As often as possible, on Fridays I will post interviews with
\ncolleagues from the field who are far more knowledgeable than I am on
\nvarious marketing and publicity topics. In honor (-our) of all the gray days we’ve been having in New York, this week we have an interview with a Proper British Person! Here’s BBC Music Magazine<\/i> editor Oliver Condy on not bringing computers to the beach, Tweeting about the World Cup (…not), and how American journalists need to toughen up. <\/b><\/p>\n
![\"OliverCondy.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/OliverCondy.jpg\")
Oliver Condy has been the editor of BBC Music Magazine for over five years, before which he was deputy editor at Classic FM Magazine. Now living in Bristol, Oliver sings tenor with the Exultate chamber choir and gives organ recitals from time to time, most recently as part of the 2009 City of London Festival. Oliver has an MA in organ performance studies from Cardiff University and a Premier Prix from the Conservatoire at Rueil Malmaison, Paris. <\/i><\/p>\n
Right, so: a glossy print magazine on classical music in 2010. How’s that working out for you?
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Glossy magazines about anything are having a tough time of it but, yes, music magazines are very vulnerable to the onslaught of the web. Blogs, downloading, streaming and free online newspapers have made it hard for commercial journalism to survive in the way they have for hundreds of years. BBC Music Magazine<\/i>, however, is a strong brand, and I honestly believe that the more electronic our age becomes, the more people are going to cherish the printed product. But there’s no denying that, at the moment, classical music magazines are seeing a drop in readership. The UK ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulations) figures were published in early February and all three major British classical music magazines (BBC Music Magazine, Classic FM Magazine and Gramophone Magazine<\/i>) marked a fall in circulation. The good news for us is that, despite the fall, we saw the lowest percentage drop and actually increased our market share of the UK market by one per cent from 39 to 40 per cent. We’re still the biggest-selling classical music title in the world.
A magazine, as many a New Yorker reader will testify, is a browsable, abusable, flick-through-able thing of monthly solace. Every four weeks, it thumps reassuringly onto the doormat, and never crashes, never breaks down and never runs out of battery. It’s bath- and beach-friendly too. I’m not sure your MacBook Pro is terribly fond of sand, is it? We’ll be ok, although I think we have some stormy times ahead.
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What’s the breakdown of web-only content vs. print-only content, and have you been under any pressure to go web-only? If I can play The Lorax Advocate for a moment, what’s the benefit of having a print magazine at all? Advertising dollars? Erm…pounds?<\/b> A CD comes with every issue of the magazine, correct? How did that get started, and who’s in charge of the content? It seems logical for a music magazine, but I can imagine there are all sorts of rights\/political challenges involved as well<\/b>.
You’ll have to bear with me on this one. Hindsight is a wonderful thing in print journalism. This is how I see it: when the web became an unavoidable presence in the mid to late 1990s, newspapers leapt at the advertising dollars that were dancing before their eyes. Giving content away free was acceptable because, so the thinking went, the internet was a huge, limitless, brand spanking new pool for advertisers to dive headlong into. Papers gave away their content bit by bit and, for a while, falling revenues from newsstand sales were compensated by online advertising. Now look at print journalism. Internet advertising isn’t as expensive as it was and papers are closing in the US at the rate of one every couple of weeks. Now UK papers are starting to wake up to the prospect of charging for online access and hiding themselves from news aggregators.
So – given everything that I’ve written so far, I honestly think that we’d be foolish to contemplate going web-only. There are still over 11 million people in the UK who aren’t yet online, and probably never will be. Many of them are old, less privileged than you or I, or simply afraid of technology. And since we’re dealing with classical music, you can guarantee that we’re read by quite a few older members of society, many of whom won’t want to log on.
We make far more money with our magazine because we’re a magazine company – we know what we’re doing and we do it well. And we know our competitors. Our advertisers also understand the nature of a magazine – a trusted source that they know is put together by knowledgeable people using the words of highly specialised, educated critics and writers. I see no point in going web only.
But, and I know I’m tackling the first part of your question last – for which apologies, our web presence is hugely important to us. Most of what we do at www.bbcmusicmagazine.com<\/a> is written specifically for the site. We do have reviews up there from the magazine, but all the features, news and opinions are tailored for our site. You won’t find, say, the cover feature from the February issue up on our site free of charge. That’s unfair to the subscribers and unfair to journalism. Quality writing costs – and we can’t simply give it away. We take a lot of pride in our audio clips, updated news items and new release info which we think complement the print version. But if you want the ‘real’ BBC Music Magazine<\/i>, we’re on the newsstands…
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The CD was the magazine’s original USP (unique selling point). No other magazine was giving away complete works on a cover CD when the magazine launched in 1992. BBC Music Magazine <\/i>started producing them from issue one and has done so every month since. For those readers not in the UK, it might be worth mentioning that the BBC license payers support eight BBC ensembles: the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Philharmonic, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the BBC Concert Orchestra, the BBC Scottish Symphony, the BBC Big Band (to an extent), the BBC Singers and the Ulster Orchestra (again, to an extent). Most of our CDs showcase one of these wonderful ensembles – and they are truly wonderful. We’re lucky to have them.
We also tie in with Radio 3’s New Generation Artist scheme and, from time to time, we collaborate with non-BBC artists.
Who’s in charge of content? We have a CD editor, Alice Pearson, and she and I come up with content. She then sources it from new performances, gets orchestras to record the pieces or delves into the BBC’s enviable archive – and battles heroically through the copyright minefields. Politically it’s not a problem – artists are thrilled to be involved by and large, and we’re thrilled to be able to have them on our discs.<\/p>\n