…( sung to the tune of the Judas Priest classic… Can you tell I’ve been listening to Double Brutal, the new album by Austrian Death Machine? It’s another great, funny, metallic blast…and two discs this time!)
I really like, admire, respect and enjoy my competition. For the past several years, I believe my closest competition to HM has been AP (Alternative Press) and Relevant. I love both and enjoy getting the latest copy of each. I am about to sit down over lunch with the latest AP, as a matter of fact. I like the journalism in each and especially the graphics (too) in Relevant. Each of our publications is different, has its good points and, I’m sure, its weak points.
Both mags dwarf mine in circulation. I believe AP’s circ is 200,000; and Relevant’s is somewhere between 75,000 and 100,000. Wow! Those are huge numbers. HM is barely a tenth of that. Quality-wise, those other two mags bring it each and every issue. They’re really, really good publications.
Competition brings out the best in us… It can also bring out some not-so-fun stuff. Having such strong competition out there probably costs HM Mag some readers, but it’s all good, because it keeps us on our toes, inspiring us to do better, and it’s getting coverage of some really good music out there.
Back in June, when we were planning our Sep/Oct issue, I contacted the publicist about doing a double-flip cover with Paramore. We were told, “Paramore cannot be on the cover before Oct 1 and we would need to hold off on the poster as well. We can send you photos. Review copies won’t be available, we are only playing the record for journalists in NY and LA (sorry!).” Somehow the publicist (and likely with the cooperation of the band, management and label) agreed to let some magazine have an exclusive on making Paramore their cover artist for the month of September (and the end of summer leading up to today).
This sort of thing had sorta happened to us before, where we had a Stephen Christian-penned cover story on Anberlin written. They were in the middle of their exclusive photo shoot with Relevant when word came up that they had this other cover story in HM around the same time. They were told that this publication had a policy of not putting a person/artist/band on the cover if they were on another magazine cover at the same time. Instead of losing their Relevant cover, the band informed me that we needed to pull our cover story. I could’ve dragged my feet and fought for “journalistic integrity” and that sort of thing (I was, in fact, less than a week from going to the printer). That was issue #124 and I happened to have had a great story on Maylene & the Sons of Disaster that I also had an extra photo of that I could lay out the cover with. I decided to submit to the requests around me on that one.
I wondered which magazine was pulling this stunt this time. I guessed it might’ve been AP, but wasn’t sure. If I was in the shoes of the bigger magazine in that situation, I can imagine that the power I welded would feel pretty good. But the idea of holding the band to exclusivity seemed alien to me. If I was in a band, I would love it if we were on multiple covers at the same time. Seems like that’d be awesome! Why would I want to be the only mag with a popular band on the cover? Anyway, turns out that it was, indeed, AP who had Paramore on its September issue cover. I’ll still choose to like the mag. It’s all good. The peeps over at AP have been real nice to me and I’ve enjoyed meeting a few of them at various industry gigs. I wasn’t thrilled with their latest cover policy, but I could live another day in spite of it. Disappointment might be warranted, but anger? Nah…
The drama didn’t end with Paramore not being on the cover, though. Later, after asking for the opportunity to stream the album, we were told: “We won’t be sending out streams on this record. Can you have a writer go to our LA office to listen?”
Wow! How bizarre is that?
At first, I was like, “Forget these guys!” It’s hard to imagine that I actually felt that way and was deciding that way, because I think Paramore is a great band and one very worthy of coverage in HM. Later I realized that it was stupid not to at least try to make it happen. One of our two writers from the West Coast found a way to steer around the Michael Jackson memorial service LA traffic and listened to the album as it was played in Atlantic’s office. I wonder how that experience was for Dan. I need to ask him for details. I bet that was weird. I wonder if they left him alone in the room…
Hope you find my real-life stories fun to read.
🙂
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