You're right JK. I folded my copy shortly after you made your prediction!

The story you refer to does not really match your prediction, but Music Week is quite clearly having problems.

Obviously it needs a subscription base to cover its costs, (and make a profit). But where are the costs? If it's in the printing and distributing, it would make sense to copy Record of the Day's example and go totally electronic. But if the costs are keeping a team of journalists employed, then it's more difficult to see how to move on.

Though RotD do a great job, it is very diffent to Music Weeks. It will be a shame for it to go.

If you want to run a decent trade mag, you need a team of well connected journalists whether it goes print or by PDF. The gathering side is largely the same.

Music Weak was initially invaluable to retailers, with information on catalogue numbers, distributors and so on. Plus quite useful to programmers.
We took over all industry areas with The Tip Sheet, gathering A&R, MD's, Chairmen and heads of departments with our informed gossip and choice of music. The charts became less important due to hype (which I started; to my eternal shame). Then so did physical distribution and retail (due to laziness from shop owners).

The Record of the Day provides a great service for those in music too lazy to consume all media, who want a precis cutting out trivia. Unfortunately, one man's trivia is another man's gold.

Music Weak got duller and duller; put together by (very nice) drones who wouldn't get jobs elsewhere.

Then the worst thing (for the industry) happened. I got arrested and wrongly convicted.

The Tip Sheet lost sparkle and became dull and dusty, reflecting (instead of leading) the industry.

I watch the posts here now and feel sad that we get far more Your Views threads than music ones.

But, as a terrific song performed by the Glamorous Gloria Gorgeous in Vile Pervert; The Musical asks...

What's A Girl To Do?