TDC - Guitar Player Magazine

[alantig]

Just got an e-mail today - Guitar Player is following Bass Player on the path to a digital-only existence.

Quote

It is with regret that as of the date of this letter we are having to make a difficult decision regarding the future of Guitar Player magazine. We will be closing as a print title to focus our efforts on bringing you the best in guitar-related content every day at our website. Visit GuitarPlayer.com, where we will carry on the legacy we’ve built over the past 58 years. We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your loyalty and support of Guitar Player magazine.

They're offering a Guitar World subscription in its stead.  Since I already subscribe to that (and was just about to renew), I have to make sure they are going to extend, not duplicate.

Sad day for me - I've been reading GP for over 40 years, and at one point, I bought someone's collection, largely to obtain the 1979 Ace Frehley issue that my mother wouldn't buy at the store.  I haven't subscribed all that time, and I didn't keep all the issues (there are a large chunk I only kept the articles I wanted).  For me, GP was always the class of the US guitar magazines.  I've been expecting this ever since Future Publishing took them over.  I won't be surprised if Guitar World follows in a couple years - funny how so many of the US music magazines owned by that company go under but the UK mags (which they really jack the price up for) keep going.

Add one more to the list of magazines my subscription has killed.  Back in the early 90s, so many mags I subscribed to died, my wife said whenever I subscribed to another, she expected them to send a letter asking me to reconsider.

[RobB]

“So it goes.” 
Kurt Vonnegut, ‘Slaughterhouse Five.’

 

[Jakeboy]

So it goes….by Rockpile? Nick Lowe solo? Same thing? Am seeing Billy Bremner’s Rockfile soon….yes, Rockfile…,

[RobB]

8 minutes ago, Jakeboy said:

So it goes….by Rockpile? Nick Lowe solo? Same thing?

No. Kurt Vonnegut. 

[kizanski]

 

[hamerican gigolo]

Sad, but inevitable... 😪 

[beezerboy]

 

“I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.”

― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

[alantig]

Two more magazines under the Future brand have published their final issues.

Guitar Techniques is one.  I used to buy this a lot, but then they stopped putting transcriptions in each issue.  A lot of "in the style of" lessons, a lot of themed licks lessons, but it became a much rarer purchase for me.

Total Guitar is the other.  This one was still an occasional purchase for me - decent interviews, transcriptions, some other good content.  But once Future bought everything, there were a lot of interviews repeated across magazines.

Sad what's become of the industry - for guitar magazines, we're pretty much down to Guitar World, Guitarist, and Acoustic Guitar now.  It's a far cry from the heyday of the 80s and 90s when there were months I couldn't afford all the magazines I wanted some months.

[DaveH]

I hate to hear this. A lot of different mags I used to read (guitar, bike, electronics, etc) have bellied up or turned to crap. One I hated to see go in the late 90's was Guitar Shop. I really liked that one.

[alantig]

That one didn't come to mind.  But Guitar One and Guitar For The Practicing Musician.

My wife used to call the kiss of death for magazines in the late 80s/early 90s.  She said the surest sign that a magazine was about to go under was if I filled out a subscription card.