What would you like to see in your ideal Guitar magazine for the 21st century?

EricTheWeary

Prior to Guitarist,Guitar Player was around, and used to be a much wordier, more detailed publication then. Beat International had been around. I think even Making Music preceded Guitarist and the cd's with backing tracks weren't added for years and were quite controversial at the time.

littlethoughts

EricTheWeary said:

The vault is/ was terrible.Fiddly and quite often hard to watch on anything that couldn't cope well with those apple/ ios files. I gave up looking even when I bought the mag. Either give something physical , like a DVD, to add value to the mag or just upload the clips straight to the MR site/ YouTube which is where they end up anyway.
Some of the new reader offers for Guitarist have been great and I can see that attracting new subscribers. I don't know the economics of a free gift worth more than the subscription but it feels unhealthy as a long term strategy.
At least Guitarist seems to have come out of its arty white font stage. What a fucking stupid idea that was ! :x

Yeah the vault is pretty dreadful. I'd like a service where as you subscribe you get access to an app/webpage which simply has everything on. No faffing around with words from pages from the mag, just a simple thing that you have access to when you subscribe and can get to from different devices. it could even be sold separately to the magazine for non-subscribers, so although you can hear things you can't see the tab unless you bought that mag. My girlfriend uses a pilates app which she pays 69p a month for and gets a new workout everyday, done in structured training regimes. Much better value for her compared to buying a dvd, and you get lots of variety and structure rather than cruising youtube. Given that something like this is distributed by a self employed personal trainer, I'm sure a major publishing company could manage to pull off a similar distribution system.

johnnyurq

Yes I mind it well @Fez and you are spot on it was really crap getting decent guitar related info before Guitarist. Unless you wanted to learn Bobby Shaftoe and buy guitars that you could fire arrows from the neck is so wonky.

Dave_Mc

chrisv said:

In terms of features, it's interesting that so many readers responded well to our Copies, Clones & Fakes feature from last year - that's a great example of a piece that simply wouldn't have happened if we really were tiptoeing on eggshells in the way that some people seem to believe.

Yeah that was a good one. Also an example of putting my money where my mouth is- IIRC it came out after I'd cancelled my subscription and I bought the magazine from a shop on the strength of that article.

mellowsun

Anyone remember Making Music magazine? That was great - what happened to it?

mart

mellowsun said:

Anyone remember Making Music magazine? That was great - what happened to it?

I remember early issues being brilliant, but the later ones being hardly worth picking up. I don't know when it stopped though.

impmann

I certainly do remember it. It was fab back in the day, especially as it was free. A mate of mine used to sell advertising on that mag... and that advertising paid for it to be produced.

Fez

Can't remember exactly when Guitar Player came out but it wasn't always easy to get hold much before Guitarist came out. Magazine distribution improved massively in the 80's.

I miss remembered the guitar project as well that was Everyday Electronics circa 1975 I think Electronics & Music maker was an offshoot from EE.

I quite like Iguitarmagazine.

mellowsun

mart said:

I remember early issues being brilliant, but the later ones being hardly worth picking up. I don't know when it stopped though.

iirc the early issues were in a big, broadsheet format. I used to get it in the late 1980s.