Cook's Illustrated is the realest. But their rush to cash in on the cookbook market after the success of Best Recipe (still my go to number one cookbook) left some SERIOUS copy problems with the books that followed -- Baking Illustrated had the wrong flour measurements in its pie crust recipe if memory serves. OOF.
And are they still publishing that "Cook's Country" joint? That was as offensive as it was terrible.
DB_Cooper (hair included) is on point in this thread. And I've never had the pleasure of meeting Josh Dunn, but he has done an amazing job with print layout - WaxPo owes a great deal of their success to this.
Bottom line is that WaxPoetics has a tough job, and they are realistically pretty limited in terms of how far they can possibly expand their subscriber-base. Their efforts to grow have really pushed them beyond their original "record nerd" appeal, and they have stumbled at points along the way. There have been issues and articles that I haven't been into, or where there's been conflict of interest issues, no doubt.
But look - this is the ONLY magazine that has, or realistically ever will, attempted to go deep into some of the subjects and artists that we love. Almost all of us know at least one person if not a dozen or two who have worked with or written for the magazine in the past. So critique the hell out of it, because that's what we're good at on the Strut, but at the end of the day these guys are putting in work and running a business isn't easy - nor is catering to some really picky MFers like a SoulStrut audience.
Just having a music magazine that actually writes about (mostly quality) music in 2010 is unique, in and of itself. Of course, this doesn't mean we should lower our standards or expectations, but holding Wax Poetics to some unreasonable standard while letting everyone else slide makes little sense either.
I'd honestly be very interested to hear from WaxPoetics how much they would have to raise subscription rates were they to do away with advertising completely - if one were to factor out the administrative overhead of dealing with ad content and accounts, plus the extra pages printed, somehow I don't think it would be an unreasonable amount, and as someone who let my subscription lapse (I buy individual issues if there's something interesting), it would certainly get me back in the door and subscribing again.
There's real value in at least striving to create a sustainable business that is ad-free (and also free of conflict of interest pieces, which IMO is the greater issue at hand), and people are increasingly willing to pay for ad-free content - I think Wax Poetics has a great chance to ride the wave and foster that backlash against an ad-based model, or to at least to adopt a more creative, non-conventional ad model, because in a few years taking out giant print ads will be a thing of the past for most ad agencies who know their sh*t.
DB_Cooper (hair included) is on point in this thread. And I've never had the pleasure of meeting Josh Dunn, but he has done an amazing job with print layout - WaxPo owes a great deal of their success to this.
Bottom line is that WaxPoetics has a tough job, and they are realistically pretty limited in terms of how far they can possibly expand their subscriber-base. Their efforts to grow have really pushed them beyond their original "record nerd" appeal, and they have stumbled at points along the way. There have been issues and articles that I haven't been into, or where there's been conflict of interest issues, no doubt.
But look - this is the ONLY magazine that has, or realistically ever will, attempted to go deep into some of the subjects and artists that we love. Almost all of us know at least one person if not a dozen or two who have worked with or written for the magazine in the past. So critique the hell out of it, because that's what we're good at on the Strut, but at the end of the day these guys are putting in work and running a business isn't easy - nor is catering to some really picky MFers like a SoulStrut audience.
Just having a music magazine that actually writes about (mostly quality) music in 2010 is unique, in and of itself. Of course, this doesn't mean we should lower our standards or expectations, but holding Wax Poetics to some unreasonable standard while letting everyone else slide makes little sense either.
I'd honestly be very interested to hear from WaxPoetics how much they would have to raise subscription rates were they to do away with advertising completely - if one were to factor out the administrative overhead of dealing with ad content and accounts, plus the extra pages printed, somehow I don't think it would be an unreasonable amount, and as someone who let my subscription lapse (I buy individual issues if there's something interesting), it would certainly get me back in the door and subscribing again.
There's real value in at least striving to create a sustainable business that is ad-free (and also free of conflict of interest pieces, which IMO is the greater issue at hand), and people are increasingly willing to pay for ad-free content - I think Wax Poetics has a great chance to ride the wave and foster that backlash against an ad-based model, or to at least to adopt a more creative, non-conventional ad model, because in a few years taking out giant print ads will be a thing of the past for most ad agencies who know their sh*t.
Nice take on the subject.
I would mention, though, that sometimes ads in a magazine like this are a positive thing. When I bought various music mags as a teen and beyond in the 70's - 80's I read the ads as closely as the articles. They told me what was available and also hipped me to as much new music as the articles. Of course the Ford ad doesn't apply, but ads in a specialty mag can be a positive.
Full disclosure: I advertise in WaxPo and like to feel like my ads don't take away from the mag as a whole.
Do I like everything they've done? No.
I don't like everything anybody has done, including myself.
I would mention, though, that sometimes ads in a magazine like this are a positive thing. When I bought various music mags as a teen and beyond in the 70's - 80's I read the ads as closely as the articles. They told me what was available and also hipped me to as much new music as the articles. Of course the Ford ad doesn't apply, but ads in a specialty mag can be a positive.
Right - which is why I think they have an incredible opportunity to create useful advertising - why not just have, as many magazines have done in the past, a section just for record stores who sell vinyl to advertise in, kind of as a directory? Or a page just for new reissues coming out? There is always so much being released, and no one source to turn to to stay tuned in, that for me, it'd be a real service to simply get a list of all the new music projects or record stores who were seeking to appeal to the Wax Poetics readership. The WaxPo brand is really, really strong and they could leverage this in some very creative ways.
It would be explicit that the ads were paid for, but I don't think anyone would mind, and within the next year I'd certainly consider advertising.
I think what folks don't appreciate is seeing an ad for the next Madlib on the same page as the start of a Miles Davis article, or something like that - even if there's nothing morally wrong with it, we're just not used to seeing older artists who are out of the spotlight in a commercial context. A great deal of Wax Poetics success initially is the respect they paid to great musicians and I hope they maintain that primary focus.
Also, I imagine that one of the biggest struggles for WaxPo has been that when they founded the magazine, there was a lot more money in the music industry, especially with hip-hop artists still hanging in there, new brands starting up, etc. I imagine part of the reason they have turned to more conventional advertisers isn't solely that they may pay better, but that there simply aren't enough more fitting ads to fill up the allocated ad space at the price said space deserves to command.
"This magazine isn't living up to my standards. Oh noes! Puma is on the covers to the WaxPo compendiums! My moral universe is imploding!"
Pfft. Some folks ostensibly live in this perfect vacuum where other people's Purity is their end, and not Content and what it takes to get it onto the physical paper in their hand. I only have a problem when the topics are uninteresting to me, I can't read the text (the Ford ad comes close, and could have been better-executed stylistically), or when some Benzino-fix is in (the Egon article was closest to that, but those letters were big and red and on the wall). That's it. The moral crusade of AdBusters is and has always been juvenile, but you can live in that rent-controlled loft if you want to.
Cook's Illustrated is nice, but it's also been around for almost 20 years and has a circulation of 1 million. Not in the same ballpark. By comparison, WaxPo has a much more limited readership (sub-80,000) and a relatively static historical era to draw from, and thus must pull strings. DEAL.
I'd posit that end-users in 2010 are so used to free content online that less and less of those folks actually care to appreciate what it costs to keep a print business afloat today. I'd appreciate of some of the WaxPo cognoscenti would add their perspectives here, to give this thread balance.
I'd posit that end-users in 2010 are so used to free content online that less and less of those folks actually care to appreciate what it costs to keep a print business afloat today.
For the most part, yeah.
In this case, the depth of the articles and the almost book-like quality of the magazine makes me hold it to a higher standard. Folks who buy it pour over every article and put it on a shelf to keep for a long time.
I would periodically subscribe to Rolling Stone magazine because it was so cheap (something like $12 for 26 issues). And I would seriously grab it out of the mailbox, read it on the toilet and then toss it in the recycle bin. It wasn't that I needed some Metamucil -- it was that you could read it that fast and the quality was such that I never wanted to read it again or throw it on a coffee table for someone else to page through (perhaps the magazine would have needed to be "flagged" in that case).
Point being: that magazine was garbage and was disregarded as such. WaxPo is different and people are critical because it's something they feel they have a stake in supporting.
I'd appreciate of some of the WaxPo cognoscenti would add their perspectives here, to give this thread balance.
~3800 page views... WaxPo staff lurk and sometimes post on this site.
Considering the harsh nature of the comments from the very owner of this site among others, I'm not surprised that they've steered clear.
raj is on point
i reached the same tipping point with that john klemmer article
shit was like 8 pages long
ftw?
yes it's the only thing "we" got
kinda like barack
it ain't perfect,it works , but it's boring/stiff and now funded by babylon
This is an important point. I think about magazines like Artforum or Maximumrocknroll or (after a while) Wax Poetics, and think that ads can, in some cases, legitimately be considered as content. The ads in Wax Poetics don't bother me at all. Or at least they bother me far less than things like the fact that the defaced Bob Power article in question was bland and uninformative.
And on the one hand I'm surprised that more folks aren't horning about those kinds of issues (you know, the writing and stuff) but on the other hand--as has been pointed out--Wax Poetics really is the only one covering a lot of this material, they've done great service to a starved readership, and they've subsequently (and deservedly, I think) been cut a good amount of slack on the strength of what I call The Oh Shit! Factor:
"Oh shit--it's an article on Melvin Bliss!"
"Oh yeah? How is it?"
"Fuck you mean, 'how is it'?!...Melvin Bliss, son! A whole article...with pictures! Oh shit!"
I mean, I'm a pretty close reader, and as nitpicky as the next two people you know, and even so, I can't front: I still get mildly geeked seeing obscure shit that I love being highlighted in a physical chunk of print that I can buy down at the Borders, and I still give Wax Poetics my share of Oh Shit! points, turning a merciful eye where I wouldn't otherwise, just on the strength.
That said, I feel like Wax Poetics relies pretty heavily on the Oh Shit! Factor, considerably more than it ought to so many years in. It's been, what, like ten years or something? The fact that their house defense against editorial shortcomings is still mostly "Hey, who else is printing this kind of stuff? A'ight then." is disappointing. I feel like they've underestimated the value of the goodwill that their emergence generated among their constituency, while at the same time overestimating the amount. The sheer desperation of record nerds to see their loves reflected back to them is considerable, and it is mostly blind, but it's not infinite, and it's not totally blind, and while the magazine's defenders might be able to write it off on some "Haters gonna hate," as long as Wax Poetics continues to give quarter to the open insult that is the repackaged press release, the grad-school thesis, the book excerpt as cover story, the money-smudged multi-page pieces on Bob Power (Oh shit, son--Bob Power!), the content obviously gifted to some advertiser, the creaky refugee from another magazine's pass-pile, et al., then I think that goodwill is gonna continue to depreciate, and discussions of Wax Poetics are gonna continue to have the same faint undertone of disappointment that's running through our discussion here.
I've paid retail for every single issue from the very first one, and I'm for the most part really grateful that Wax Poetics exists for me to take this kind of umbrage with. That said, I'd be interested to know where they think they're headed as a magazine.
Can you please investigate how Tape Op makes an excellent, highl specialized esoteric magazine FREE to anyone who wants to subscribe? That's a great model and I ride for that and they have, as far as I an tell, waaaay less corporate advertising.
As far as content goes, Josh Dunn is a genius, And his layouts and photo work have saved many an issue IMO.
Considering the harsh nature of the comments from the very owner of this site among others, I'm not surprised that they've steered clear.
I wouldn't expect them to stoop down to this level and defend themselves on an Internet message board. I am not an ambassador to any sort of "scene" so I'm not afraid to express how I feel or hide behind an alias.
I can say I'm a bit biased on my sentiments because years a go they X'd out my site name in their "groundbreaking" cover story on Mingering Mike.
STILL, I subscribed to their magazine, but lost interest. I don't care for much of their content any more. I don't care about Bob James' sentiments on sampling... nor do I care about Weather Report's keyboard player.
It is what it is.
Godspeed to Wax Poetics and their quest to build an empire off Timmy Digalots.
Can you please investigate how Tape Op makes an excellent, highl specialized esoteric magazine FREE to anyone who wants to subscribe? That's a great model and I ride for that and they have, as far as I an tell, waaaay less corporate advertising.
Doesn't explain all the numbers behind it, but from their site:
Who works for Tape Op?
Be aware that Tape Op is nobody's full time job. All of us own or work at recording studios, except for Laura whose husband has a nice home studio!
I'd honestly be very interested to hear from WaxPoetics how much they would have to raise subscription rates were they to do away with advertising completely - if one were to factor out the administrative overhead of dealing with ad content and accounts, plus the extra pages printed, somehow I don't think it would be an unreasonable amount, and as someone who let my subscription lapse (I buy individual issues if there's something interesting), it would certainly get me back in the door and subscribing again.
There's real value in at least striving to create a sustainable business that is ad-free (and also free of conflict of interest pieces, which IMO is the greater issue at hand), and people are increasingly willing to pay for ad-free content - I think Wax Poetics has a great chance to ride the wave and foster that backlash against an ad-based model, or to at least to adopt a more creative, non-conventional ad model, because in a few years taking out giant print ads will be a thing of the past for most ad agencies who know their sh*t.
They might not be able to make anywhere near enough without advertising because they may be fudging their circ/readership figures in order to get those ad dollars.
Often mags exaggerate their readership figures so that big companies with big budgets (car companies, etc.) will think it's worthwhile splashing out a few grand for an ad in the magazine.
So you can have pretty poor circulation, no one really buying your shit, but still be afloat by convincing advertisers that you are reaching a bunch of people. If you tried making money off just readers buying the mag, then it probably wouldn't work.
Case in point with figures - I remember seeing that somewhere near its peak XXL were saying in their ad guide that their readership was 1.5 million.
On closer inspection that figure was created by taking their circulation, which was a nice round, exact 300,000 (so probably rounded up from something) and multiplying it by their pass along rate, which was 5.
I.e. 5 people read every copy put out, so 300,000 x 5 = 1,500,000 readership.
And that pass along figure is from those questionnaires they sometimes have where it's like, "how many mofos in your household?" and you say, ok, well me, my mom, dad, gran, sister, uncle Henry, and that vagrant that we let stay in the attic, that's 7 people... and they use that as a number for how many people read 1 copy.
But of course with one magazine, I barely read all of it, let alone any other person in the house and only like 1 in 15 ads actually catches my eye, so they should be dividing the circulation by 2 or more, rather than multiplying by anything.
Comments
And are they still publishing that "Cook's Country" joint? That was as offensive as it was terrible.
Bottom line is that WaxPoetics has a tough job, and they are realistically pretty limited in terms of how far they can possibly expand their subscriber-base. Their efforts to grow have really pushed them beyond their original "record nerd" appeal, and they have stumbled at points along the way. There have been issues and articles that I haven't been into, or where there's been conflict of interest issues, no doubt.
But look - this is the ONLY magazine that has, or realistically ever will, attempted to go deep into some of the subjects and artists that we love. Almost all of us know at least one person if not a dozen or two who have worked with or written for the magazine in the past. So critique the hell out of it, because that's what we're good at on the Strut, but at the end of the day these guys are putting in work and running a business isn't easy - nor is catering to some really picky MFers like a SoulStrut audience.
Just having a music magazine that actually writes about (mostly quality) music in 2010 is unique, in and of itself. Of course, this doesn't mean we should lower our standards or expectations, but holding Wax Poetics to some unreasonable standard while letting everyone else slide makes little sense either.
I'd honestly be very interested to hear from WaxPoetics how much they would have to raise subscription rates were they to do away with advertising completely - if one were to factor out the administrative overhead of dealing with ad content and accounts, plus the extra pages printed, somehow I don't think it would be an unreasonable amount, and as someone who let my subscription lapse (I buy individual issues if there's something interesting), it would certainly get me back in the door and subscribing again.
There's real value in at least striving to create a sustainable business that is ad-free (and also free of conflict of interest pieces, which IMO is the greater issue at hand), and people are increasingly willing to pay for ad-free content - I think Wax Poetics has a great chance to ride the wave and foster that backlash against an ad-based model, or to at least to adopt a more creative, non-conventional ad model, because in a few years taking out giant print ads will be a thing of the past for most ad agencies who know their sh*t.
Nice take on the subject.
I would mention, though, that sometimes ads in a magazine like this are a positive thing. When I bought various music mags as a teen and beyond in the 70's - 80's I read the ads as closely as the articles. They told me what was available and also hipped me to as much new music as the articles. Of course the Ford ad doesn't apply, but ads in a specialty mag can be a positive.
Full disclosure: I advertise in WaxPo and like to feel like my ads don't take away from the mag as a whole.
Do I like everything they've done? No.
I don't like everything anybody has done, including myself.
That's the way it goes...
Right - which is why I think they have an incredible opportunity to create useful advertising - why not just have, as many magazines have done in the past, a section just for record stores who sell vinyl to advertise in, kind of as a directory? Or a page just for new reissues coming out? There is always so much being released, and no one source to turn to to stay tuned in, that for me, it'd be a real service to simply get a list of all the new music projects or record stores who were seeking to appeal to the Wax Poetics readership. The WaxPo brand is really, really strong and they could leverage this in some very creative ways.
It would be explicit that the ads were paid for, but I don't think anyone would mind, and within the next year I'd certainly consider advertising.
I think what folks don't appreciate is seeing an ad for the next Madlib on the same page as the start of a Miles Davis article, or something like that - even if there's nothing morally wrong with it, we're just not used to seeing older artists who are out of the spotlight in a commercial context. A great deal of Wax Poetics success initially is the respect they paid to great musicians and I hope they maintain that primary focus.
Also, I imagine that one of the biggest struggles for WaxPo has been that when they founded the magazine, there was a lot more money in the music industry, especially with hip-hop artists still hanging in there, new brands starting up, etc. I imagine part of the reason they have turned to more conventional advertisers isn't solely that they may pay better, but that there simply aren't enough more fitting ads to fill up the allocated ad space at the price said space deserves to command.
Pfft. Some folks ostensibly live in this perfect vacuum where other people's Purity is their end, and not Content and what it takes to get it onto the physical paper in their hand. I only have a problem when the topics are uninteresting to me, I can't read the text (the Ford ad comes close, and could have been better-executed stylistically), or when some Benzino-fix is in (the Egon article was closest to that, but those letters were big and red and on the wall). That's it. The moral crusade of AdBusters is and has always been juvenile, but you can live in that rent-controlled loft if you want to.
Cook's Illustrated is nice, but it's also been around for almost 20 years and has a circulation of 1 million. Not in the same ballpark. By comparison, WaxPo has a much more limited readership (sub-80,000) and a relatively static historical era to draw from, and thus must pull strings. DEAL.
I'd posit that end-users in 2010 are so used to free content online that less and less of those folks actually care to appreciate what it costs to keep a print business afloat today. I'd appreciate of some of the WaxPo cognoscenti would add their perspectives here, to give this thread balance.
~3800 page views... WaxPo staff lurk and sometimes post on this site.
Considering the harsh nature of the comments from the very owner of this site among others, I'm not surprised that they've steered clear.
For the most part, yeah.
In this case, the depth of the articles and the almost book-like quality of the magazine makes me hold it to a higher standard. Folks who buy it pour over every article and put it on a shelf to keep for a long time.
I would periodically subscribe to Rolling Stone magazine because it was so cheap (something like $12 for 26 issues). And I would seriously grab it out of the mailbox, read it on the toilet and then toss it in the recycle bin. It wasn't that I needed some Metamucil -- it was that you could read it that fast and the quality was such that I never wanted to read it again or throw it on a coffee table for someone else to page through (perhaps the magazine would have needed to be "flagged" in that case).
Point being: that magazine was garbage and was disregarded as such. WaxPo is different and people are critical because it's something they feel they have a stake in supporting.
raj is on point
i reached the same tipping point with that john klemmer article
shit was like 8 pages long
ftw?
yes it's the only thing "we" got
kinda like barack
it ain't perfect,it works , but it's boring/stiff and now funded by babylon
This is an important point. I think about magazines like Artforum or Maximumrocknroll or (after a while) Wax Poetics, and think that ads can, in some cases, legitimately be considered as content. The ads in Wax Poetics don't bother me at all. Or at least they bother me far less than things like the fact that the defaced Bob Power article in question was bland and uninformative.
And on the one hand I'm surprised that more folks aren't horning about those kinds of issues (you know, the writing and stuff) but on the other hand--as has been pointed out--Wax Poetics really is the only one covering a lot of this material, they've done great service to a starved readership, and they've subsequently (and deservedly, I think) been cut a good amount of slack on the strength of what I call The Oh Shit! Factor:
"Oh shit--it's an article on Melvin Bliss!"
"Oh yeah? How is it?"
"Fuck you mean, 'how is it'?!...Melvin Bliss, son! A whole article...with pictures! Oh shit!"
I mean, I'm a pretty close reader, and as nitpicky as the next two people you know, and even so, I can't front: I still get mildly geeked seeing obscure shit that I love being highlighted in a physical chunk of print that I can buy down at the Borders, and I still give Wax Poetics my share of Oh Shit! points, turning a merciful eye where I wouldn't otherwise, just on the strength.
That said, I feel like Wax Poetics relies pretty heavily on the Oh Shit! Factor, considerably more than it ought to so many years in. It's been, what, like ten years or something? The fact that their house defense against editorial shortcomings is still mostly "Hey, who else is printing this kind of stuff? A'ight then." is disappointing. I feel like they've underestimated the value of the goodwill that their emergence generated among their constituency, while at the same time overestimating the amount. The sheer desperation of record nerds to see their loves reflected back to them is considerable, and it is mostly blind, but it's not infinite, and it's not totally blind, and while the magazine's defenders might be able to write it off on some "Haters gonna hate," as long as Wax Poetics continues to give quarter to the open insult that is the repackaged press release, the grad-school thesis, the book excerpt as cover story, the money-smudged multi-page pieces on Bob Power (Oh shit, son--Bob Power!), the content obviously gifted to some advertiser, the creaky refugee from another magazine's pass-pile, et al., then I think that goodwill is gonna continue to depreciate, and discussions of Wax Poetics are gonna continue to have the same faint undertone of disappointment that's running through our discussion here.
I've paid retail for every single issue from the very first one, and I'm for the most part really grateful that Wax Poetics exists for me to take this kind of umbrage with. That said, I'd be interested to know where they think they're headed as a magazine.
Can you please investigate how Tape Op makes an excellent, highl specialized esoteric magazine FREE to anyone who wants to subscribe? That's a great model and I ride for that and they have, as far as I an tell, waaaay less corporate advertising.
As far as content goes, Josh Dunn is a genius, And his layouts and photo work have saved many an issue IMO.
I wouldn't expect them to stoop down to this level and defend themselves on an Internet message board. I am not an ambassador to any sort of "scene" so I'm not afraid to express how I feel or hide behind an alias.
I can say I'm a bit biased on my sentiments because years a go they X'd out my site name in their "groundbreaking" cover story on Mingering Mike.
STILL, I subscribed to their magazine, but lost interest. I don't care for much of their content any more. I don't care about Bob James' sentiments on sampling... nor do I care about Weather Report's keyboard player.
It is what it is.
Godspeed to Wax Poetics and their quest to build an empire off Timmy Digalots.
Doesn't explain all the numbers behind it, but from their site:
They might not be able to make anywhere near enough without advertising because they may be fudging their circ/readership figures in order to get those ad dollars.
Often mags exaggerate their readership figures so that big companies with big budgets (car companies, etc.) will think it's worthwhile splashing out a few grand for an ad in the magazine.
So you can have pretty poor circulation, no one really buying your shit, but still be afloat by convincing advertisers that you are reaching a bunch of people. If you tried making money off just readers buying the mag, then it probably wouldn't work.
Case in point with figures - I remember seeing that somewhere near its peak XXL were saying in their ad guide that their readership was 1.5 million.
On closer inspection that figure was created by taking their circulation, which was a nice round, exact 300,000 (so probably rounded up from something) and multiplying it by their pass along rate, which was 5.
I.e. 5 people read every copy put out, so 300,000 x 5 = 1,500,000 readership.
And that pass along figure is from those questionnaires they sometimes have where it's like, "how many mofos in your household?" and you say, ok, well me, my mom, dad, gran, sister, uncle Henry, and that vagrant that we let stay in the attic, that's 7 people... and they use that as a number for how many people read 1 copy.
But of course with one magazine, I barely read all of it, let alone any other person in the house and only like 1 in 15 ads actually catches my eye, so they should be dividing the circulation by 2 or more, rather than multiplying by anything.
b/w
We need a "oh shit, son!" graemlin.
that said, i have no problem w the ford ad, its the placement that is garish.