Gramophone

[teamsaint]

The quality of the magazine will be a reflection of what the management feel they need to do to satisfy the conflicting needs of their subscribers, and a group management that would likely pull the plug at the first sign of red ink on the P and L .

Publishing into niche markets is a tough business, and corners simply have to be cut in order to meet the needs of a cost driven business. Young, cheap and inexperienced employees with a rapid turnover are a way of life in publishing, and that includes marketing who may tend to find the answers that management want to hear, rather than really reflect what the core market wants.

So maybe short terms survival tactics look like dumbing down?

[Richard Barrett]

So maybe short terms survival tactics look like dumbing down?

What's the difference between dumbing down and looking like dumbing down?

[teamsaint]

What's the difference between dumbing down and looking like dumbing down?

Intention, is what I driving at, really.

[jayne lee wilson]

This is the question, isn't it? The answer is probably that it depends on what kind of profit you want to make out of it, which probably wouldn't be enough to make a large company like Haymarket think it worth bothering with. Dumbing down and leaving behind the (probably relatively small) constituency of more discerning readers takes a lot less effort, as we see from Radio 3. It's not a matter of sneering and nitpicking, it's the logic of the market.

Eh? But the Mark Allen group bought Gramophone in 2013, soon after Cullingford took over as editor, both explicitly stating their intention to return it to something like its former depth & breadth. (BTW Richard, there were plenty of dull issues back in the pre-Haymarket day!).

Similarly, HiFi News left IPC after a misguided attempt to popularise, and is now a brilliant read most months, with MyTime/AV Tech...

Of course it's the market, but - who needs the big guys now?

(sneering etc. - it wasn't you I had in mind now, was it? ...but it's like politics: if only it was more this, or more that..... too many potential or former readers cling to the myth of perfectibility... )

[mahlerei]

Jayne

But it was a golden age for me, not because the mag was perfect but because it was a constant and valuable companion at the start of a wondrous voyage.

To be honest, even if things hadn't changed I probably would have stopped buying the mag anyway, simply because I am used to finding my info online these days. It's the same with news; I don't buy newspapers anymore but hoover up news from t'net instead. In short, I just don't need Gramophone in the way I once did.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Jayne

But it was a golden age for me, not because the mag was perfect but because it was a constant and valuable companion at the start of a wondrous voyage.

To be honest, even if things hadn't changed I probably would have stopped buying the mag anyway, simply because I am used to finding my info online these days. It's the same with news; I don't buy newspapers anymore but hoover up news from t'net instead. In short, I just don't need Gramophone in the way I once did.

- even if it wasn't better in t'olden days, I enjoyed it then.

[Alison]

Since anyone these days can post their opinion on a recording I think the sort of authority previously enjoyed by Gramophone reviewers has significantly been eroded.

What eg Peter Quantrill has to say is of interest but no more so than the eg Ferneys, Bryns and Pastoralguys of this world!

[mahlerei]

Since anyone these days can post their opinion on a recording I think the sort of authority previously enjoyed by Gramophone reviewers has significantly been eroded.

Yes, I suppose it's an authority thing - we just don't bend the knee as much as we once did.

[Alison]

Yes, I suppose it's an authority thing - we just don't bend the knee as much as we once did.

Funny how what Gramophone (and the Penguin Guide) said about a recording quickly became the received opinion of the disc.

[cloughie]

Funny how what Gramophone (and the Penguin Guide) said about a recording quickly became the received opinion of the disc.

Does anyone remember when the record buying bible was the EMG Art of Record Buying - the Annual Guide from the Monthly Letter.

[gurnemanz]

Yes. I think my father bought it - hard cover book. I ended up buying Gramophone from about 1971 and keeping them. The Gramophone catalogue was essential because you could check review dates. It started off being quite cheap but became stupidly expensive in later years.

[jayne lee wilson]

Funny how what Gramophone (and the Penguin Guide) said about a recording quickly became the received opinion of the disc.

Nothing funny about it - we knew that their reviews were based on very careful attention to the sound and the performance through high-quality equipment (v. Sounds in Retrospect). They would report the truth of a given sound-balance with great accuracy. Musically, we soon perceived the depth & breadth of comparative knowledge from Cooke, Harvey, Salter, Nichols, Layton, Greenfield, Swain, Oliver, Osborne, Cowan....

The danger, of course, was always that such opinions were not revised often enough in the light - or darkness - of later new releases... but without some kind of broadbased, wideranging publication, how do you know about them?

[jayne lee wilson]

Since anyone these days can post their opinion on a recording I think the sort of authority previously enjoyed by Gramophone reviewers has significantly been eroded.

What eg Peter Quantrill has to say is of interest but no more so than the eg Ferneys, Bryns and Pastoralguys of this world!

I think that authority was eroded more by the poorer quality of later reviews (in G. and IRR) than by sheer ubiquity of online comment. Has anyone here ever really benefited from an (often anonymous) Amazon reviewer? I don't think I ever have. It's usually all too obvious why their opinions can't be trusted.

If you find comments and reviews here useful consider this: if someone asks, what Roussel Symphonies should I buy? I can give them an answer which I hope will be of some use, having bought almost all of the extant cycles and many separate issues, and listened to them on highly analytical equipment. BUT I can only do that because of what the Gramophone taught me back in the day, and because of the continuing existence of its online archive. Online review magazines are startlingly variable in the quality of their attentive listening, their comparative awareness of the classical catalogue (not to mention dull or inelegant writing) and it comes back, all over again, to gradually finding out who has "the knowledge" (of recordings, hifi and music) to make them worth reading. Not too many, is it?

All things must pass.... yes, but what takes their place? Just this wild west of loud, frequently shallow opinion with a few still small voices barely making themselves heard? Inevitable perhaps, but pretty dispiriting.
So as I said above, with new releases I tend to trust my instincts now and that's OK. It suits me to be adventurous & take a punt .
But if was 20-something, just starting out? God knows. But I hope someone would tell me about a certain reviews & features archive dating back to the 1930s, that the same current publication covers much new and unusual music in its reviews and has monthly Contemporary Composers articles well off the beaten track... ....

[cloughie]

Yes. I think my father bought it - hard cover book. I ended up buying Gramophone from about 1971 and keeping them. The Gramophone catalogue was essential because you could check review dates. It started off being quite cheap but became stupidly expensive in later years.

A similar pattern to mine - Gramophone became the best listing of new releases for many years - but when it was less so and became thinner in quality I stopped buying it. I dumped 30 plus years of them around 15 years ago!

[mahlerei]

jayne

Good points. Of course there's a lot to be said for accumulated wisdom, and there was no shortage of that in Gramophone or the Penguin Guide. But even there I cleaved more to some critics than others; that same instinct prevails in internet reviews/opiniona, both here and elsewhere.