Are you the editor of a struggling magazine with no subscription base? Looking to get free publicity and increase your circulation? The Radiohead School of Publishing might be before you.
Hoping to ???create exposure for a relatively new magazine??? (that began in 1995), Premier Guitar is playing the ???pay what you want??? card. 10,000 copies of its December issue will be sent to non-subscribers offering them the magazine for free, or whatever price they think the magazine is worth.
The magazine claims it had the idea before Paste, another struggling magazine that mistook its popularity for Radiohead???s. We don???t believe them, though. ???Serious and accomplished guitarists??? are such posers.
Have you heard? Paste, a crappy magazine you’ve never heard of, has decided to follow in Radiohead’s footsteps and allow readers to determine how much (if anything!) they should pay for subscription rates. Unlike Radiohead, however, Paste lacks the preexisting fan-base, marketing savvy or any content worth paying for. (Example: Ryan Adams is on the cover).
Naturally, we’ll be sure to keep you updated and let you know how the indie mag (best known for attracting rebellious arty types) fares. But in this case, it’s probably safe to say reading for free won’t qualify you as a jerk. But it just might qualify you as their very first subscriber!
• Paris Hilton may have broke up with Paris Latsis on the phone with new beau Stavros Niarchos listening in, but it’s the new Greek shipping heir that’s laughing last: he’s “just having fun” with the heiress. [Page Six]
• We’re really not sure what’s going on with Michael Jackson’s legal woes (something about missing a deadline to file a multi-million dollar counter claim), but we do know he’s still hot for young boys with smooth bodies. [Fox 411 & R&M]
• After an 18-month search for the new James Bond after Pierce Brosnan’s $20-plus million dollar salary demands, producers went with 37-year-old Daniel Craig rather than Colin Farrell or Ewan McGregor. [This Is London]
• Boy George didn’t exactly make an effort to prematurely defend himself from his recent cocaine charges, neglecting to set the record straight on his sobriety. Not that the Howard Stern show is the best place to do that. [R&M]
• There will be no diamond-encrusted bra to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina, as Britney Spears decided to pull the item from her eBay charity auction so nobody is “misled” into thinking it’s something that it’s not. That is, she wore it during her HBO special, not her … Baby One More Time video. [AP]
• Heath Ledger enjoyed kissing Jake Gyllenhaal about as much as Al Reynolds enjoys kissing Star Jones. [NYP]
It’s time for another indie magazine mention, though Paste hasn’t quite “>surrendered its soul to the bill payers. Staffers do, however, engage in plenty of free liquor tastings, courtesy aggressive advertisers.
Paste is the music and lifestyle magazine you think is tops if you’re the type of person that’s avoided joining the Paper magazine cult all these years. You also like Paste if you and your friends’ second-tier hobby is pretending Blender is a shitty magazine.
What differentiates Paste from the No. 1 magazine on the Tribune’s list, music magazine Blender, as well as mainstays such as Rolling Stone and Spin, is that you can pretty much bet that no matter how much pop superstar Britney Spears agrees to bare, she will never be on its cover.
That’s why editor Josh Jackson & Co. are ruminating on plastering wholesome girls like India.Arie and Fiona Apple, who have anything but sex appeal.
Paste magazine last made headlines when they rejected an ad from Matador Records for Stephen Malkmus’s album, which the mag deemed too racy. Now they’re popping up again with huge, huge news! They’re taking over the subscription list of the defunct Tracks, which folded in April after its Spin and Vibe founders couldn’t drum up the cash to keep it going.
And just how will the Tracks mailing list affect Paste’s subscriber base? It’s gonna triple it. Yes, triple! From 15,000 to .. 50,000! That rate base is popping up to 120,000, which puts it on par with Vice mag’s numbers.