Vibe Folds

Good. I stopped subscribing years ago. I got sick of them putting the same talentless ass clowns on the covers.

I couldnt agree more.Vibe,since it has been created has lost many core values "de rigueur" for a good magazine.A good written paper became sui generi the epitome of trash, ads and tolerance for nothing that isnt wrapped in hip hop.Black Culture in more than Hip Hop, Kanye, autotune....

Mohamed Ndiaye-Kingué

@a boy and his dog: You've been hearted!

En0s0ne... Now with auto-tune commenting

@BookishLookish: And occasionally - Lester Bangs, James Wood, Susan Sontag, Walter Benjamin, the music-critic-period Bernard Shaw, Orwell, Clive James, Pauline Kael - the criticism is of far greater value than the work actually under consideration.

condiment

@mina324: My reaction was "who ate Kanye?" I don't remember his face being that, um, puffy.

@Ken Green: I did that too when I had a subscription in high school, but now that I live with my brother who gets Rolling Stone, I've found that it covers a wider range of music, news, and pop culture than the Spin magazines I used to get. I still like Spin, but their focus is sometimes a little too narrow for me.

mina324

I've never been able to read about music. It's like dancing about architecture, i think is the saying? And I certainly never read Vibe. I always mix it up with Vice which is only one letter removed and also something i try never to read. In general, i don't really read magazines.

@snugbug: Thanks for the explanation. I will contemplate what you've written.

I can see a good critic being valuable but not indispensable to current society.

Hope your aspirations are fulfilled. I think the rain of blood from magazine juggernauts like Vibe may fertilize your field, good luck.

@BookishLookish: You don't want my head to explode by thinking larger, now do you?

@nathanst: Agreed.

@doodlebug: Yes, it folded because you don't know who J. Dilla is.

Next?

@sweetpickles: You are reading me a bit too literally, child. Think a bit larger please. And that is Miss Lookish to you.

@sweetpickles: While narrowing critics down to what we see in a newspaper is a tad strawman, I agree with your sentiment. Art is culture and culture is a fancy synonym for hobby. While art is fascinating, it's not necessary to survival (except for a governing authority's propaganda wing/product advertising).

If all of the artists and critics died tomorrow, we'd have more in a week. Art is an ever renewing resource in environments that allows its existence.

Quincy wants to get his magazine back.
[www.ebonyjet.com]

@irishflyesq: I KNEW someone'd beat me to that joke...you are a winner!

I used to collect both Vibe and a the source back in the day.

The end of these rags started when Lil' Kim and Lil' Wayne started getting 4 out of 5 stars for their albums.

Good Riddance.

@ModernMindOfM: I'm surprised they didn't try to cash in on MJ with one more issue.

@doodlebug: Most of Vibe's readers, sadly, wouldn't know who J Dilla is. They'd also think Kanye is the best hip hop producer and probably thought Notorious was a good movie.

I will say that it is better than the Source and XXL.

@BookishLookish: Critics don't get artists paid. If that were true, Transformers II: Rise of the Exploding Toaster Ovens wouldn't be the biggest movie in the country. Some critics help an artist gain a legacy and some commercial recognition for monetary gain, but getting them paid is a ridiculous statement. Criticism has never sold records. I have to say Lookish, I'll admit to writing some stupid things here. But criticism as a public service? Reading Roger Ebert take down the latest Hollywood titsplosion is not something people pay taxes for. We'd rather have our garbage taken to the dump.

@nathanst: I did not say they are equals to artists. They teach people how to think about art. They point out the beauty of music, theatre, opera, cinema, literature, etc. They allow artists to gain importance and therefore, they ALLOW ARTISTS TO GET PAID.

Ya hearin' me now?

@snugbug: GROAN ! + apologies. Misspelled words up the wazoo in my post.. Hope it still makes sense.

snugbug

@nathanst: Hello, happy to oblige. The pro-critics argument goes like this: both artists and their fans are generally too deeply attached to the artistic product to be able to appraise it or contextualize. Note I stayed away from the adverb "objectively," because the job of a critic is subjective my nature. She/he is offered a public position to broadcast her/his opinions, because of a track record that indicates they are rational, even-keeled, educated observers of culture. Hence, their opinion is worth more than the opinion of Joe Blow who goes to the movies (or to a Britney Spears concert) and at the end delivers a "That ruled!" or "That sucked!" definitive pronouncement. Criticism is like cooking: it's all in the nuance, ie, in "spicing." Yes, you don't CREATE an artistic work, but what you create is a canvas of cultural context onto which regular readers can then hang their own opinions. That's precious, I believe, because CONTEXT is key in any sort of inter-human communication. Any statement can be read differently by anyone. The job of a critic is to bring (theoretically) myriad dissenting opinions into a sharp focus, and break it all down for you succintly, and one hopes, with grace, humor and style.

snugbug

Is anyone else surprised that they didn't try to make a go of it as an online-only content site? Seems like their owners could've atleast given them a few months on the interwebs, even if (per the release to Vibe employees) they haven't made the necessary online inroads they'd hoped.

ModernMindOfM

I actually made big coin writing for Addicted To Noise and Sonicnet from about 1995-2001. Then along came the idea that everyone could be his or her own rock critic (no matter if they could actually write or if they knew anything about music), and the birth of the blogs. Free content! Since most people out there don't know Lester Bangs from Joe Schmoe, they ain't going to pay for the opinions of a "rock critic" if they can get the same opinions (if much less informed) for free. Around 2001, the party ended for online rock criticism, and I haven't bothered much with it since, because writing for free is a mug's game. Now, the whole game is pretty much in the toilet. Unless you are willing to work for nothing or almost nothing, you ain't working.

UdolfMelbo

@nathanst:

Correction: I fail to see how critics are a public service equal to librarians or teachers

Also, I don't see them as equals to artists that create original works. My opinion of critics is rarely favorable. Enlightenment on the social value of critics would be appreciated.

WIRE magazine- give it a look, coz you won't find music coverage like this anywhere else in print. Iz the shiz.

EmmettJagalagala

The world will end not with a whimper but with a tweet.

a boy and his dog

@BookishLookish: I fail to see how critics are a public service equal to a librarian or teacher or the artists that create original works.

The truth is that Vibe hasn't been a magazine worth subscribing to for a couple of years. I like Danyel Smith, but her stewardship has leaned more toward US Weekly and Star. She tried making it relevant by endorsing Obama, but fell short elsewhere. Still it'll always be remembered for exposing the R. Kelly/Aaliyah relationship and the Tupac/Biggie tension. Good times...

badass-boi

@snugbug: Well, at least you know there's a basement to crash in...

I know I'm just an old white RS subscriber, but the fact that I have no idea who J Dilla is (much less that he has a legacy to fight for) might explain why not enough people read that magazine.

doodlebug

RIP Jazztimes too!!!
Vibe did ut out a book of DOPE photos to celebrate their decade (VX: 10 years of Vibe) it's like $1.50 on amazon. totally worth it!!

tailpipebananna

@Maura Johnston: The radio, MTV, Disney, and, well, anything on TV for that matter, still breaks the most pop acts. Music magazines, to me anyway, always dug deeper. And that's not to say that blogs don't, but I just don't get the same amount of quality journalism and content under the same umbrella. Their hype-cycle doesn't allow for any digestion. I read Spin for years because it made a good assessment of the pop landscape. It didn't cater to just one genre of indie or electronic or hip-hop. I feel The Fader and Spin still do it the best. There will always be other sources. But I'd truly hate to see people become more fragmented within genres. It piles on too much information and doesn't allow for any curation. A lot of these blogs post nonsense all day because they feel it's a business plan. But I think, eventually soon, people will take a step back and realize no one cares--especially advertisers--if your content is crap.

Also, I used to write about music and get paid. And the money was not just to give my opinion, but to go out and do research, interview, hit the record stores, make the connections with the music and nail it. This lead to new discoveries to include in the piece. But I regress. Maybe I should just yell at those blog kids to get off my lawn.

@Ken Green: i really doubt that anyone in wankster's life is taking subscription cards and just filling them out and sending them in to fuck with them, dude. it's a whole helluva lot more likely that he signed up for some mailing list or attended some event that RS purchased names from/"sponsored" to start sending magazines to to pick up flagging circ numbers. ie standard industry practice, not crazy ppl targeting anyone?

@Mohamed Ndiaye-Kingué: I likey;)

@nathanst: That's exactly what my brother (who is 26, has a business-y type manager job and already owns a house) has been telling me. Stop whining, stop trading careful planning for instant gratification (that's what he called it; journalism as a career = "the pursuit of instant gratification" to him), stop, stop, stop, just STOP! I guess you guys are right: I shall never stop, but I should also no longer expect to make a decent living in this racket. The train has left the station. I'll be waving at y'all from the offices of Manpower.

snugbug

Hard as it may sound, in light of the current situation, something good always comes out of a crisis.

It's perfect time, the newspaper industry is in real trouble - a bunch are up for sale or miring chap 11 (bankruptcy).

The medias business' catastrophe is alone with nothing left but creative minds figuring out how they can reinvent themselves and dump some juicy news contents wherever, whenever we want.

Here's a hint of the fittest media business strategy for the next decade

Monday to Friday: online contents & mobile news delivery would be the king
Week End : Premium Print edition

Mohamed Ndiaye-Kingué

@sweetpickles: well, it depends on what sort of "new artists" you're talking about breaking. if it's indie rock, pitchfork is pretty much the only game in town, and even its power has waned over the years. (there's also a clutch of music blogs that in the grand scheme of things help set up the pitchfork canonization.) if it's hip-hop, there's nah right. if it's kinda-cool american apparel stuff, the fader is the game. other genres have their own hierarchies. it's very fractured.

and the few remaining print outlets are not really breaking artists anymore -- look at rolling stone, which has had products of tv (adam lambert and the jonas brothers) on its last two covers. music coverage is becoming more and more reactive, by dint of all profit-seeking content ventures having to play the pageview game in order to stay afloat.

it pains me to say this because of both the source and the fact that the whole process of "breaking" is teeny tiny when you compare it to the pop era of 10 years ago, but the online outfit who has most significantly "broken" musical artists in recent months is (ugh) perez. lady gaga and katy perry were certainly aided by his constant touting of them, thanks to the huge firehose of traffic he wields. (not to mention that back when amy winehouse first came to the states a washington post profile quoted her press agent as saying that the attention he gave to her proclivities was good for her brand.) those two have broken bigger than any pitchfork/blog-touted artist, although even then, in the grand scheme of things, lots of people out there have no idea who they are or what they sing, thanks to being able to cocoon themselves in radio that plays "the '60s '70s and '80s" or, even more often, their own ipods. (and perez has certainly backed horses that haven't taken off here -- much as i love robyn, his pushing of her didn't work out commercially, in large part because the musically savvy populace who she would have appealed to bought her album when it was an import a few years ago.)

@irishflyesq: Read em whilst in a pounding in the ass prison.

@nathanst: Critics are not artists. They are public servants and as such, they deserve as much job security as any teacher, sanitation worker or commissioner.

@sweetpickles: Go watch some concerts, you'll find new artists while supporting them as well.

The bigger blow to upcoming musicians isn't the loss of this but the selling of thepiratebay, the current key method for distributing music outside of the retail world.

@T-RO: Hey, they could have done a crime beat but NOoo, they had big dreams of writing about what they love.

Now they can and there's no office politics to distract them.

This is why artists and others who take a non-pragmatic approach must be prepared to suffer for what they love. Everyone loves pretty things but the funds are limited.

Vibe - The Gay Fish issue.

J. Frank Parnell

Stopped reading music magazine a long time ago, right around the time RS kept on putting movie stars on the cover (If I wanted Entertainment Weekly, I would have ORDERED Entertainment Weekly.)

Ken Green

@wankster: yes

@wankster:

Someone's taking those little subscription cards and filling them out with your name, address, etc. You'll probably be getting a bill soon but don't panic. Just write them and tell them you didn't order it and it'll stop. You won't owe anything. It's just like those old CD/cassette music clubs. Someone signed me up as a joke, I told them I didn't order it and to stop sending then and I kept the ones they did send. But they were crappy CDs I'd never buy, so...

Ken Green

I started receiving RollingStone and never signed up for it. Does anyone know why this happens? I just started getting another magazine I don't pay for either. Is this to boost their numbers for advertisers?

@T-RO: No need to imagine it. I AM music journalism. PPS: And the truth hurts.

snugbug

I'm not really sure who is better than Spin or Fader--who both have a great presence online--but do tell. We're talking about music journalism and breaking new artists here. Not just regurgitated news of upcoming tours and why your favorite indie rocker stopped eating chickens.

I gotta say, Vibe lasted way longer than I thought it would. I consider it a success really. At the time when the Quincy Jones backed magazine came out it had no real competitors.
The only music mag I would spend money on is Mojo.

let's just imagine what it must be like to be a music journalist or a critic. the perfect storm of two industries dying. Poverty, anyone? Bueller?

If someone mentions Pitchfork taking over, I will cut them.

Q magazine. And back issues of Creem.

Kanye's bummed by the news in that cover.

snugbug

Vibe Runs Out of Batteries

@mina324: I meant that in response to the Doll Reader comment.

mina324

Well, they don't have interviews to pay for.

mina324

What am I gonna do with 40 subscriptions to Vibe?

irishflyesq

And yet Doll Reader still lives.

Scout 3.0

Paste meets all my needs. If we could conjugate and fix meals together, I would leave my wife.

paxcincinnatus

I can't look at that Kanye cover without thinking of his blogged reaction to the picture: "THAT'S SOME BENJAMIN BUTTON SHIT!!"

mina324