Your Take: Where Do You Get Your Country Music News?
The reporters and editors who craft headline banners atop newspapers and magazines across the country have been making the front pages themselves over the last few months–and between layoffs, furloughs and shut-downs at newspapers, magazines and television stations across the country, these aren’t fluffy, feel-good feature stories.
It’s no surprise, then, country music news outlets have also suffered from slower ad revenues, awkward print to Web transitions and the changing ways people are looking for their news.
The latest casualty is Country Standard Time, a Boston-based magazine owned by Jeffrey B. Remz. Yesterday, it announced it would cease the publication of its magazine and publish only on the Internet, citing a lack of advertising for the free magazine and, according to Remz, being “in two bad businesses – music and magazines.”
Back in mid-February, we reported Americana/Alt-country magazine No Depression was stopping publication after its May-June issue. Owners Grant Alden, Peter Blackstock and Kyla Fairchild described some of the catalysts for their departure from the country music news scene in a statement:
That community is, as they say, in transition. In this evolving downloadable world, what a record label is and does is all up to question. What is irrefutable is that their advertising budgets are drastically reduced, for reasons we well understand. It seems clear at this point that whatever businesses evolve to replace (or transform) record labels will have much less need to advertise in print.
The decline of brick and mortar music retail means we have fewer newsstands on which to sell our magazine, and small labels have fewer venues that might embrace and hand-sell their music. Ditto for independent bookstores. Paper manufacturers have consolidated and begun closing mills to cut production; we’ve been told to expect three price increases in 2008. Last year there was a shift in postal regulations, written by and for big publishers, which shifted costs down to smaller publishers whose economies of scale are unable to take advantage of advanced sorting techniques.
Then there’s the economy…
During this latest (and perhaps most drastic to date) shift in media power and influence, how do you get your country music news? Through television channels like CMT and GAC, local radio stations, blogs and Web sites, or traditional print coverage?
What hit do you think the country music industry and fans will take with the demise of publications like No Depression and Country Standard Time, and what holes do you think their absence will leave on the country music landscape?
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March 28, 2009 at 8:27 am Permalink
I never saw a print issue of Country Standard Time – too bad as I like the website
I check the 9513 first for news ,then the CMT and GAC websites, then the Nashville Tennessean website, then miscellaneous other websites
March 28, 2009 at 8:37 am Permalink
Frankly, I used to go to CMT and GAC for news, but now I just come here for Brody’s round ups. It’s the fastest way to get the important stuff. I look at other places, but the round up is a sure bet every day. Since CU doesn
March 28, 2009 at 8:49 am Permalink
Anything I need to know, I can find out right here at The 9513.
March 28, 2009 at 8:59 am Permalink
I was going to say that since CU doesn’t focus on country music news, I don’t research it as religiously I probably should.
March 28, 2009 at 9:52 am Permalink
I didn’t know Country Standard Time had a magazine. So I guess I won’t miss it much.
I used to get all my country music news from Country Weekly, until about two years ago. That’s when I started visiting the CMT News site and the CMT Blog. Those eventually lead me here and to sites like the gg column – where nearly every country-related headline is condensed rather cleverly. And of course the News Round-ups here at The 9513 are great tools too.
So I think we’ll see the shift from print to online be fairly seamless – with only a few casualties along the way.
March 28, 2009 at 10:06 am Permalink
For years I used to get my country music news (aside from the radio) from Country Music magazine. They used to do in-depth interviews with country music stars, not just the typical one or two pages most publications do. And like The 9513, they weren’t afraid to publish honest album reviews. Sadly, they went out of business about 10 (?) years ago, and those of us with time remaining on our subscriptions were given subscriptions to Country Weekly instead.
March 28, 2009 at 10:07 am Permalink
Here and to a lesser extent CMT.com
I generally find out release dates and upcoming single releases from places like the Pulse Music Board.
March 28, 2009 at 10:28 am Permalink
I come here for my news =)
Sometimes I go to the CMT website too
March 28, 2009 at 11:27 am Permalink
I wonder what would happened in the9513 if Carrie wins the ACM Entertainer of the year.
Hmmm… let me guess
1. Jim Malec would cry for a week
2. Brady would eat everything until she gain 50 pounds
3. the rest will cursed carrie for a year
That’s my guess
tell me yours
March 28, 2009 at 11:59 am Permalink
I remember Country Music magazine – and Country America too. They both ceased to exist around the same time it seemed.
March 28, 2009 at 12:11 pm Permalink
1. 9513
2. CMT Website
3. Radio & Records website
4. CMT or GAC TV
5. allaboutcountry.com (for new sound clips most)
6. acctop40.com
7. songwriter101.com
Can’t remember the last time I saw anything in hard copy format.
March 28, 2009 at 12:26 pm Permalink
Brody’s roundups are my only daily source of country news. I check other sources (blogs, CMT, Google News) once or twice a week. Trying to do news in print is a losing battle at this point, as the information is already widely available by the time you publish.
March 28, 2009 at 1:12 pm Permalink
Other than reading the occasional roundup here, I don’t bother at all with Country Music news. Entertainment and news aren’t two things that I generally blend. ;)
March 28, 2009 at 1:26 pm Permalink
To be fair its not just a music. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer went on line only this month as well.
March 28, 2009 at 2:56 pm Permalink
Stormy,
The Rocky Mountain News ceased publication altogether. So the print world is dying, what with ‘free’ blogs/papers out there.
March 28, 2009 at 3:02 pm Permalink
I wonder what would happened in the9513 if Carrie wins the ACM Entertainer of the year.
Hmmm… let me guess
1. Jim Malec would cry for a week
2. Brady would eat everything until she gain 50 pounds
3. the rest will cursed carrie for a year
That’s my guess
tell me yours
Wow! Let’s hope it doesn’t happen, then. I’d hate to see Brady gain 50 pounds AND change genders!
March 28, 2009 at 4:23 pm Permalink
Brady would make a cute girl. Especially if he gained that weight in the right places. :)
March 28, 2009 at 6:27 pm Permalink
I come on here first then roll over to Nashville Gab and then get some news from the Tennessean. I use Twitter/Myspace for some of my favorite artists. I like the fact that 9513 has everything in one spot. I still get Country Weekly from time to time depending on who is in there but most of the time when it gets in there its old news by now. That’s the problem with magazines with their news updates…give me more interesting articles on a variety of country artists rather than news updates that I read over a week or two ago!
March 28, 2009 at 6:30 pm Permalink
To: Jennystonedeaf…if we take the last 3 letters off your name there, I bet we have a good idea of how you were feeling when you wrote that comment a million times…do you have enough munchies?
March 28, 2009 at 6:31 pm Permalink
1.) The 9513, 2.) CMT.com blog and news section, 3.) Country Standard Time – They don’t add a whole lot of news each day, but what they do add is usually of interest to me, 4.) AllAboutCountry.com – To read country music news from the perspective of radio people. This is enough to keep me as informed as I care to be.
I was a “Country Weekly” subscriber but don’t buy it now at the newstand as its not worth the cover price to me. It figures they’d do an Amy Dalley feature right after all the subscriptions were cancelled…
I don’t listen to country radio any longer, don’t watch CMT at all, nor watch much GAC because of the excessive commercial breaks. I pretty much get all my notice about what’s happening in country music from the online sources mentioned above. I check the charts to see the names of new artists and try to hear what they sound like online. My favorite chart was the R&R Country Singles Chart which hasn’t been updated since 2/27/09, so it looks like that one is on its deathbed. I’ll miss that one…
March 28, 2009 at 7:29 pm Permalink
Rick, that chart is still available. they just moved it around:
http://www.radioandrecords.com/RRWebSite20/Members/Charts.aspx?ChartId=4
March 28, 2009 at 8:00 pm Permalink
I get it all right here, baby.
March 28, 2009 at 10:05 pm Permalink
“Trying to do news in print is a losing battle at this point, as the information is already widely available by the time you publish.”
I wish you weren’t so very, very correct. There are still a lot of folks out there who don’t even have internet access, if you can imagine such a thing, so there will still be a reason to do it for a while. But only for a while, I’m afraid.
March 28, 2009 at 11:06 pm Permalink
I get the biggest bit of my country music news from here and cmt.com. Whenever I want a laugh, I get some fake news from Countrycalifornia.com.
The only hard publications I purchase anymore is American Songwriter and Country Weekly. I almost always enjoy most of American Songwriter, and buy Country Weekly mainly out of nostalgia. It truly is sad to me that print is going out. The same reason I prefer to buy cds, as well as purchase books rather than, say, check them out at the library, is because I enjoy being able to hold a tangible product is my hand. I like to be able to look at the shelf and look it over and go back to it and live with it some.
March 29, 2009 at 10:24 am Permalink
The only hard copy of anything I buy anymore is Bust, which is not specifically a country music mag, but covers a lot of the country music I like.
March 29, 2009 at 11:47 am Permalink
I follow with the masses of the above comments: I used to go to CMT and other misc country blogs, but I mainly come here since it’s condensed, to the point, and very newsworthy of my needs. Plus I can filter what I like on the weekly news basis better than any other websites. I occasionally will go to CMT to watch acoustic version videos they post, but otherwise, I lost touch with CMT.
March 29, 2009 at 3:29 pm Permalink
Being a journalism major, this whole topic is very disturbing.
It’s not like there is a shortage of news readers in general (or less of a need for journalists). Actually, there’s been a huge increase in readers. Unfortunately, the increase is all online and the print industry hasn’t found a way to make money off of that. Couple that with a recession and this is what ya get.
It’s especially difficult to make people pay for information that they’ve always been able to get for free. The answer is something that no one has…
March 29, 2009 at 4:24 pm Permalink
Yes, sorry to discourage you Pierce, but I tend to get all of my music related news online. Echoing Josh, I like the9513.com because it condenses the news from multiple websites. I also check out CMT and Billboard.
March 29, 2009 at 7:53 pm Permalink
Pierce: Also, in a move that will hurt both you and us, budgets for investigative journalism have been slashed to the bone.
March 30, 2009 at 12:42 am Permalink
Stormy, don’t be so pessimistic! I’m sure King Obama’s “enabling legislation”, er I mean his “stimulus package” will include funding for journalists to dig up dirt on anyone who opposes his socialist agenda! It does seem strange that their paychecks will be issued by Pravda…..
PS – I heard today leftist human rights organizations are petitioning courts in Spain to bring war crimes charges against a bunch of Bush Administration officials for “torture” committed at Guantanamo! See, you just need to listen to NPR to find out where the “investigative journalist” action is…..
March 30, 2009 at 9:49 am Permalink
Rick: But Fox News doesn’t do investigative jouralism–they just make crap up.
NPR is a good source of in deapth news, but even they have cut their staff.
March 30, 2009 at 9:51 am Permalink
And, if you want to feel better about Socialist Agendas, I did not vote for Obama. I voted for Cynthia McKinney.
March 30, 2009 at 10:26 am Permalink
But Fox News doesn’t do investigative jouralism–they just make crap up.
No, that would be CBS and The New York Times .
March 30, 2009 at 10:39 am Permalink
CBS when?
March 30, 2009 at 10:53 am Permalink
“I’m sure King Obama’s “enabling legislation”, er I mean his “stimulus package” will include funding for journalists to dig up dirt on anyone who opposes his socialist agenda! It does seem strange that their paychecks will be issued by Pravda…..”
And what does this have to do with country music??
All this shows is that you’re a brain-dead ‘dittohead’.
March 30, 2009 at 12:14 pm Permalink
CBS when?
When they ran a fake story about George W. Bush’s National Guard service, which is why Dan Rather no longer works there.
March 30, 2009 at 2:22 pm Permalink
“When they ran a fake story about George W. Bush’s National Guard service, which is why Dan Rather no longer works there.”
Well, I come here to get away from politics! Isn’t there a general discussion forum where you guys can swap rhetoric & talking points ad nauseum?
March 30, 2009 at 3:20 pm Permalink
Funny how people love to bring up that CBS/Rather story…how come no-one ever comments on the many fake news stories Fox News runs?
March 30, 2009 at 3:36 pm Permalink
It is amazing that one journalist got a network to make one mistake and it’s held to a ’standard’ as to the network’s ‘fake news’ stories. oh well. Let’s get back to the music.
March 31, 2009 at 12:14 am Permalink
This was published a few days ago on AdvertisingAge and pertains pretty well to a lot of the discussion here: Future May Be Brighter, But It’s Apocalypse Now
@jennystonedeaf: I wonder what would happened in the9513 if Carrie wins the ACM Entertainer of the year[...]
2. Brady would eat everything until she gain 50 pounds
I’d prefer to become depressed, quit eating, and lose 50 pounds. It is nice to see a woman break through and get nominated, but she’s not deserving of the award yet.
April 1, 2009 at 5:06 pm Permalink
I go to GAC, then here, then just the news at CMT. I also go to other country sites. I watch GAC but not CMT unless they actually have sometime on there to do with country artists and music.
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