Rolling Stone Magazine up for sale
Rolling Stone Magazine is synonymous with Rock n Roll glory, and has been so for the past 49 years.
They have covered the who’s who in music and have been on the forefront of popular culture.
To be featured in Rolling Stone would be any artists dream, and their journalism is revered in the music industry.
But times are a changin’ and this Rolling Stone has gathered moss.
In the ‘Insta-everything’ times of today, people don’t have time to read through lengthy articles. With everything digitalized, the age-old testament of ‘reading a zine’ has gone out the window.
Bloomberg Business Week stated that Rolling Stone has suffered a 9.3% drop in newsstand sales.
What’s worse is that even traffic to Rollingstone.com has decreased by 28%.
These two deflations result in loss of advertisement.
A stone’s throw away
After having sold 49% of the magazine’s shares to a music technology company based in Singapore, BandLab Technologies, founder Jann Wenner is ready to sell the remaining 51% to the highest bidder.
Wenner told The New York Times, “I love my job, I enjoyed it for a long time” but that letting go was “just the smart thing to do.”
Their stance is that they can’t accomplish the level of ambition they would like to, without help.
Instead of letting the moss take over, the Stone needs to adapt to the current surroundings and trends in publication.
There is no doubt that music journalism isn’t what it used to be, but there is no point in living in the past, as glorious as it may be.
In a statement sharing his heartache of the news, long time contributor and veteran music critic Anthony DeCurtis said, “That sense of the magazine editor’s hands on the magazine — that’s what’s going to get lost here. I don’t know who’s going to be able to step in and do that anymore.”
Rolling Stone Magazine up for sale; let’s hope the bidder can create some Rock n Roll magic. Suggestions are it’ll cost a cool $80 million to buy. Let’s see…
