1.4 Background of Study

The readership and advertising of printed music magazines are in a vulnerable state. One of the main reasons is the technology of internet. Music lovers nowadays prefer to read reviews on websites and message boards or even download the music themselves rather than reading about them in printed magazines. Another reason is the craze of online social networks which took over the service that once was offered by music magazines. 

Figure 7: Mohd Rom Mohd Nor of ROTTW Magazine

From the researcher’s case study, Mohd Rom Mohd Nor -the general manager cum editor of ROTTW music magazine agrees that music magazine industry in Malaysia is also failing. Music lovers from the urban areas are converting to the internet now and the people from suburban areas are following suit.

ROTTW is the pioneering music magazine in Malaysia and still consistently publishing until today in 2011. The acronym stands for Rhythm Of The Third World. ROTTW has its own community with the name Rottwailers and organizes a yearly music competition, ROTTW Soundstage. According to Rom, the objective of starting and publishing the magazine is to create a change in local music industry. It is a medium of change.

He mentioned that there is an article in a recent issue of ROTTW that stated internet is the one that creates chaos and destroys everything. It puts uncertainty onto everything; even hard copy music products such as compact discs will fail. Everything will fail because everybody will only face their computers. The sales of the magazine were better in the past compared to now.

To survive, a music magazine has to be repackaged. He said that a magazine is all about how you package your information for a target market or group. For a magazine to survive, the publisher must be well versed with the world’s development. The look must be updated and the flavor must be changed so the readers will not get bored of it. Every product has a life span and has an end. Before the appeal to the market drops, they should enhance the product by repackaging it. It will get a fresh life and the survival can be prolonged.

The look and repackaging must follow the taste of time. The publishers have to look at the current fashion styles from other magazines. Because people are like sheep-they always follow trends. The strategy is not copying, but looking into the artistic value. A lot of local music magazines copy the format from the western music magazines. There are subtle things that make it feel different. You have to know substance and the fundamentals. One of the formulas to survive is strong fundamentals. Back to basics, they have no choice.

Music magazines must have aesthetic value so that readers would want to keep them. The cover page design will affect 95% of the magazine sales. It is almost everything. The point of the sale is the presentation and content.

The readers will keep on buying if the price can be maintained. But paper cost keeps on rising, and manpower have to be maintained. So, what ROTTW do is they cut their costs from the inside, not the production cost. If they do that, it might make the magazine look cheap.

Music magazines must also develop their network and have intimacy. For music magazines or any other business, being close to the consumer is the ingredient for survival.

ROTTW is also looking forward to plan strategies to keep on surviving as a printed music magazine. They are not interested in converting their revenue into an online medium because hardcopy lasts longer. It is the most long lasting medium. And their target group is people who buy hard copies. They have to repackage their magazine to accommodate the change. You cannot change people but you can always change yourself. You can entice people, but they are the ones who decide to change or not to change.

Mohd Rom claims that ROTTW operates like a fanzine. It is using the same format of intimacy-the formula for survival. A publication has to be close to the market, similar to what the management books teach. If the publication team gets to know their readers and the market, they will be very accurate with their decisions. They will be the service to the community and to the consumers. There is a necessity to it.

ROTTW is also run by one man and they welcome everyone. Everyone can hang out at his house; bands and people of any races. That is the culture that they live by. The mechanics, the running of the magazine is quite similar with a fanzine. He shoots photos, writes, draws and also drafts. They are only a few people but they have a lot of contributors, so they are efficient. People will be shocked and thought it came from a very huge office.

Research in the form of questionnaires should be carried out to analyze the preference of music lovers on the graphic design preference of music magazines using fanzine methods. This research could be the guideline for music magazines to be repackaged with an alternative presentation of information. Even though the marketing and networking aspect of fanzines will help a lot, but the art and design aspect is the most important part to be researched and analyzed. 

Another case study that was carried out by the researcher is about ‘Zine Scene’ column in Alarm Press Magazine. Alarm Press is a music and art magazine that operates in a small office in Chicago. Mallory Gevaert, who writes the bi-weekly column about fanzines, was interviewed to know her take on incorporating fanzine graphics into music magazines as a design approach.

The reason she writes about fanzines is because they are an interesting part of publishing industry that many people do not seem to know about. Many people are having a lot of misconceptions about fanzines. She opined that fanzine graphics or any home-made type graphics can be very eye-catching especially on a newsstand. If it is done right, they can look professional and slick enough to be fitted in a music magazine. Plus they have that DIY or punk aesthetics that can well represent a lot of modern music.

One of the fanzine methods that she thinks would work well is stencil art that looks ‘cool’ to her. She also expressed that different binding methods would definitely set the magazine apart from other magazines on the market shelves. She stated that for music magazines to survive in the current download craze and weblogs era, they should explore something new and interesting that does not look like the other highly gloss magazines available in the market. She had witnessed some music magazines that sell well with using cut-and-paste covers or handwritten titles.

To her, high quality photos and layout is always an important key when reading magazines but a lot of websites use templates now, so they tend to look very similar to each other. That is why she thinks that printed music magazines are essential to keep on being published. Printed music magazines are also portable, which is a big help even with tablet computers and mobile phones around nowadays.