Stylus RIP

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

http://stylusmagazine.com/ - Stylus Zine is ending after 5 years. I'll miss its Singles Jukebox feature, which I also wrote for (too) occasionally. Did anyone read it?

Comments

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

Not me. I read Singles Jukebox for quite a while, but any time I looked at the rest of the site it seemed to be written by and for total mooks. There is an ILM thread of people throwing up their hands in horror at its disappearance, which makes me feel even more cut off from the ways of the modern world!! Also old, because it hardly feels like yesterday that it started. I associate it with aggressively amateur / deliberately fannish writing, which right now seems to be the curse of the interweb.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I never had the patience for its longform articles - I felt bad about this since "moar longform thinkpiece criticism" used to be one of my NYLPM rallying cries. In fact I think Stylus was probably as "popist" a zine as we're likely to get online so I feel a bit bad that I'm not mourning it more.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Not unless someone linked to it - even then I'd generally only read the singles reviews by people I knew (my tolerance for reviews by strangers being v low).

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

I had the jukebox bookmarked. Clicked on it when I remembered to or when prompted. Otherwise, no.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I read the singles jukebox but even there I only ever wanted to read about half the contributors. Was more likely to click on main site than p-4rk which is to say, not that often (blah blah indie rock front and centre blah).

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

I really enjoyed writing for the Jukebox when I did but it ended up becoming a bit of a chore in the end. Skillextric did great work running that tho.

[nicolars.livejournal.com]

For all of the talk about it on ilx I don't think I ever read anything from it, iirc.

[cis.livejournal.com]

I read it sometimes - it had too many lists for my liking, and there was this odd period where they had some female writer whose entire point seemed to be 'i am a girl and i like music that boys like isn't that so weirdddddd', but every so often you'd get some really interesting stuff in there - like Southall's stuff on sound, and Swygart's chart rundowns and pop articles (the 'something changed' bit in his 'top ten no.10 singles' article is one of my favourite pieces of writing, i think? it's certainly something that really affected me.), and maybe even some of the American writers on whatever it was they were into (i seem to remember todd burns writing something really interesting on the stypod once? and Ian Mathers on, like, totally twee indie or sth, a style that fit the records perfectly while not making me want to buy them at all). It had some surprisingly good dance reviews! But I could never work out who the readership were who didn't occasionally write for it -- I suppose if they'd commented more we'd know about them, but whenever they did, on the jukebox at least, they were so annoying.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

if Will reads this he should consider this official encouragement to carry on jukeboxing elsewhere...

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

seconded.

What else do people read?

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

Don't mean to make this sound like a rave, but it is (was) really the only music writing I regularly read, although quality varied widely. Somehow I've found pitchfork unbearable to read for a while, and I don't fancy having to go back to it.

Re: What else do people read?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I read Pitchfork more since I started writing for them, but mostly because I want to make sure stuff I'm talking about hasn't just come up in some prominent other article (though Mark Richardson's column and some of the reviewers, like Nitsuh and Stevie, are excellent). They're a lot better than they used to be, I think, but also maybe less colourful and more earnest.

I am only just starting to read ANY online music writing again though.

Re: What else do people read?

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I've basically quit reading "music journalism" - I find more of interest and insight in Kat/Tom/Frank's tossed-off comments on the new entries each week. There are various people whose every word I would read - occasionally this coincides with "music journalism" but not often.

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

I was always kind of glad it was there and I wrote for it on occasions, but it always struck me as falling between two stools (Pitchfork-lite or irreverent pop-friendly webzine).

Also I got the feeling that the only people who read it were ILMers or other music writers. Was that an unfair assumption?

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I read it just like I read PFork and bunch of other blogs/webzines, i.e. to get sense of 'avg critical response' to releases I had preexisting interest in. Also, when Cis was in the jukebox. *g*

[umlauts.livejournal.com]

I read it pretty frequently. Any piece by Dom, Nick, Ian, Swygart and a few others I would almost always enjoy. Most of my stuff on there doesn't read too well in hindsight, though I used to send out the URL of the Eurovision entry to friends with pride. Yeah, that's how I feel about the place: proud to have been part of it, though I know I never lived up to what Todd expected from me with regards to quality or quantity.

I am sure that WBS's attempts to talk about chart pop are one of the leading influences on it being covered more meaningfully in places like Pitchfork, so through him and a few others, what Stylus tried to do and ultimately couldn't, will end up being done in some larger outlets.

The Singles jukebox was an excellent feature, I think I kind of preferred it in a weekly dose than a blog format but I think I'm the minority there. Wish I'd written more for it.