Magazine circulations take a tumble, Stuff holds up
It’s ABC day, when the 6-monthly circulation figures for UK magazines (Jan-Jun 2009) are released. And the report makes pretty depressing reading.
Fact is, people are buying fewer magazines. Big sectors are down: women’s weeklies (-4.8%), men’s lifestyle (-4.7%), sport (-4.6%) and even TV listings (-5.4%). And when you strip out the freebies like Shortlist (up 0.9% to 510,720), things look even worse.
The men’s monthly lifestyle has been decimated. Even the closure of Maxim and Arena can’t stop the numbers looking horrible.
Stuff is down 4% year-on-year to 84,565. Given the recession (and the fact that we sell most mags around Christmas), it’s a pretty good result. Others in the men’s category haven’t fared so well: FHM down 16.2%, Loaded down 23.8%, even the previously solid GQ is down 7.7%.
And the men’s weeklies are in freefall – Nuts down 24.6% to 188,532 and Zoo down 31.2% ton a mere 111,012 (from over 200,000 in 2005). Given the costs of producing these mags, and the dearth of advertising, it could be curtains for one of them soon (No guesses which. Seems like the weekly phenomenom wasn’t so phenomenal after all.
Only Men’s Health and Men’s Fitness bucked the downward trend – in fact, Men’s Health has finally overtaken FHM and is now the UK’s best-selling men’s monthly. Congratulations to them – it’s a victory for great magazine making. And great abs.
Stuff redesign makes it onto The Guardian’s media blog
A long and pretty positive piece about our Stuff magazine redesign over on the Media Guardian’s Organ Grinder blog. My favourite part is about specs…
The cover promises Stuff will be “Making specs even more exciting”. The results of the smartphone feature are summarised in a spectrum-style “Supertest Specburst” reminiscent of the Captain Scarlet logo – innovative, and impressive eye candy, but perhaps slightly impractical given it needs a key at the side to decipher it.
Nicely put. Although I hope he did realise we had our tongues lodged in our cheeks when we said we were ‘making specs even more exciting’.
Stuff's Specburst - a visual toy
Or did we? I lose track of the depth of my own geekery sometimes. We love the Specburst at Stuff, but is meant to be a little bit challenging, a kind of visual toy for the readers to play with. I’m desperate to see it in animated, interactive form.
PR Week: me and the new Stuff magazine
There’s a rather nice piece in the latest PR week – entitled ‘ Do not judge Stuff magazine by its cover’ – about Stuff in general and the redesign in particular (my last hurrah as editor-in-chief).
Big props to Gareth Davies at Edelman, Laura Macdonald at Skywrite and Paul Wooding at Weber Shandwick Technology, who all give glowing references.
I’m also please with the way the thorny issue of cover girls is dealt with. It’s never an easy one to explain:
Dunmore acknowledges the ‘babes’ element of Stuff could alienate women, who are just as interested in technology as men, and put them off the magazine.
But he points out there is no real alternative cover shot for Stuff. ‘If we pictured just a product, we’d end up pigeon-holed as a mobile phone magazine, or a MP3 magazine, or a computer magazine,’ he argues.
Having a girl on the front cover means Stuff is stocked next to magazines like GQ rather than niche technology magazines. ‘We have not found a better solution,’ he admits
I’ll return to the redesign in a later post. By which I mean… after I’ve slept.
Why I’m not quite leaving Stuff magazine
Tom Dunmore v Stephen Fry: now available for (legal) download
My gig at the iTunes Festival is now available for free download from iTunes. And when I say ‘my gig’, I of course mean my wet-palmed introduction and questioning of the legend that is Mr Stephen Fry.
Proof! Stephen Fry & me by Tui
Stephen Fry managed to ruffle a few feathers with his good-natured attack on the more draconian anti-piracy exploits of the music and movie industries. Admittedly it was a pretty soft target in front of an audience of 20somethings, but the sentiment seemed pretty spot-on to me.
Of course, the old charmer knew he’d get away with it. And despite his ingenuous aside to me as we left the stage (“Oh I do hope I haven’t upset our hosts”), he knew what he would cause a stir. But hey, that’s rock and roll (except in this case you can download it for free without upsetting The Man).
Anyway, Mr Fry’s meditation on copyright is well worth a listen. Just try to ignore my fear-induced glottic rictus. I don’t usually sound like a screaming teenager, I promise.
Download the Stephen Fry copyright podcast from iTunes
Me, Stephen Fry, and the scariest day of my life
Read Pirates don’t kill music – lawyers do
iPhone sex app leaves a nasty taste in my mouth
Appmania has made it to the London freesheets. Last night: an exposé of the app entrepreneurs in thelondonpaper. This morning: 10 Metro column inches dedicated to an iPhone app that purports to measure your sexual prowess.
Passion ‘works’ by monitoring motion and volume levels: simply ‘strap the phone to your arm and press stop when finished.’
All of which presumably means that a violent, noisy bout of onanism will see you rated as a Lothario. Well, I’m not dumb enough to pay the £3 to find out. But others may be less discerning.
There are some genuinely fascinating apps appearing for the iPhone, but the ubiquity of the handset means wading through increasing dross to find them.
And the App goldrush is only going to make things worse
Time for the avant-gadgeteers to switch to Android? Could be…
(At least the Guardian is on hand to explain that 90% of app makers don’t get paid.)
Why I’m not quite leaving Stuff magazine
Well, the news is out. On August 1, I step down as brand director and editor-in-chief of Stuff magazine.
I’ve worked on Stuff magazine (and Stuff.tv) for a decade, and as editor/editor-in-chief for 6 years. Leaving it is not an easy thing to do. Which is why I’ve decided to come back.
You see, although I’m setting up my own creative consultancy, Flying Leaf, one of my main clients is going to be Haymarket Media – and, in particular, Stuff. In fact, I’ll probably be doing more writing and testing than I’ve done for the past couple of years.
So why the move? Two reasons.
Firstly, I recently became a father and want to spend as much time as humanly possible with my new daughter. And yes, I’m well aware that this desire may wear off which is why…
Secondly, I want to establish my own creative business. I want to spend time doing what I love. And I love writing things and making things, I love learning to use new software, I love zooming to 800% on Photoshop and pushing individual pixels. I love working out how to communicate an idea, how to have fun with words, images, movies and animations.
So I’m going to pursue The Way of the Flying Leaf, alongside graphic guru Lise Meyrick and our many talented friends. At Flying leaf, we aim to make everything from books to websites, videos to packaging.
It’s going to be a fun ride… and one with regular injections of Stuff-induced gadget joy. I can’t wait.
PS Is mixing ‘ride’ and ‘injection’ metaphors distasteful during the Tour de France?
Update – 20th April: Well, 8 months in and Flying Leaf has produced 10 videos, 12 scripts, 4 websites (including our latest for hunkydory publishing), 2 rebrands and a bunch of promotional printed material. And i’m still writing for Stuff and getting to play with the iPad. It’s going good so far!
Augmented reality: I have seen the future, and it’s overlayed with pop-ups
I finally had my first view of the future a couple of days ago, in the shape of ‘The iPhone’s First Augmented Reality App”, Nearest Tube.
Nearest Tube is still undergoing approval at the iTunes Store. I’m not sure what they’re waiting for – it’s pretty simple: the app uses the compass on the iPhone 3G S to work out which direction you’re facing in, and then overlays the direction of the nearest London Underground stations over a live video feed from the built-in camera. It’s not massively accurate – but it’s massively cool.
In fact, this first glimpse of augmented reality reminds me of my first touch of the iPhone – and the sci-fi joy of those Minority Report-style gestures.
Augmented reality: my vision of the pop-up future
In truth, after 15 years of sacrificing personal space and avoiding eye contact, I’m familiar enough with London’s underground network to do without Nearest Tube. It’s a frippery that I will rarely, if ever, use – except to when I’m performing my iBore schtick for another poor, unsuspecting drone. But as well as showing me the way to an underground station I already knew, Nearest Tube also points the direction of mobile technology. By overlaying reality with extra info, it breaks down the barriers between virtual and real. And although this ‘reality’ is mediated by the dim eye of the iPhone, the concept of augmented reality is nonetheless as exciting and groundbreaking as anything I’ve seen in my time as a technology journalist.
Pirates don’t kill music. Lawyers do
So Stephen Fry managed to whip up quite a storm with his controversial address to an enthralled audience at London’s Roundhouse on Sunday. His comments on piracy – and admission that he, like six million other Brits, had indulged in filesharing – were reported over on Stuff (naturally), Sky news and in this spot-on blog post by the BBC’s Rory Cellan Jones (who was present and asked the first question).
It was, of course, an honour to share the stage with Mr Fry, even if my role was merely to look awestruck and pose a few questions from Stephen’s Twitter feed. But Stephen was right: the creative industries need to grow up. Heavy handed tactics haven’t worked in the past, and they won’t work in the future. Easy for a rich celebrity to say when he no longer needs an industry to market him, of course, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
Back in 2002 (I think) I wrote my first polemical cover story for Stuff, which criticised the music industry’s aggressive tactics that forced to the closure of the original filesharing site, Napster (and the subsequent Hydra-style blossoming of P2P networks). I suggested a better alternative: working with Napster to create new ways of reaching fans. To sell more music, more tickets, more merchandise.
It’s taken seven hard years for the industry to realise that DRM isn’t going to work, that music lovers want to own the music they love, not ‘license’ it – and that means being able to share songs with friends.
Had they had the foresight, the RIAA could have turned Napster into Spotify before a generation had grown used to getting everything for free via illicit means. Even now, the industry is still taking grandmothers and teenagers to court for downloading songs illegally. Such actions don’t stop filesharing – they just alienate a generation.
Me, Stephen Fry, and the scariest day of my life
Stephen Fry is the god of geeks. He’s an intellectual heavyweight, titan of trivia, humourist, essayist, polymath, inveterate tweeter – not to mention one of the finest comic actors and presenters on TV. And he’s keeping me up at night.
Stephen Fry will be speaking to me at the iTunes Festival 2009
Why? Because I’ve been asked to introduce Mr Fry, and quiz him, when he gives a speech on the internet and all things tech at the Roundhouse this Sunday, as part of the iTunes Festival . The world hasn’t witnessed such an intellectual mismatch since… well, since Alan Davies sat next to Stephen Fry on the most recent episode of QI.
Nonetheless, you don’t get the opportunity to hobnob with your heroes very often – so my shock quickly turned to joy. Joy, that is, tinged with gut-wrenching fear at the idea of treading the boards in front of a thousand Fry fans, trying to think of something quick witted to say… or something quick… or just something…
But of course it’ll be fine. I mean, it’s not like it’s going to be recorded and put onto the iTunes store for posterity. Oh, wait…
So i’ve set myself a task: to learn more about the man, the ideas, the novels, the TV shows, the stephenfry.com website, the musings, the podcasts… and that torrent of tweets. But first: an early morning showing of Brüno. And maybe a pizza. Gotta keep things in perspective.
If you have any questions you’d like me to ask of Stephen Fry chirrup away at twitter.com/tomdunmorestuff
Sadly all of the free tickets to Stephen’s speech have already been allocated, but you can still win places for other gigs over at the iTunes Festival Facebook page.
Google calls time on the Age of Windows
Google announced on Wednesday that it was developing its own computer operating system. It will be secure, fast, lightweight and – most of all – free. And it presents the biggest challenge yet to the long-standing dominance of Windows.
The idea behind Google ChromeOS is nothing new – it’s built on a Linux foundation and will no doubt share many of the features of other open-source operating systems. But Google is the only computing brand with more might than Microsoft: it’s trusted, and has a proven track record of building brilliant, free services, from search to instant messaging.