Are Hifi Reviews Flawed?

[Marco]

You're missing the point, Andre

I'm not talking about largely commercially-driven magazines. You need to read what I'm saying properly. Anyway, I'm about to have my lunch now, so I'll come back to the discussion later

Marco.

[Rare Bird]

You're missing the point, Andre

I'm not talking about solely commercially-driven magazines. You need to read what I'm saying properly. Anyway, I'm about to have my lunch now, so I'll come back to the discussion later

Marco.

Sorry something i picked up from others on here

I used to take magazines from a none commercial outlet. 'Sound Practice' was one i used to buy directly from Audionote, that was good. But go on please clarify your point..

[MartinT]

Undoubtedly, such a magazine (one that's mainly driven from sales of copies, not advertising revenue) would be a labour of love and would never make a fortune, but I believe that, done well with sufficient devotion to the cause, it would (eventually once established) still make a respectable profit and provide a decent income for those who ran it.

That's the key, isn't it Marco? Would such a magazine really sell enough copies to make critical mass? We're a crazy passionate bunch but are there enough of us?

[Marco]

Well, if we're talking about the viability of a UK-based magazine, first of all add up the total membership of pfm, Wigwam, Zerogain, WD forum, others and here, which totals tens of thousands, and then consider how many other people out with of that (not to mention some of the readership of current hi-fi magazines who may 'defect' to a magazine which better catered for their needs), who could be tempted to buy such a publication, and I think that the potential is there to make it a viable proposition.

Will it happen though? No of course not, so this is just 'pie in the sky', but nevertheless an intriguing subject to discuss

Right, I'm off now for some munchies!

Marco.

P.S I wonder what Alan Sircom or David Price would make of all this?

[MartinT]

Perhaps a bunch of us should contribute an article a month. Difficult to get review stock, though.

[Joe]

Surely the whole point about forums is that they are interactive; if you disagree with something that's posted, or need clarification, you can say so and get an almost instant response. With a magazine, you get what you're given, with the only comeback being a letter to the editor which may or may not be published a month or so later.

And some forums (eg PFM) are very broad churches, with subjectivists and objectivists fighting it out like cats in a sack. Hard to imagine how a magazine could satisfy such varied needs.

[Rare Bird]

Marco.

P.S I wonder what Alan Sircom or David Price would make of all this?

Who! Got two choices aint they

[Alan Sircom]

Well, if we're talking about the viability of a UK-based magazine, first of all add up the total membership of pfm, Wigwam, Zerogain, WD forum, others and here, which totals tens of thousands, and then consider how many other people out with of that (not to mention some of the readership of current hi-fi magazines who may 'defect' to a magazine which better catered for their needs), who could be tempted to buy such a publication, and I think that the potential is there to make it a viable proposition.

Will it happen though? No of course not, so this is just 'pie in the sky', but nevertheless an intriguing subject to discuss

Right, I'm off now for some munchies!

Marco.

P.S I wonder what Alan Sircom or David Price would make of all this?

Unfortunately "if you build it, they will come" only works in the movies. The reality is, the hi-fi magazines today are built on the reader demands of yesterday and today. Anything you don't see in a hi-fi magazine today but did see 20 years ago has gone because readers complained about it to such an extent, the feature went away.

Long before I started reviewing, magazines largely got rid of 'make your own loudspeakers' features because a new generation of audio buyers weren't interested and didn't want to associate themselves with the 'pipe and soldering iron' brigade that went before. When those features went away, it was only a matter of time before the 'what the measurements mean' features went with them, then the measurements themselves. And so on. For good or ill, the days of John Crabbe and Julian Hirsch, of Gilbert Briggs and F. Langford-Smith are long past.

The most consistent complaint received by a hi-fi magazine is that it doesn't review enough of the 'good stuff' (this 'good stuff' reflects the tone of the magazine - a magazine like Hi-Fi+ gets complaints from people if it goes too down-market and mainstream, where I would imagine WHF gets complaints if it goes in the other direction). Anything not directly related to that 'good stuff' (i.e. features, interviews, reader systems, Q&As, how tos, music reviews, technical explanations, etc) is considered 'filler'. Although as editor I have to balance these arguments against trying to appeal to a wider audience, the problem is I have to apportion budget on commissioning features that I know my publishers receive complaints about.

Right now, for most editors, that means computer audio features and reviews. I know these end up with a sea of 'cancel my subscription' complaints from existing readers hitting the publisher inbox, but to not address this key focus for the next decade at this time is to risk commercial suicide. Winning these battles comes at the expense of losing the sort of feature that might win back a disenfranchised audience.

As the readership of the magazine becomes more focused (which happens in a shrinking market), a magazine ends up reflecting that focus. Witness the recent sidelining of music reviews in Stereophile, brought about by a combination of squeezing the budget and a readership that only wants to read review after review after review.

Realistically though, the forum denizens are not a pool of tens of thousands of potential readers you suggest. There are a lot of cross-forum folk (the same names appear across all the forums, just their activity varies depending on which forum takes their particular fancy) and many members are one-hit wonders, posting on the forum to ask a particular question, only to disappear or lurk. A lot are disenfranchised readers who dropped off the magazine radar because they bought their equipment and the magazines no longer appeal to them (this last was always the case, but people read on because forums didn't exist).

If there was a way to revive that readership, someone would have done successfully it by now. I've tried... and failed and I'm not alone in trying. This is a lose-lose scenario for a magazine editor - to try and entice back a disenfranchised forum community, you end up having to instigate such changes to the magazine that you disenfranchise the existing readership, with no guarantee of success in winning back the lost readers. I suspect this is because the subject matter that appeals to forum readers is going to be best served in a forum these days. Trying to entice people to buy a magazine that offers what attracts people to a free forum is to invite the end of that magazine.

[Marco]

Interesting response, Alan, and thanks for that. I promise that I'll get back to you tomorrow when I've sobered up!!

In the meantime, my friend..........




Marco.

[tfarney]

Having spent my career on the other side of the media/advertiser relationship, I've never bought into the consumer conspiracy theories that say advertisers have influence over editorial content. I've had many clients who have pulled, or threatened to pull, their ad budget from a publication in the wake of a negative story. I've never seen it work for them and they almost always end up back in that pub in a few months. The bottom line is that the advertisers need the media as much as the media needs them. More, on an individual basis. Besides, it's much easier to influence individual reviewers than it is to push around a media that may be much bigger than your own company.

But I'm not sure I buy into the notion that the demise of measurement naturally follows the end of do-it-yourself articles. I barely see the connection, and clearly remember reviews with measurements in publications that never, at least in my reading lifetime, ran build it yourself speaker articles.

Measurements went away for another reason.

Tim