The publisher of “Q” and “Kerrang” magazines, Stuart Williams, of Bauer Media, talking to Music Week about why music magazine circulation has tanked this year:
“It’s been a really quiet year for music releases.[…] Readers want to find out about new and exciting bands and if there aren’t any out there for us to cover then we can’t blame readers for not wanting to spend money on our titles”.
Categories: miscellaneous
eh?
yeah Kit, he didn't dig you… it's okay… not everyone digs the mercury….
ouch!
i just meant the guy is obviously wrong, there are loads of new exciting bands..
yeh this guy is seriously wrong just look at the academy's and colleges there are loads of great new trio's and small groups coming out…
From my awareness Q doesn't typically focus on interesting new bands -isn't it more about established mainstream acts? Certainly not much jazz either. Don't know so much about Kerrang. It seems to me more likely that the increase in on-line writing and commentary about music is impacting the printed media. There is loads of good new stuff out there though – not just jazz but other music also.
how about United Vibrations? Very exciting I'd say…
Why always this boring and misguided emphasis on 'what's new'? As if established acts aren't capable of producing exciting music….It's sad for the current crop of 'new' bands (yes Kit even you) to realize that before they've developed their best music they'll be 'old news' and on the media scrap heap. Luckily as (the other) anonymous implied we can take control with on-line writing and self-promotion via the internet.
hmm.. i agree that emphasis should just be on bands making exciting music, regardless of whether they are old or young – but its also wrong to say that there aren't any good new bands, as they are.
It's relatively easy to keep tabs on the new releases from artists you know and love, and for me discovering new bands / players is one of the great joys of music. So for me, an emphasis on new bands is both healthy and exciting.
I love to listen to Miles, Parker, Monk, Bud Powell, etc. Jazz has such a great history, but it also has an equally exciting present and future, and no reason not to get equally, if not more, excited about that also. After all these are the people that we can go out and see for ourselves in the flesh! In my opinion, having followed the jazz since I first really got into it in the mid-80s, with the starting point being my dad's mostly 50s record collection, there has never been a better, more innovative, and fascinating time, with a very natural cross-fertilisation from other genres contributing to a genuinely creative scene.
But… the jazz coverage of either magazine is so low the comment is irrelevant in relation to our scene. It may be true for the scenes that they cover but I think, based on who Bauer Media is [http://www.bauermedia.co.uk/], that it perhaps was not really worth mentioning. Unless there was something I missed?
Kit, you are right. If you stop looking you don't find.
Jack, on the button.
And fair cop, Corey. You're right to put me on the spot. Why indeed cover this?!
My logic in mentioning it on this site may be obscure. I had just been surprised by the comment in many ways:
-by the extent to which Stuart Williams sees the role of his magazines when it comes to new bands as quite so passive.
-(possibly, more speculatively…) by the knock-on effects of the record companies' publicity machines going though a period of intense self-doubt/depression/ lamenting that the good times are over? A comment like Stuart Williams' here seems dulled, tired.
But, hey, the conclusion anyone reading these comments will come to is that in jazz, in London, we have not “run out of new and exciting bands.”
Not by a long way.
But I don't live in London. And I reckon there's heaps of new and exciting bands, doing creative music in other places too. I hope your new jazz journo post allows you to get in the car and head out, Seb… as there's lots of us out here! 😉