[sdiy] Audio (and synth) DIY printed magazine idea

[Rude 66]

well, here in holland some of the mags i write for are significantly
smaller, so you don't need 30.000 subscribers to stay in business.. but why
go the paper way? you're obviously catering to a worldwide community, so
shipping costs would be either too expensive for you or for the subscribers.
isn't that what we have the internet for? theo nly thing that isn't going to
work is a paid site, so then it'll all have to be free, including the
contributions from authors. maybe you could generate some money by offering
kits that go with articles, and giving the author or creator of the circuit
a percentage.
i think the 30,000 interested people worldwide certainly exist.. trouble is
how to get to them, and then  convince them to take up your magazine. you
could boost readership by incorporating a 'vintage repair' series, so owners
of vintage synths could use it too. set up alliances with local synth
magazines for a double subscription with you.. thingsl ike that.
i'd say either do it as a web site, and maybe with printable pages made
available for a small fee, or go all the way, promote the hell out of
yourself everywhere, have clear articles on glossy colour paper and convince
paul, john, cynthia and the others to run glossy ads with people taking
their clothes off in a room full of synths. and then hope..

r./



----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard Wentk" <richard at skydancer.com>
To: "Barry Klein" <Barry.L.Klein at wdc.com>; <synth at charlielamm.com>;
<synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl>
Sent: Tuesday, January 06, 2004 7:19 PM
Subject: RE: [sdiy] Audio (and synth) DIY printed magazine idea


> At 08:34 06/01/2004 -0800, Barry Klein wrote:
> >1. Concentrate on the advertising income (or lack of it?).  Lots of
material
> >to write about...
> >Maybe model "TapeOP" magazine and approach his advertisers.
> >2. Include a CD each issue with sounds of the circuits and/or reader
> >submissions.
> >
> >Barry
> >
> >
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: owner-synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl
> >[mailto:owner-synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl]On Behalf Of
> >synth at charlielamm.com
> >Sent: Tuesday, January 06, 2004 8:11 AM
> >To: synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl
> >Subject: [sdiy] Audio (and synth) DIY printed magazine idea
> >
> >
> >I come from a family of non-fiction writers and we are constantly
bouncing
> >ideas off each other for books and magazines that might do a little
better
> >than break-even (sometime break-even is OK too).
> >
> >My latest idea is to have a magazine called something like "Audio DIY".
> >It would be in English, and come out monthly or bimonthly, and hopefully
> >sell to an International audience.
> >
> >It would cover what I see to be the 4 "thrusts" of the audio DIY biz as I
> >see it on the web and usenet
> >
> >--Synth DIY
> >--Stomp DIY
> >--Amp DIY
> >--Software DIY (Reaktor, Nord modular, roll your own plug ins, etc)
>
> It's an interesting idea, but I can't see it being viable in print form.
My
> guess is that there is simply no way that there's anywhere close to 30,000
> people in the world who have a practical interest in this kind of DIY. The
> 80s DIY heyday was based on a lot of people with DIY electronics interest
> building synth hardware like Powertrans and Elektor Formants. But I think
> for many the interest was in *electronics* rather than *musical
> electronics.* The equivalent people today are modding and overclocking
> their PCs instead of building cackling egg timers and digital roulette
> wheels. And the more intelligent ones are contributing to various
> open-source development projects and/or shareware. Only a tiny minority
are
> interested in music technology for its own sake, and most of those will
> have products for sale/download already. Given that most of these are
> cottage industries it might not be realistic to expect the same kind of ad
> income that big name mags like FM and SOS can get from big names like
> Yamaha, Korg, Roland, etc.
>
> I think if you followed the same route as FM, CM, SOS and so on and added
a
> new twist of some sort, you might have more of a chance. I suspect there
is
> a gap between the utter beginner and the total synth nerd (a la SOS's
> neverending programming series) which isn't being covered and could be
> filled successfully. E.g. there's a huge Max/MSP community, and the
Max/MSP
> forum doesn't do a perfect job of promoting user interests. Likewise with
> Reaktor, where people are producing great patches, but there's relatively
> little discussion about how and why.
>
> But the emphasis then would be more on using gear and building studios
than
> hard/soft DIY. Certainly the level of experience on this list is probably
> only going to be of interest to a few hundred people worldwide at most.
> Maybe a thousand at a push, but I'd be extremely surprised if it was
> significantly more than that.
>
> Richard
>
>