Became aware of the closure of the legendary British magazine Q, who for 34 years was one of the most influential music media in Europe. The last issue will be released on July 28. Boris Barabanov was wondering how glossy magazine have been stretched in the digital world, but at the same time remembered never happened the Q output on the Russian market.Q magazine was first published in London in 1986. Its founders, music BBC journalists mark Ellen and David Hepworth, found that adult music lovers to re-buy albums that have come to love in the vinyl version, now on CD. So, im still interested in their old idols. It was not a very young audience, which was calculated other music press of the time. The issue of the monthly glossy magazine for the public with higher consumer standards than, for example, buyers of the weekly New Musical Express or Melody Maker, just made sense.In the 1990s in England appeared similar in format magazines Mojo and Uncut. After just a few years after the launch of Q magazine was to present their annual awards, competing in prestige with the “British Grammy” — the BRIT Awards.In the 1990s, the Russian fans and journalists, began regularly to go and see the musical Mecca of the Old world, began to buy Q, and for many it became the standard music magazine. Q wrote about the musicians who were somehow presented on radio and in the shops — U2, Depeche Mode, Oasis, Blur, Madonna, Radiohead and so on, while major American music magazine Rolling Stone was in fact not a musical, but rather cultural and journalistic, and his audience adored alien to the Russians, country and rap.However, the wide audience in Russia about anything Q did not know. Although at some point the publication was a few steps from the domestic reader. And in the early 2000s, Artemy Troitsky, the order of tired of the leadership of the local Playboy, convinced the bosses of ID Independent Media that real musical gloss can be an interesting business in Russia. During this period, Q was in England out of the competition, its obvious advantage was the proximity on the magazine pages of current rock and pop music from the charts. On behalf of Mr. Trinity pilot issue of the Russian version of Q was prepared by journalist Maksim Semelyak. According to the latter, it was not pure Q, and a new product with materials from Q and other authoritative British edition of Mojo magazine aimed at the more conservative music and the audience. On the cover of the pilot was Nick cave, and inside, among other things, an interview with Adriano Celentano. “We immediately thought about payback and about the specifics of the Russian audience,— says Trinity, so the interview with Alla Pugacheva there, too, could appear.”In a country whose music industry is just getting on its feet, it was at the time on ��udivlenie many music magazines. If St. Petersburg Fuzz inherit the tradition of underground samizdat, then, for example, Russian NME tried to be fashionable and blatant Pro-British publication, and the Play consisted solely of reviews. However, according to Artemy Troitsky, none of the usual advertisers approached his colleagues from the Independent Media or his friends from show-business were not prepared to place advertisements in Russian Q. Trinity recalls the words of one of the tour’s promoters: “Why would I want to advertise your concert at the Q for $4-5 thousand, if I can give $200 mouseobserver “Komsomolskaya Pravda” and get the same effect?” According to the reporter, the hundred rooms of the signal Q and lie still somewhere in his archives.Towards the end of the 2000s, Q had to adjust to market realities. In 2008, the magazine twice reduced in volume. If in 2007 the circulation of Q was 130 thousand copies, then in 2015 — only 44 thousand, and it was still a good figure, which provides a dedicated audience of adult music lovers of the island (for comparison, paper NME in this period had already been distributed free of charge, and 2018 only exists on the Internet). The relocation of the magazine to the online newspaper The Guardian in a recent article about the decline of the Q calls “hopelessly slow”. In July 2020, reporting on the closure of the magazine, its editor Ted Kessler said back in March, nobody could have predicted this outcome, but the situation of the epidemic COVID-19, “was irresistible”. In may, the owners of Q Bauer Media put the magazine on sale, but the buyer is not found. The end of a Q, like most of the mainstream print media was predictable long ago. It was the result of universal digitalization, changing consumer habits of the audience and competition with blogs and online media. As noted, The same as The Guardian, the last straw for the magazine Q, was an attempt to be relevant, to write about the most trendy artists and to raise the most discussed topics. For monthly publications is death: what was important a month ago, now nobody cares. Remain afloat paper niche publications with smaller circulations, telling about the Affairs of bygone days. So, as did Q in 1986.
