Gramophone, the self-described “world’s best classical music magazine,” and BBC Music, the self-described “world’s best-selling classical music magazine,” are soldiering bravely into the 21st century this month.
On April 6th, Gramophone launched its new design. As described by editor James Inverne on the website,
“You’ll enjoy some new features, such as The Trial (where critics
advocate the cases for and against an iconic recording; in this issue
Mike Ashman and Peter Quantrill argue the relative merits of Karajan’s Parsifal
– and you can cast your juror’s vote in our forum) and the fascinating
Biography of an Instrument. You will find more pages of reviews (this
issue, for instance, covers a bumper crop of DVD and Blu‑ray releases).
Inevitably, some well-loved features are rested (That Strain Again, The
Gramophone Debate), but they’ll be back at some point. Others have earned a happy retirement.You have only to glance at the panel of reviewers, however, to see
that the most important thing remains the same. We still offer an
unrivalled ensemble of the world’s great writers on music, with some
impressive new names to join us in coming issues; and, of course, you
will still find master musicians giving us their fascinating insights
in these pages.”
If I may digress for a moment, and I may, the only other time I’ve heard “bumper crop” used is in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I love it and am going to start using it as much as possible in my everyday life. Consider yourselves warned.
Back to business. You can e-flip through a sample Gramophone here, and below is the new cover design:
For reference, here are some old covers:
Not being terribly into serifs myself, I like the new logo a lot. It’s striking, clean, makes the magazine less clearly Just About Classical Music (a plus, I’d say), and clearly sets the aesthetic apart from its main competitor BBC Music‘s look:
One thing that’s confusing about the Gramophone redesign, though, is that they seem to have three different taglines floating around. Two can be found on their website homepage:
“The world’s authority on classical music since 1923,” here:
…and here:
“The world’s best classical music magazine,” here:
And then they have “The world’s best classical music reviews” on their new cover:
Since the new look was just launched, perhaps they’re still in a period of transition, but it’s decision time!
Tomorrow at 2:45pm BST, BBC Music Magazine will stream their annual awards live from their website:
The first thing we notice is that both magazines are heavy into hot pink this spring.
So, at 9:45 am here on the East Coast, and at an impossibly early time on the West Coast (for the likes of me, anyway), we can watch from the comfort of our own computer screens. My hope is that they will also live-Tweet the proceedings on their excellent Twitter feed. With 2,649 followers, they should get a good e-audience.
Both Gramophone and BBC Music have blog sections on their sites, the former here and the latter here. It’s a bit hard to tell in both cases if they’re written by staff-only, or if freelancers are on board. The U S of A’s own Albert Imperato from 21C Media Group writes the New York Insider blog for Gramophone, but everything else appears to be written in-house. I’m curious how the blogs fuel subscriptions, and how subscriptions fuel page visits. This is touched upon in a recent interview hosted here with BBC Music Magazine editor Oliver Condy.
Most of what we do at www.bbcmusicmagazine.com
is written specifically for the site. We do have reviews up there from
the magazine, but all the features, news and opinions are tailored for
our site. You won’t find, say, the cover feature from the February
issue up on our site free of charge. That’s unfair to the subscribers
and unfair to journalism. Quality writing costs – and we can’t simply
give it away. We take a lot of pride in our audio clips, updated news
items and new release info which we think complement the print version.
But if you want the ‘real’ BBC Music Magazine, we’re on the newsstands…
I have to admit: I don’t subscribe to either magazine. Keep in mind that I also don’t subscribe to the New York Times. I do subscribe to both Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine‘s RSS feeds, though, and would happily pay for online versions like The New Yorker or The Economist offer. I don’t like paper, you see; my apartment’s too small, and there’s no recycling in the building. Should someone who does like paper want to subscribe, though, it’s incredibly difficult to go about doing that on the Gramophone site (there’s nothing on the homepage, and I finally found a link to another site at the bottom of a news item), while BBC has a big banner across the top of their homepage. Gramophone, however, gets major points for their online archive, which is very cool and useful. Neither Gramophone nor BBC Music Magazine is currently available in the Kindle store, sadly. Actually, The Economist has an audio edition–you can literally have every magazine read to you in its entirety–with their print (but not electronic) subscription, which would be a great fit for a classical music magazine, because sound clips could be incorporated. In the battle for 21st Century Domination, I wonder which magazine will be the first to jump on the iPad bandwagon, since there are also obvious sound tie-ins there.
More importantly, did everyone know that another British classical music magazine, ClassicFM, has a dating site?
Hi Amanda,
Glad you’re enjoying the relaunched site. It is actually pretty easy to subscribe to Gramophone on the site though – if you click on the banner at the top right (the one which you point out which has a pic of the magazine cover) it will take you to a page with a subscription option. Also there’s the box to the right of the top story to take you straight to Haymarket’s official subscription site (Haymarket is our parent company), and at the bottom of the home page there is a subscribe button.
We are also building up the blogs, so watch this space, as they say…
All the best,
James