $2 for that archived NY Times article that came up in your google search? And with most magazines in the $5 range, do that many people balk at buying an issue if a coverline catches their eye?
I recall reading an op-ed once (I think on designobserver.com, but i could be mistaken) about how designers and illustrators who undercut the competition were only hurting the industry as a whole, because doing so cheapened the implied value of their talents. Basically — you charge less, and customers stop thinking of it as a deal, and start thinking it’s just how things should be. Magazines have done that for years by offering subscriptions for only $15! $12! $10! for an entire year! — and now that advertising’s not paying the bills, they’re (or we’re, I should say, since I’m an editor) screwed.
I’m starting to think that the answer doesn’t lie in a desperate scramble to match the web’s “information wants to be cheap/free/stolen” mantra, but to make a product that’s so artfully, impeccably produced that you can sell fewer at a higher price and still come away with a profit. It’s not easy, and the market can’t sustain every glossy going high-end, so it’s not the perfect solution. But every time I pay $10 for an issue of Monocle I can’t help but feel like I’m holding the future of magazines.
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