So it seems State magazine have decided to change track a little bit and become a freesheet. From a start which promised much, it seems a firm enough stranglehold was not gained on the music mag market in Ireland and so the ever more conceited rag that is Hotpress reigns supreme for now.
Unfortunately I have not yet had the privilege of reading a copy of State, the cost of a subscription to New Zealand was just too much for me at present, so my experience of the ‘new music payload’ has until now been restricted to their online incarnation. While the journalism and quality of articles have always been great, I could never get used to the site layout itself. It just didn’t make happy viewing for me. Was the print version the same?
Photo owned by viZZZual.com (cc)
Anyway, State have had their critics recently. Their decision to put Abba on the cover stunk of Hotpiss at it’s worst, and it seemed to some they had abandoned the brief of new Irish focused music journalism and gone for a cover that would simply sell copies. Worth a try, maybe, but it obvously didn’t do the trick.
Yesterdays ‘press release‘ hasn’t done them any favours either. It’s claim that it will ‘become the first Quality National Music Monthly available completely free’ (yes, they used the capitals) attracted the ire of Analogue and I’m sure other publications like Connected and Mongrel will also very rightly feel aggrieved that the press release seems to infer that they, while being free and national, are not ‘quality’. A posting by Phil Udell on the newly revamped State website seems to at least attempt to appease this, Udell writes ‘of course we’re not the first to take this approach (props to our colleagues at Mongrel, Analogue and Connected)’. And speaking of the site revamp, it now looks a lot more pleasing, at least to my eyes.
Lets hope that State can keep up the same level of articles and music journalism (maybe with less of the Abba), and, in Udell’s words, moves onward and upward. I look forward to reading, and maybe they could stick up some PDFs of back issues too.
Incidentally, here in New Zealand, I have the choice of two music magazines. Rip It Up, published every two months, and Real Groovy, published monthly. Both retail at just under $8 (around €4) and are of fantastic quality. Big, solid, colourful and very well designed an written. I don’t see any reason why a publisher in a country like Ireland which would seem to have a richer and more diverse musical culture (not knocking NZ’s, which is pretty decent) can not do the same.
