Stereophile and related sites Sold: Layoffs have begun.

This a million times over.

I wonder if Jana being the latest hire is what cost her? You would think her youth, exuberance and possible demographic draw would count for something.

 

I really like the magazine and look forward to it. Is it what I would do, nope because I can't do that. I have enough problems maintaining my website. But I, look at the pictures, read what's interesting to me and look at the music reviews and move on. As far as it being "top heavy with aging white men," well such is life so I deal with it accordingly. It doesn't stop me from enjoying it or appreciating the effort that's put forward to produce it. IMHO it doesn't mean a damn thing. I like the whole staff and like others have said it's unfortunate that someone has lost to their job. It's tough out here.

M~

 

I get an email with this subject line every three or four weeks, the latest on 3/8/18:
Act Now: Convert your SHUTTERBUG subscription to digital...for FREE!
This Shutterbug email is probably the same as for Stereophile from the same publisher now (or recently up to now). I want print. Of course they want to stop sending the paper, but I want the real print magazine, especially for Shutterbug for the photos and the ads.

This site
MagazinePriceSearch.com tracks the lowest prices on 1434 magazine subscriptions! We find the best prices on magazines!
shows the best available prices for nearly all magazines, including the three titles so far mentioned in this thread.

This site
Discount Magazines and Discount Magazine Subscriptions Online at Discount Magazine Subscription Rates

often has good or the best prices too, and if you subscribe to anything there, you will often get emails with special $2 offers on various titles from all publishers. Usually the $2 is for one full year, but this site often has special $2 deals of other titles, apparently just for this site, with just 4 or 5 issues to give you a taste for $2.

Even if either site says "new subscribers only" for a special rate, you can do a renewal at that "new" rate. Just put the order in as if you are new. The fulfullment place won't care about it and will sort out the renewal.

 

I want print also, as I don't like taking my laptop into the bathroom. That's the only place I look at Stereophile.

 

Jana - bless her! She didn't know a thing about deep audiophile concerns but she was learning and she put up with a bunch of old guys and made them look more groovy and cool. Who was the Einstein that canned her?!?! Dumb de dumb dumb.

 

Can you expand more on that?

Well, Stereophile has been one of the very very few-and I think the only in America-to actually bother measuring anything significant and talk about it. Stereophile raised up issues like jitter, for instance. Sound & Vision makes some shallow measurements which hardly are worthwhile nor presented in a particularly good way. Consumer Reports I subscribe to and admire, but they have their limitations, and certainly do NOT measure audio in any deep way at all. I would NOT take them as any kind of audio benchmark. This is not to say that Stereophile is perfect-it has driven me nuts they never measure performance of RECEIVERS which many many people use, even for playing stereo, but if they go the way of the dodo we will be left only with subjectivist babbling.

 

Hope the new boss improves what was always a great mag.

 

It is shocking news but maybe it is not. The millennials do not buy audio gears like the boomers did ...

 

True, but she helped bring out the best in them.

 

Stereophile is fine. Stereophile has 75,0oo subscribers to TAS's approximately 20,000

 

If J.A. is gone I might resubscribe.
Had a subscription since 93 but quit because of rude John 3 years ago. He seemed to take on JGH's demeanor when he aged.

 

E

Sometimes rudeness is called for

 

You must be working for them. Right Mike ?

 

Figure in the cost of postage & production and they are basically paying you to subscribe. Building view counts to set & hopefully boost advertising rates is exactly why they do it. No one's gonna pay to advertise to no one.

D.D.

 

Michael Fremer here:

The comments here indicate a lack of knowledge and/or understanding of publishing and business in general. Aside from some particularly insulting comments calling Stereophile and my website "little more than advertorials" there's a lot of hysteria and ridiculous speculation so let's all calm down and understand what's happened.

The new owners took a look at the spreadsheets and the numbers and here's what they found: they bought the group because it makes money.

It is a successful overall enterprise led by Stereophile which is probably the most, or among the world's most successful audio magazines with a print circulation in excess of 70,000 subscribers. Stereophile unlike its only print competition is an audited book. Stereophile's web traffic is enormous as any of its many advertisers will tell you—in the hundreds of thousands of page hits monthly (or whatever term is normally used to measure traffic).

The new owners made some decisions based on the numbers. Numbers don't lie. Some parts of the group are more successful than others. That doesn't mean everyone who remains agrees with everything that was done but that's not the point. Stereophile will remain healthy. In fact it will be healthier. People panicking here about losing subscription money ($12 or so?) are just been hysterical.

Tyll Hertsens' InnerFidelity headphone-based site has extremely good traffic and advertiser support. Tyll has long been considered one of the leading headphone authorities and has been since long before the recent 'headphone craze'. He's not going anywhere.

Speaking personally my website, AnalogPlanet started strong and has shown healthy growth every year over the past six years. AnalogPlanet's YouTube channel has more than 15,000 subscribers. Stereophile has been doing a series of videos showing reviewers' rooms. The one of my room shot by Jana Dagdagan is approaching 200,000 views.

I was extremely upset that Jana was let go. I think it was a mistake. Perhaps the new owners will reconsider. She was just over to my place last week and we shot a few hours' worth of video. One, a review of Pro-Ject's VC-S cleaning machine was edited before the surprise layoffs and in the one day it's been up on the YouTube channel it has more than 5000 views.

Robert Baird has had a long run at Stereophile and I don't know why he's been let go. Certainly not for cause. His end of mag column was always great. On the other hand, IMO some of the reviewers he had, while good writers and musically knowledgeable, had no audiophile creds and so weren't capable of telling reader whether the recording was great or meh. Yes, it's about the music. But it's foremost an audio magazine so sound matters in a review. My guess is that the magazine derives zero income from the record industry (such that there is today) and so the cost/benefit ratio of having a well-paid long at the mag music editor as seen by those in charge was extremely low.

I'm also sorry to see Mike Lavorgna go. I don't know what's going to happen to the AudioStream site he ran but let's be honest about one thing: computer audio (and by that I mean downloading files) is going away. Streaming is taking over. Perhaps the new owners looked at the numbers. One number is that the AudioStream YouTube channel has 574 subscribers. I have noticed that some of the other "computer audio" sites are diversifying and moving away from strictly computer audio. That includes the excellent site run by John Darko. He notes that Oppo has thrown in the towel and will no longer be making disc-based products. So perhaps the new owners are looking forward and see less of a need for a "computer audio" site since Stereophile already covers streaming audio products both online and in print. I'm just speculating there.

I'm trying to be HONEST here. It might even get me in trouble. At this point after doing this for 30+ years I care more about leveling with people especially in light of some of the hysteria here. However, when someone talks **** about me like that clown who called my site an "advertorial" you'd better believe there will be strong blowback!

 

Thank you very much for your informative reply.

-I certainly don't agree with any "insulting" posts posted here

-I agree completely that letting Baird go is a terrible idea. I think he was great.

-Jana D had a great future..agree there as well.

-Totally disagree about "computer audio"...but even IF streaming is the future..you still need a computer or a streamer and a DAC...hence..computer audio.

IMO...You can never get into "trouble" by being honest, so thanks for speaking your mind.

 

I might add, that it is only natural that your comments specific to the sale are going to have a certain spin, and I do NOT mean that in a negative way..

Others have commented that your group was not in line with T.E.N.'s financial goals, and the company that purchased you is really rather small...just to give another view of things.

I did post here further up that I did not believe anything would happen to Stereophile..personnel changes, sure, but the magazine is not going anywhere, and
readers should not panic.

 

Michael, thank you for your comments.

If you’re taking questions, I’m curious if you have any insight as to how this will affect Sound & Vision. As I mentioned in a prior post I subscribe to their pub as well as yours, simply because many of the products they introduce me to are friendlier to my wallet. Both pubs are enjoyable and they have some good writers as well, but I wouldn’t want to see them disappear.

 

Thanks for your post and I agree with most of it.
70,000 readers, I think it was that much 10 years ago.

 

..interesting...is that a positive, or a negative..or neither?

 

Well, it's nice that Mike took the time to respond, and I do agree with him for the most part but a business needs to grow and prosper to stay in business these days, I don't think they were growing. I won't try and pretend I no why, but I no why I quit subscribing after many, many faithful years. So it's a bit positive and a bit negative.

 

15,000 Youtube subs for Analog Planet is VERY impressive. Just as a quick counterpoint, there is a guy out of Huntsville, AL who has
The Vinyl Room Youtube channel with 1750 subs with no corporate backing at all. Great videos!

Analog Planet, however does a lot of stuff on location, so that is a big leg up. VR is a one man show, very homespun, but very charming.

 

...some would say MAINTAINING your market share is actually winning in publishing..in other businesses it might be seen as a lack of growth. But
publishing is a unique enterprise.

 

Oh, for 22 years now....