Note to Acoustic Guitar magazine

[hamburg325]

I've been avidly playing acoustic guitar for 50 years and have been reading AG since you began. I've always worried about the health and longevity of your magazine. Now, with each new, anemic issue that hits my mailbox, my worries have only increased.

So please forgive this unsolicited feedback. But I'm hoping it might help.

• Your content is consistently—month after month, year after year—underwhelming. Among other problems, you load each issue with highly ignorable instructional stuff. Despite what your research might say, I doubt that many serious players engage with this Mel Bay-type material. The web teems with energetic guitar pedagogy of every variety. Why waste your precious pages with this ploddingly dull content?

• Instead, you should devote many more pages to artist features and gear and music reviews. Especially gear reviews. From time immemorial, you have paid only scant attention to what guitar players are most enraptured with: the gear itself. Yet, when you do review gear, it is in the mildest and most simpering manner. Never saying anything even slightly opinionated or (heaven forbid) critical; always maintaining the most bleached and non-threatening editorial voice. But that's not what enthusiasts want.

• On the matter of your editorial voice: it is indeed bleached and anonymous, devoid of any flavor or attitude. Curiously, you've never learned from other enthusiast publications (audio, cars, watches, etc.) that readers want a strong editorial voice and authorial point of view. Have you never gazed upon The Absolute Sound or Stereophile? Personalities abound. Opinions fly. Readers are enthralled.

• Coupled with your missing editorial voice is a bland and flavorless graphic design. Your magazine looks like it's dedicated to the dental supply industry rather than one of the most richly artisanal and historical fields of musical endeavor.

• Finally, I know the rotating cast of editors is likely not to blame for this state of affairs. Rather, the long-time owner and publisher has given AG its stamp of insipidness from day one. I'm sure editors and others have tried to inject life into this ghost of a magazine. But what I see, month after month, remains steadfastly safe and dull.

Sorry for the diatribe. I will continue to subscribe and support you. But the world of acoustic guitars deserves better.

[baw3]

I couldnt have said it better. I cancelled my subscription a few years ago.

[El Conquistador]

I certainly agree with you view of their content.

Steve

[godfreydaniel]

I’m not interested in an editorial view with attitude. It seems like I can’t get away from “attitude” all over the media.

I mostly focus on lessons by Greg Ruby, Steve James, Mary Flower and similar artists.

I’m assuming that like most magazines that still manage to exist, they’re hanging on by the skin of their teeth. Note that they ask for patrons for funding.

[Benjo]

What acoustic guitar magazines do you all recommend? I am aware of the Fretboard Journal. I've read a few interesting articles by them but haven't found their podcast that interesting, so I haven't ever considered subscribing. Maybe I'm not hardcore enough of an enthusiast. But they look like a good choice for the die hard acoustic player because of how indepth they go.

There's another that sometimes advertises on AGF can't remember the name. I clicked on the link last month to visit the site but found their presentation a little too elitist and preoccupied with presenting everything in an artisinal connoisseurish way, like they were going for an ultra highbrow fine art approach. That turned me off. Their content may be great though.

Speaking of podcasts, are their any good fingerstyle ones other than Fretbksrd Journal that folks recommend?

[ish5]

I don't know the magazine, but I do know the publishing world and the problem - for them - with attitude is it turns off the spigot of advertising dollars. If their attitude turns off Martin, or Taylor or the other finite group of advertisers there is no replacing those ad dollars.

There is an old story about a major city newspaper that relied heavily on ads from two competing department stores. Then the stores merged and the ad budget was cut in half (One store instead of two) and the paper was forced to gut its staff to keep up.

Unfortunately, the reality these days is very tough for news, particularly niche publications, which rely on a specific industry (and more specifically, not pissing off that industry) to survive.

Subscription dollars, in general, don't cover the bills and print products are expensive to produce.

And BTW, I'm in no way saying you're wrong about the content. I don't read the magazine. But coming from that industry, I know the trials of putting out content that both pleases the readership and doesn't piss off the advertisers. Training is safe. Bleached gear "reviews" are safe. Annoying the advertisers...not safe.

[jpd]

Totally disagree....only wish it was back to 12 issues yearly.

[RLetson]

The magazine biz has never been easy, and the internet has nearly killed it off altogether. I've seen this close up, since I started writing for magazines in 1985 and spent 16 years writing for Acoustic Guitar (1992-2009, 30+ features and departments and 30+ short reviews). I also subscribed to or regularly bought every acoustic-friendly guitar magazine available--about six running feet of archives are shelved here in my office, all but two of them titles no longer published. Acoustic Guitar and Fretboard Journal are the survivors. (I never bothered with the rock-centric titles, and eventually even stopped looking at Guitar Player more than 20 years ago.)

Acoustic guitar is a niche hobby, and niche hobbies are precarious as business areas. (I suspect that pro players don't read the magazines much unless they're being covered.) Music-hobby magazines have a narrow set of possible topics: how-to pieces, product reviews, what's-hot pieces, artist/practitioner profiles or interviews, and maybe category/genre/history overviews. And not all of them are going to appeal to the entire readership--I stopped reading how-to-fingerpick pieces a long time ago. But artist profiles have a broader appeal.

Gear reviews are also broadly appealing--but it's an area strewn with landmines. I can't count the number of times I've read posts suggesting editorial fiddling with reviews. (I still do book reviews for a specialist magazine, and I still read kvetching about review policy, bias, and such.)

FWIW, I still subscribe to AG (I started as soon as I saw #1) and to Fretboard Journal (since #2). I wish that Frets were still around, and Just Jazz Guitar (though it was so pricey that I only bought selected issues). But I learned long ago that niche magazines are vulnerable to changes in fashion and a whole range of economic factors. Of the dozen or more magazines I've written for over the last 30 years, three are still in business. And two of those now ask for contributors as well as subscribers.

[LuckyDan]

Originally Posted by godfreydaniel

I’m not interested in an editorial view with attitude. It seems like I can’t get away from “attitude” all over the media.

I mostly focus on lessons by Greg Ruby, Steve James, Mary Flower and similar artists.

I’m assuming that like most magazines that still manage to exist, they’re hanging on by the skin of their teeth. Note that they ask for patrons for funding.

Quite agree. I stop reading when I sense a cutesy, trendy style, loaded with buzz terms. (How many times do you see something described as "iconic" per day? How many times can you describe anything as "cool"? Please.)

I actually do still stop and look at the basics lessons, in part because I'm curious about the different ways that the rudiments can be taught, and because it is still possible for me to learn from rudimentary lessons by forcing myself to get back to the basics.

If I were an editor I would be aware too that there are, thank heaven, many new guitar players out there who are looking for some solid foundational training.

[Benjo]

For me high quality tab/music of good fingerstyle instrumentals would be a compelling reason to subscribe to a magazine, several per issue not just one

[rllink]

I feel that way about every magazine I've ever subscribed to.

[gmel555]

The challenge for avocation related publications (music, photography, electronics, etc.) is the mfg'er's they "review" are likely their advertisers. It's an impossible situation I think for them to be objective enough without ticking off their "lifeline". I only read reviews now for specs. As another member of the 50 year player club (I'm 66 yo) I find the focus -in much of media- is on younger players/readers/viewers. I think our demographics just aren't the target audience anymore...it's okay IMHO, it's happening on many fronts and just part of the "circle"...

[hamburg325]

A the end of the day, these enthusiast magazines need to engage and, yes, entertain. No readers, no advertisers.

And it is possible to do gear reviews that are inoffensive (to advertisers) yet substantive and entertaining. Look at The Absolute Sound.

[MinorKey]

I'm in the UK but read AG a few times (our own acoustic magazine died a few years ago) but the last issue of AG I got I found boring. Put me off getting it again. I'm not particularly interested in gear reviews, I've no money for gear but on the other hand I do like to see nice guitars and read about them. I'm a perennial beginner but as the OP stated, there's countless free online tutes. I'm more interested in the instrument itself, its history and greatest players.

[Norsepicker]

There were many magazines like the op seems to want, and I believe they've gone by the wayside. I've found the instructional material and those that provide it very useful. I don't need to read any more about Taylor vs. Martin or what strings I should use. I became a sponsor when they, like most magazines, were struggling to stay alive in the online world. I understand why they had to cut back on print issues, but I would be deeply saddened if they disappeared.