What ever happened to Guitar Mags on the shelves?
Went to a store today that has one of the bigger magazine racks in town. Was hoping to find some cool guitar mags to look at. The only guitar mag on the shelf was Guitar World. I already get that in the mail, so needless to say, I was pretty disappointed to see the demise of guitar mags on the shelves. Only one guitar mag for sale. Doesn't anybody buy guitar mags anymore? Where is the younger crowd getting their guitar tab fix these days?
Comments
When I started playing I was all about guitar mags, specifically for the tabs. But since the creation of \"power tab\" I 'm not so into the tabs in guitar world. Don't get me wrong, I still use them. But if I want to learn a particular song, all I have to do anymore is a quick www.ultimate-guitar.com search. Sure, it's not legal :roll: , but how else am I going to get the obscure tabs that guitar world doesn't offer?
EDIT: Not to mention the fact that GuitarWorld offers 5 tabs/month. 4 of which I, more than likely, won't care for or already know.
In my opinion, all the magazines killed themselves with an overload of page after page advertising and less attention to the articles and lessons or good info, and ran the good magazines into the ground by caring more about greedy marketing, than art or artists. Good riddance. :?
www.guitarplayer.com
www.guitarplayertv.com
www.bassplayer.tv
www.keyboardmag.tv
www.eqmag.tv
http://emusician.com
Guitar Player TV has a huge variety of lessons,product reviews,interviews,and performances.The others are not as elaborate but are useful.
As for variety of mags;the local grocery store here as well as Barnes and Nobles and Borders carry all the established guitar mags.
Later
http://www.justjazzguitar.com/index.php
Surprise, surprise..
I do like some of the guitar videos that are available like Lick Library, and Quick Licks. I even enjoy surfing YouTube for someone who can show me how to play a song. All that stuff is great. I just don't find it very useful to be tied to a computer while practicing my music and just lament the demise of printed guitar mags that I grew up with.
I appreciate the links and am building up a list of those sites. I suppose it's the future and I should get on the bandwagon. Just remember the good old days when a bunch of us young guitarists would be gathered around the magazine rack looking at guitar mags while mom shopped for the groceries.....
Its the same reason news papers are on there way out. The internet. Everything that is paper based is on its way out. Kind of sucks as I like to read a good magazine every once and a while instead of staring at a screen, but yea papers out digital is in....welcome to the 21'st century.
Bye bye paper products. :shock: 8)
Some of my best days were back in the 20th Century. I just don't get too excited about some changes here in the 21st Century. Still prefer to prop up a magazine tab on the music stand and reading 2 full pages compared to reading a pdf file on the screen and having to scroll section by section on just 1 partial page.
Guitar world is a bit young for me....that really hurts to say...I get it anyway. :roll:
Guitar player is kinda cool, but kinda snobish in a way... :?
They are all starting stack up. I can never seem to throw them away for some reason. I think I am at least 6 months behind in all of them...but I do look at the pictures when they first come in :oops:
Avid readers of those magazines are most likely yearly subscribers.
It cracks me up how much money people seem to think publishers and journalists make.
Like any media reliant on advertising, they haven't 'killed' themselves, they're struggling to stay afloat among the internet and cheaper advertising options.
I rarely read them anymore myself because I can get everything I need online for free. And now they can't afford to pay decent journalists, the writing has gone down hill too.
Its sucks, but I don't think you can blame the publisher. Magazines have taken the biggest hit than any other media produce in the last five years and we are lucky there are still some out on the shelves.
Trust me...I'm an editor of three magazines and my job is under constant pressure. Magazines are dropping like fly's and aside from the big paper journalists, most are doing it mainly for the passion.
It's not really anyone's fault, its just the progress away from print media.
Well, here is a point that I like to bring up about \"free\" things on the internet. I had to spend hundreds of dollars on a computer and also a monthly internet access fee to get at that \"free\" information. I suppose one could go to a public library and actually use their \"free\" computers and internet, but that is on their open hours and terms of usage (30 minute limit at my local library). Also, the better web sites with tabs and backing tracks seem to get shut down from the copyright lawyers as soon as they get popular. Information here today, gone tomorrow. At least my old mags sitting on the shelf have been consistently available for 10+ years.
I'm not anti-tech. I really like the guitar instuction videos. I get to see, and hear, how some song is played. But usually those aren't free. I have a large collection of backing tracks I have amassed over the years, but now that I play bass, they are less useful. Still enjoy downloading good midi files when I can. Hope to do more of that with my software synths which keep getting better. I often use Karaoke files if I intend to sing a song as they make great backing tracks for the vocalist. Also, karaoke files sometimes are just easier for me to hear what the instruments are doing without the vocals in the mix. I just miss the printed guitar mags I used to look forward to buying off the shelf in days past. The internet does not give me that same thrill. But maybe it's more of a generational thing.
I was just buying guitar mags to keep up with latest fashions and equipment! I never knew they had MUSIC in there, too!
I never learned to read tab or sheet music, because music has always been natural to me, to be able to pick out specific instruments or sounds, then if I can hum, whistle, or sing the note sequence, I can find it and play it on most instruments that I've tried (keyboard, guitar, bass, trumpet, etc.)
And videos! I can watch someone play, then play along the 2nd or 3rd time, usually.
Even so, I still pick up music mags when I find them.
My wife had suggested to go to the local bookstore to see if they had anything. The closest thing they had was Bass Player, accoustic player, and some other string instruments I wasnt interested in. But I thought, You have \"Bass Player\" but not Guitar Player--interesting.
I guess the area did have more folk and Celtic(yes I said celtic).Just thought I'd share.
BTW, not sure if you have a Barnes and Noble or not, but they usually have a good selection of guitar mags. Good Luck
I'm so old that the only way we learned music was to be able to read sheet music. Not entirely true, but close. I grew up playing Saxaphone in the school band and played lots of music I had never heard on the radio. So, reading sheet music was a must. Unfortunately, never acquired the skill to listen to music and play it back \"naturally\" like you can. I think both skills are valuable, but I was never taught to listen to music in that way. I have always felt a big hole in my music education because of that. Wtih guitar, I am trying to listen and play, like you can, but it's not easy for me. I guess I'm not a \"natural\" - or maybe it's just that my musical training has handicapped me.
My brother-in-law can play by ear, which is great, but give him some sheet music and ask him to play anything and you will be wasting your time. So we often work together and help each other depending on what song we are learning. He wishes he could read sheet music.
\"I could have calibrated my words better\"
Since you are taking exception with me, allow me to respond. You haven't convinced me that I am out of line with my opinion. I will value your say, as you stated you are the editor of several magazines. Likewise know, I am a magazine subscriber of 47 years. I subscribed to the first major modern guitar mag in the States...Guitar Player, and also Rolling Stone back in about 1968. I got my first magazine subscriptions in 1962. (MAD magazine and Boy's Life) I base my opinion off my history of consumerism.
I realize the internet has become a big competitor to magazines and newspapers. I am sure you are right, that the internet has taken a significant amount of business from magazines and newspapers. But I do feel in this market, bad magazines and newspapers will fail just as equally by their own hand, as at the hand of competition. You still have to offer a good product, giving your customer some value. With magazines we have accepted advertisements as part of the appeal. (but there are reasonable limits) Americans are a consumer based society, so we like ads to some degree. We are also a media based society. For that reason we will always want and enjoy our magazines and newspapers, regardless of the internet entering as a new form of media outlet. Most of us don't enjoy the internet as much as hype would have one believe. Some of the hype (IMO) comes from the dying media. The ever popular cry that the internet is destroying them is heard allot. I like the internet about equal to all the other forms of media, but with magazines top of the list...dispite what is offered free.
But lets be honest, everybody and their sister has upstarted a magazine, and thinning that huge herd is more a result of economy, and maybe not the internet?
I really wonder if Musician's Friend and maybe Guitar Center own the so-called \"crappy\" Guitar magazines? If so, they are able to charge customers a subscription, for the same basic crap the give out in their free monthly catalogs.
We will always want a good informative and engaging guitar magazine, with lots of images, lessons, product reviews, celebrity interviews and in depth musical debate, humor, theory, the whole musical sphere...and some hot chix holding a hot axe. Horrible guitar magazines almost entirely commercial??? hell no.
Charge me more per issue, and keep offering me a high quality guitar magazine please. Get me off this forum, and I'll pay you double the subscription.
I am a capitalist and love seeing people prosper. As a consumer, I want a good product, and value for my investment.
Media is a product, and maybe even have some moral obligation. There are TV, newspaper, and magazine businesses doing well, while others are coughing up blood. As media consumers, we will always want various forms of information. We look to our media to look out for us, be our watchdogs, keep us educated and informed on everything, especially current events, or our beloved hobbies, celebrities, and our sports or entertainment...even our TV Guides, etc. We want more than one or two sources as well. We don't trust one source, or we have various sources for various interests.
With this evolution, what is best for the consumer is what is going to prevail. I think a good magazine is always going to have it's place. This internet is popular, but I'd gladly choose a good magazine to tell me national events, if it wasn't so hard to find one that isn't a propaganda engine for the democratic party. Most media in the U.S.A has tanked for the liberal agenda. The liberals are outnumbered 2 to 1, yet the media here is almost completely liberally biased. I have to go to the internet to get any fair reporting of current, national or political events.
Consumers are fed up with any media that treats us like fools. We know when we are being lied to, and see through propaganda, and tired of the marketing games.
TV...what a racket that has become. What they charge for basic service is about $50/month. You get very little for that. It is filled with crappy programs, reality programs, and reruns upon reruns, with half the viewing repetitive commercials. It is all meant to get you to buy the premium channels...so now you are paying about $100/month. I mainly have my TV for sports, the weather channel, Fox News, and a vehicle to view my DVD's.
Internet?...same deal, we pay about $50/month for what? Just how much free YouTube videos or free whatever would it take to add up any value. You maybe get some initial value, but then a few months later you are bored out of your tree with the internet as well. The forums are where you end up, and after that, you realize you have no life. Seriously, the free stuff on the internet does not add up much value, after a while. Again, the internet is basically a vehicle to run ones favorite programs. It serves as a media outlet to some degree, but in my case not any more than other media. To be honest, I am more inclined to walk away from this computer, than to stop buying a newspaper or magazine. I spent $1200.00 for this laptop, and have to spend money every month for an internet service that seems to be getting slower each year, and I have to also spend money to keep this thing \"healthy\"...you know what...I think this is my last computer. Besides I may be in a bread line if Obama gets his way any further.
I still love magazines...I can cling to one, along with my Bible and my guns. Also, I can roll a magazine up and use it as a weapon in a pinch.
As far as struggling...we are all in that Boat, and I sympathize with you. The media have their struggles, so do we all.
I have witnessed hundreds of local businesses where I live go out of business. Companies who were successful since the 1940's. I'm lucky right now to even have a part-time job. I'm going to have to work to my grave, as will many Americans. I want my headstone to read \"Here lies Manitou--Buried Alive.\"
I had a sub to G1 it ran out just before they ended it ie merged it with GW.
Then they (GW) sent me a rag and a bill saying I owed them for subscription to GW! FORNICATERS!!! :twisted:
GW ... Too young? I don't know, possible. But how many ways can you slice an dice the same subject, over and over and keep it appealing? GW/GP etc Sometimes I think they have two or three stock interviews and they just change the names of the author and the person being interviewed!
But I have to agree with manitou. Hard copy rags are killing themselves...
Give me a quality product and I will support it. A 180 page rag and all the articles an lessons only use 38 pages or LESS!... And then just to read an article that starts on page 10 then I have to flip to pg 56 then to pg 97 then to page 121 just really pisses me off! One freakin' continued on... should suffice! ya I understand that's their way of hoping to get you to view the adds .. But...
WTF I bought the thing, I will eventually flip thru every page! That's why they made toilets :!:
Internet has it's role in todays 'scene'. Fact, it isn't good for your eyes to stare at that screen all day. And two I can't read on my laptop while lounging upside down on the couch! And not to mention also ... though they are mobile, still is a lil inconvient to take my lap top along when I go fishing :!:
\"They are all starting stack up. I can never seem to throw them away for some reason\" <---- I can totally relate to this quote
The cool thing about this is... Reach into the stack on your way to the throne and you usually find out you forgot about that artcle or missed this one...
8) More bang ferya buck you might say!
Continued on... another thread!
Okay two, acually a question while I have you on the line. You're a truck driver, right? Travel the Northeast much?Gotta question, if so. From I-91 in Hartford, whats the best/quickest way to get through NY city? I drove through there last week, from Stamford to other side of city, because of traffic, it took 2 and half hours :evil: Any suggestions??
Just try to plan your trip at night if possible, or off peak hours at worst. The place can become a parking lot. :?
Probably won't be bad after the midnight hr 8) .. But during the day :twisted: :twisted:
Good luck :!:
I started playing bass guitar a couple of years ago. I subscribe to the Bass Player magazine. In the two years of my subscription, I have not played one tab from the magazine because they have never had a song I wanted to play. Also, admittedly, they are too advanced for me to play. I usually go to ultimate-guitar's website or look for help on YouTube these days. I mainly get the Bass Player mag for articles to read and for the gear reviews. I can't afford the gear they review, but I like to read about it anyway. It's more of a bathroom magazine than a music room magazine for me, but that's OK.
G1 with the disc was my favorite american guitar mag. I still get GW with the disc every month, but it's not the same. Also, I think as I get older, there are just more and more songs/tabs they publish that I really don't have much interest in playing. So, when we decide on new songs to play as a band, I'm back to the ultimate-guitar website, YouTube, and listening to the original tracks to hear how they played it. Also, GuitarPro 5 is a great program for learning new songs.
Over the years I have seen some good guitar mags out of Britian, but we either cannot get them here or the expense is just too great. I wonder if their guitar mags are suffering the same fate as our American guitar mags? Like I said before, I'm not anti-tech (but don't tell me the internet is free), it's just that I miss the good guitar mags I grew up with.