Rolling Stone Finally Taking Late, Doomed Shot At Online Presence
It must pain Jann Wenner to see his other properties start succeeding where his flagship magazine, Rolling Stone, squandered possibilities and descended into irrelevancy: online. Now that US Weekly’s site has heat, Wenner’s finally starting to line up RS’s strategy.
The problems facing Rolling Stone’s online presence is that, well, they haven’t had one in forever. And since the late 90s, haven’t been necessarily known for covering celebrities, politics, or music particularly in depth, instead trying to spread themselves too thin, editorially. A publication or website full of Matt Taibbis, David Frickes, or celebrity gossips is one thing. Trying to do them all in the same publication is another, and it resulted in the literal and figurative sizing down of the publication.
Now, if you’ll remember, Wenner brought in Steve Schwartz from Reader’s Digest as his, uh, let’s see here…Chief Digital Officer. Great, well then. When Schwartz isn’t commandeering the bridge of the Enterprise, he’s going to be piloting a different kind of ship. The kind that sinks before it can even set sail. Ahoy!
“I think there was the concept of, let’s partner with a company that had experience in this space early on,” said Schwartz, who plans to relaunch the site in January with new community and customisation features. “A lot of companies spent a lot of money in trial and error mode.” That said, he conceded, “It hasn’t evolved nearly as much as we’d like it to.”
Since Schwartz’s hiring and their Unemployment for Christmas layoffs, they’ve made great strides, kinda capitalising on Matt Taibbi’s audience, and…that’s it.
Eight months later, their Twitter is mostly an RSS feed of articles, interspersed with the occasional pieces of news. Even JetBlue’s got a better Twitter. They don’t have a Tumblr, their Facebook presence is mediocre, and their big high tech strategy involves one of the most reviled dinosaurs of the internet. What rhymes with BUFFERING?
Rollingstone.com will have a chance to update its music-listening technology; Wenner is determining if it will continue its partnership with Web music player Rhapsody, a joint venture with RealNetworks, after its relationship with RealNetworks ends.
Hm. Considering I can listen to whatever I want on Spotify, Pandora, or hell, just Googling an album with the extension .rar and searching through Mediafire archives to download it, I would say that giving users the chance to interact with a music player they hate, that’s available anywhere else isn’t the most salient strategy. But this is what Wenner’s spending his time “determining.”
Forget the fact that Rolling Stone’s late to music’s breaking news now (thanks, Brooklyn Vegan) and that their Five Stars mean nothing anymore (thanks, Pitchfork), or that their political rockstar’s still blogging for a political site that has their own writers work their own ad sales.
Remember that Wenner has two sites with pretty solid traffic (People and US Weekly). Remember that Vogue and GQ—two publications of Rolling Stone’s infamy and legacy—are launching online presences, too. And then flash back to Schwartz, who clearly doesn’t understand Wenner’s reluctance:
Schwartz admitted that Rollingstone.com is light on user engagement, which will be a big priority of the site relaunch. “The site that’s out there right now-that whole notion of getting our audience involved in a dialogue is lost,” he said.
It’s pretty evident: the Wenner’s golden goose of ideals and leftist ideology and influencing pop culture has to dignify—and even worse, compete with—the kinds of ragtag operations Rolling Stone was when Wenner first started it. Wenner’s main man Hunter S. Thompson once wrote that “when the going gets weird, the weird get going.” Looks like Rolling Stone was too mainstream and stodgy to get their asses in gear, and for the most part, still are.
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Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
@ejs2000: It's one of my favorite covers. That's why I chose it. Somewhere, there's a picture of my ceiling in 9th grade. It was covered wall to wall with my favorite Rolling Stone covers. Believe me, if there's a publication going to shit that breaks my heart more than any other, it's RS. Nice work!
@NerD!!! - R.O.A.C.H.: Caught my attention too-- Because I drew all that scary movie type back when I was working there. That cover was in my portfolio for quite some time.
@goldenslumbers: "Last August, the Jonas Brothers issue sold 151,160 copies off the newsstand, above the magazine's 125,000 average, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation's Rapid Report. It was the fourth best seller of the year for the biweekly."
[www.observer.com]
Another huge newsstand issue this year? The Adam Lambert coming-out issue.
And again, RS *does* break music news. (Like the aforementioned Adam Lambert story -- which was probably one of the biggest non-death music-related stories this year as far as garnering public interest.) But a) music is pretty sprawling, probably much more so than any other popular art form, which guarantees that any news it breaks won't be of vital importance to everyone; and b) music news is rarely important enough to a wide swath of the populace to warrant being "broken."
@Magister:
IOW: Like pretty much everyone else, I read almost every word of every Rolling Stone, but we're not going to do that online. No amount of "engagement" is going to change this fact and unless the "engagement" is going to be separate animal, disconnected from the offline content, then I don't see a reason for them to worry too much more than their stated goal of bringing site management in-house.
Online ads don't pay as well as offline and though there's been a noticable advertising slump (not as many fashion ads), I'm sure the offline situation is temporary and an ad-free Twitter feed isn't going to add anything toward the bottom line.
@allyzay: Well, it did catch my attention.
I subscribe to at least a half dozen magazines and I've subscribed to Rolling Stone for about 30 years, but other than to follow a "more info" thing in the text, to change my address or to quickly access a back article for online attribution, I don't know that I've ever visited the website for a magazine, I receive.
OK, I take that back... RollingStone.com did used to have the most readily available copy of the "Imagine" video before YouTube and I've pointed toward it numerous times, but I really don't think I'd like it, if the website were to try and replace the magazine. As with all my subscriptions, but especially Rolling Stone, I actually look forward to getting my hard copy in the mail and have a ritual about reading it.
US Weekly is just a gossip rag and it's understandable that they have better traffic; their competition is online, there's lots of blogs linking to gossip and the text is just a lot of blurbs. Rolling Stone, Playboy, Vanity Fair, etc are lifestyle publications; They have devoted readerships, long-form articles and all of their websites are suffering online.
Let me give you some perspective: This is the umpteenth redesign Jann has asked for. They move forward, they stall, they go nowhere. Much of this in the PAST has been due to Jann's need to protect his print brand, the fact that the print team is was doing the creative (without a full understanding of web design), no internal programmers or developers at the time, and a contract with an aging music software company that pretty much makes it impossible to do anything cutting edge.
While Steve might not be "sexy" enough for the brand in SOME people's eyes, he more than makes up for it by being smart, evocative, and understanding the online technical landscape. Don't forget this isn't a typical media company - this is JANN'S company. He's like Si Newhouse with a better CD collection. Old habits and old school mentalities don't fade overnight. It's only after the painful labor and birth of the newly redesigned Us website that Jann seems ready to perhaps go back on those famous words he uttered at a speech several years ago where he stated (in so many words) that interactive would never be as important as Wenner's print publication.
ValentineCecrops
Wait, Foster -- THAT'S the cover you chose to illustrate this story? Is this a "nerd alert!" situation?
He needs to talk to the person who decided to put the Jonas Brothers on the cover, twice within a year.
I can take the Beatles cover even if the article is rehashing the same bullshit, it primarily takes from John's interview when he was out of his head on smack and angry. I love how the author completely ignores the fact that John in later years said he lied through his teeth during that interview.
Plus, it would be nice if R.S. would for once focus on the fact that John and Paul made up, but I guess hating each other is better copy.
The Rolling Stone website is a mess. I think one of the most ridiculous things is that Rolling Stone a MUSIC MAGAZINE rarely if ever breaks new music news. It's pathetic that People Magazine can beat them to the punch.
goldenslumbers
They still have the kinds of access to musicians and certain segments of actors that most over magazines and websites only dream about. They need to use that. Why not put up video or audio of these interviews they get?
Their cover story on The Beatles breaking up says it all: They have no idea the year is 2009.
I have always been puzzled by RS' inability to capitalize on their amazing archive of music information and interviews.
610Dean
I never know how much trust to put into Alexa/Compete/Quantcast numbers, but it seems Pitchfork -- which I imagine is probably one of the better trafficked web-only, independently-owned music sites -- holds its on against Rolling Stone, save for the MJ bump. And, I bet, by certain standards they do better than RS -- return visit %, time on page, etc.
Yet, P4k is probably one of the least interactive sites of its type. (Thank God for that too, could you imagine the hell that the comment section would be unless they had a moderated, Gawker like roll-out?)
The thing is, most people know what they're going to get on p4k -- the decimals with the sometimes good, sometimes not 500+ words attached, news headlines involving the latest mental state of the dude in Wavves, streaming mp3s probably blogged about somewhere else before, etc. Usually, being a music fan, i'll find something that makes it worth glancing at once or twice a day.
Rolling Stone, not so much? Except maybe for the latest news on past-their-prime or dead rockers (oh hey, Pearl Jam, Cobain, MJ, Oasis and the Beatles currently on the front page).
Which is basically to say, RS should work on their content (whether the focus should even be music anymore, I'm not sure) before going after "user engagement."
It might see a temporary bump in traffic, but it won't doing anything for their identity (which, as of right now, I'm not even sure what it is), legacy, influence and relationship with readers beyond "engagement." Which, for a flagship publication should be, at least, of some importance.
Maybe Jann can revitalize the brand by putting Al Gore in form fitting jeans on the cover or maybe a Jackson Browne two-part interview
uncle_wiggly
At the risk of sounding like I was dropped on my head, maybe the move is for Rolling Stone to stop presenting itself as a publication about music completely.
Even putting aside Hunter Thompson, the most memorable pieces I've read in Rolling Stone over the last few years have been long form articles on topics such as bug chasers, a tiny subsection of the gay community that actively tried to contract HIV; a story about a average suburban American kid who become a violent African drug lord; and even a piece in the latest issue about a blind kid, who used to "swatting" to seek revenge on woman who wouldn't give him phone sex.
All stories that have absolutely nothing to do with music.
When sites like TMZ can provide on demand beaver shots and celebrity meltdowns, showing Britney Spears posing with a purple Teletubbie just isn't provocative anymore. And as Foster pointed out, in terms of music journalism, Rolling Stone just doesn't have a clear cut niche anymore.
I say downsize the operation (even further), and make it into a less highbrow, more pop culture Slate.com, focusing on the long form human interest stories they actually do well. Or at least spin that off into a different site, so when the new Rolling Stone.com inevitably does fail, not everything goes down with the ship.
@Maura Johnston: Hm, you know what, you're right -- music has become a utility.
I'm amazed it happened this quickly, although I suppose that once it got digitized and decoupled from the physical object, it was only a matter of time.
@Foster Kamer: Now fixed, and we compulsive Internet correctors can unclench our butt cheeks
superannuated_grad_student
@Cookie Guggleman, @superannuated_grad_student: It should read like that. Does it not?
Near miss on the quote: "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro", Fear and Loathing at the Super Bowl, 1974.
superannuated_grad_student
Actually that Hunter S. Thompson quote is: "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."
Cookie Guggleman
Yes, yes Rolling Stone sucks. Also, bears shit in the woods. Carry on.
As someone who watches pieces of music news circle the drain for days at a time in her professional life, I can say one thing with confidence: If RS is interested in growing its "stagnant" (yet still higher than 99.9% of music sites) audience, it's either going to need to really up its multimedia offerings in an impressive, highly Googleable way -- or it's going to have to branch out from music into other topics that will command more of an audience. Thanks to a bunch of factors ranging from the increasingly conservative nature of radio to the decimation of the retail landscape to people just wanting to put the songs they already know they like on their iPods, "music" (particularly the new kind!) is becoming a niche interest on the level of, say, philately.
Perhaps it could go into gossip! How's that Smoking Section blog working out, anyway? Cough.