Sound and Vision, formerly Stereo Review

the skipper

Professional Curmudgeon
I have had a subscription to Stereo Review from 1965 or 66 or so and migrated to the current Sound and Vision.

I've noticed that over the years, the issues slowly dwindled from 12 issues a year to somewhat less. The last issue I received was the June issue, which came around April or May. Nothing since.

Now, it states clearly on the mailing label that my subscription expires April 2020. I got curious and called them to report a problem. It turns out there is no problem but they just dropped the number of issues per year to 7. That's five less than when I started subscribing. I thought this was supposed to be a monthly magazine. It's not.

For what it's worth, this is their "new" publishing calendar.

January
February and March will be what they call a "double issue" We'll see how that works out.
April
May
June
July and August - no issues
September
October - no issue
November
December - no issue.

So, this has me really thinking. I like this magazine but this really has me thinking. If it didn't fill a niche that nobody else even attempts to fill, I'd be gone just on principle. Fortunately, they keep giving me such a low rate that I can't get too mad but, hey, it's the idea.
 
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Not just them, Rolling Stone just went to monthly publication after years of bi-weekly. Or is that bi-monthly? Anyways only one issue a month now instead of two.
Half the issues, same price.
Local newspaper just raised their subscription rates due to increased paper costs.
 
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I worked as a magazine editor for 18 years before exiting. What you're seeing with Sound & Vision is representative of the downturn in magazine publishing across the board. Every publisher is looking for ways to cut costs, whether by putting out fewer issues, cutting pages, laying off staff, or some combination thereof. The reason? Newsstand sales have been down for years, and print advertising has tanked. It's a dying industry, so I'd enjoy those issues of Sound & Vision while you can.
 
We've only got two magazine subscriptions now, one is part of a Gaming Points card that one of my sons has the other is an old favorite of my wife, Southern Living, and it keeps shrinking. We haven't had a newspaper subscription in 10 years, don't need it to keep up with local or national news. Just a computer / tablet / phone is all we need.

Mark Gosdin
 
I've also noticed that if you cancel a magazine, they keep sending you issues anyway so they can keep their circulations number up.
 
Looks now to be 6 issues. For 13.00. Maybe Skip's is less. 7.00 on newsstands. Has anyone ever bought a newsstand copy of a magazine in the last 10 years ? The cost of an expensive lunch. I do like looking them over, though.

I received Numismatic News for years until it's issue count decreased.
I get the Wall Street Journal every day. My son was able to get a student subscription and I kept it coming at a stupidly low rate.
 
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Our local newspaper (small mountain town) went from 3 days a week to now just one. Kind of a sad thing here locally.
Digital seems the way now it goes.
Sadly for us (not so old) timers who grew up reading everything from Stereo Review to Pop Science and Pop Mechanics to Boys Life
Give it a decade or two... They'll be back, just like old stereo gear all of a sudden is "desirable" again...
And I read kids are going to Summer camps where there are no digital devices..... and LOVING it....
The good stuff can never be squelched for long... we just pay many times more for it when it returns and is featured on some tv show, ala cars.
"Call someplace Paradise, kiss it goodbye"
- The Last Resort, Eagles
 
Think about how distant future archaeologists/historians will see this. Especially since it’s not likely digital media will have survived that far into the future. It will be as if the humans, for some reason or another just stopped making printed copy. And few if any hard copy records after that will still exist.

Or another way of looking at it:

Hypothetically, for all we know, the Egyptians created their cuneiform writing, used it for several centuries/millennia on parchment and clay, then invented digital tablets to continue writing and communicating, but these were made of some disintegratable material that didn’t survive in a discernible form long term. From our perspective, their writing just one day stopped.
 
Great Review
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After looking at your other posts, in the nicest way possible, I must ask, are you a bot?
 
I just received my latest Stereopile magazine yesterday. I violently threw it into the recycle bin. What absolu!e trash. CD players for $50,000, speakers for $250,000. I don't need it, I don't want it. I don't care about it. Never again will I subscribe to an audio mag.
 
What you're seeing with Sound & Vision is representative of the downturn in magazine publishing across the board. Every publisher is looking for ways to cut costs, whether by putting out fewer issues, cutting pages, laying off staff, or some combination thereof. The reason? Newsstand sales have been down for years, and print advertising has tanked. It's a dying industry, so I'd enjoy those issues of Sound & Vision while you can.

YUP--print is dead--or at least on life-support at this point. Just the cost of printing and distribution has gone through the roof, and circulation is down--so, as a result, so are advertising revenues. I get my mail pretty much every day--but only because it is delivered directly delivered to my home--I know lots of folks that have PO boxes or live in apartment/condo complexes with central "community" mail centers, and they only check their physical mail every week or so (some even once a month).

I've also noticed that if you cancel a magazine, they keep sending you issues anyway so they can keep their circulations number up.

I have noticed this as well. I subscribed to RS magazine for decades, and then just quit renewing it--combination of lost interest, reduced size and number of issues, but it has still kept coming (all on it's own) for at least five years now. There are even magazines that I NEVER subscribed to that will show up for 6 months or so as "complimentary" copies to entice a subscription out of me--and keep circulation numbers up.

I just received my latest Stereopile magazine yesterday. I violently threw it into the recycle bin. What absolu!e trash. CD players for $50,000, speakers for $250,000. I don't need it, I don't want it. I don't care about it. Never again will I subscribe to an audio mag.

Yeah, I kind of got over "Stereophool" years ago. Reviewers that are basically paid employees of the advertisers reviewing equipment that I am not inclined to buy, or even interested in, but get paid to write something nice--I probably would too--if you "loaned" me a new $50K "demo unit" to play with every couple of months. I write up something nice--with just enough criticism or "room for improvement" to remain even remotely credible, you buy full-page ads at ridiculously expensive rates from my boss (so they are happy), and I get to remain employed.
 
I just received my latest Stereopile magazine yesterday. I violently threw it into the recycle bin. What absolu!e trash. CD players for $50,000, speakers for $250,000. I don't need it, I don't want it. I don't care about it. Never again will I subscribe to an audio mag.
This is exactly why I feel S & V is so valuable. They tend to deal with more products that are more within the reach of Joe Sixpack.
 
Our local newspaper (small mountain town) went from 3 days a week to now just one. Kind of a sad thing here locally.

I'm afraid the recent imposition of a Canadian newsprint tariff will be the death knell for many U.S. newspapers....and likely for the newsprint industry as a whole as demand drops correspondingly.
I believe total production is already down 80% of what it once was.
 
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I just received my latest Stereopile magazine yesterday. I violently threw it into the recycle bin. What absolu!e trash.
That's a shame. Kal Rubinson has a story about using a quite inexpensive DSP based multi-channel DAC with great results.

And, there's an interesting article (with measurements) written by John Atkinson about pre and post ringing found in A/D conversion. Most folks focus on sample rate and frequency domain considerations by invoking the Nyquist theorem and fail to understand time domain and transient smearing effects caused by the reconstruction filter. That's half the battle!
 
I still enjoy the look and feel of a magazine once in a while, but newsprint? GAG. A filthy waste of resources. A pain to hold and read. Things change and newspapers going away are a good thing.
 
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