Q magazine's demise signals the end of the old music press
about 5 years in The guardian
Q went where other titles were too cool to tread, championing old icons of pop and rock. But it was a victim of its own success – and a changing world
It seems a strange comparison to make, but in its initial incarnation at least, Q magazine was as much a product of its era as Oz and the International Times seemed in the late 1960s, or the crudely photocopied pages of Sniffin’ Glue appeared at the dawn of punk.
It was launched in October 1986, the product of a brilliant bit of trend-spotting by its founders, David Hepworth and Mark Ellen. Both had noticed not just that sales of compact discs were steadily soaring but that music fans – particularly those of a certain age – were using the new format’s arrival as an excuse to re-buy the highlights of their record collections: “They were reliving the time they’d first heard this music on vinyl and wondering what had happened to their old heroes,” Ellen later wrote. Continue reading...
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