As advances of high-profile records slowed to a trickle, Blender and other magazines working with long lead times were forced to run many big reviews several months late or skip them altogether. I’ve seen album advances come as preloaded iPods (the Pussycat Dolls), vinyl (the White Stripes), cassettes (Justin Timberlake), and a Discman glued shut (Tori Amos). Along the way, labels have tried other experiments. They’re less than ideal in other ways, too: A colleague once reviewed a G-Unit album while 50 Cent sat directly across from him, nodding vigorously to the beat. Often held without the complete CD, these sessions encourage partially informed, snap judgments. In the early aughts, labels, frightened by online leaks, tightened their grip on advance music, and listening sessions became the norm for most popular acts. They, in turn, offered a distinct service to fans with timely, expert evaluations of new music. Time was, record companies sent advance copies of albums to music journalists. My former editor at Blender, Craig Marks, identified this phenomenon as “cover fatigue”: In trying to book covers with maximum reach, music magazines dunk month after month into the same shrinking pool of monolithic stars. No matter how striking your cover is, it will pop from the racks that much less thanks to the inevitable media saturation of its star.
Rolling Stone may try to book her for a cover, but even if it gets a guarantee she won’t appear on the cover of another music magazine, readers will have plenty of time to tire of her face as it beams from the covers of “urban” magazines, women’s magazines, teen magazines, fashion magazines, and tabloids (to say nothing of gossip blogs, Access Hollywood, etc.). Say Beyoncé-or Kanye, or Kelly Clarkson, or any of the few musical acts that still command massive appeal-announces a new album. There are fewer superstars, and the same musicians show up on every magazine cover.
Criticisms attach to every title, and while such factors play a part in the music-mag death march, they’re negligible when considered alongside three bigger problems that cut deep and wide across the medium:ġ. I’m going to leave aside the question of whether Blender and Vibe somehow deserved their undoing, via editorial missteps or poor business-side decisions, and whether Rolling Stone and Spin deserve their present difficulties.