Covid19 Victim - Q Magazine
Q Magazine, the iconic music magazine, has become one of the victims of the corona virus pandemic and is ending publication after 34 years.
Print press has been declining for many years already as the world has moved to online resources for information and this year's pandemic was the final straw that killed business for Q magazine entirely.
Tomorrow, the 28th of July, the magazine will be publishing its last issue and so we decided that a recap of its legendary time on this earth is in order.
Q magazine was founded in 1986 by journalist and broadcaster Mark Ellen and David Hepworth, presenters of the BBC television music series "Whistle Test". It happened around the same time as the CD revolution took off and a free CD with every issue became one of the magazines features.
For many the magazine was an introduction to the big artists of the past, as well as the place to find new musicians, reviews of albums and all the news and gossip of the industry. This was one of the magazines that shaped the culture of the youth of the day. Q was known for its spiky sense of humour and had authority enough to take the piss out of the biggest musical celebrities, in its reviews, stories as well as interviews with artists themselves.
In 2001 sales peaked at 200 000 a month and began to decline from then on as the age of digitalisation took off.
For musicians, a feature on the cover of Q is like a feature on the cover of Vogue for fashion labels and as Liam Gallagher said "There's no other music publication left that can compare".
In 2017, Ted Kessler took over leadership in an attempt to turn things around from the continuous decline in readership but when 2020 and the corona pandemic hit the world, it simply didn't stand a chance in this world anymore.
"The pandemic did for us and there was nothing more to it than that," Kessler said in a Tweet.
Q magazine will be mourned by many including the big stars of the past century.
"I'm gonna miss it if it goes, because it had everything I want from a music mag," Bono said. "All the serious and all the silly... The scholarship deftly done".
The end of an era for the music industry and a symbol for the end of an age, as we enter a new world.
Not much is clear to us this year, but one thing most certainly is. Everything is uncertain and as we enter into the new age, we must accept that many things we are used to, we know and love will no longer be. To many people this is sad and scary, but what we want to give you, is a message of hope.
For all things that end, there are new beginnings that are always a chance for amazing things that we have yet to discover.