Long Live Vinyl Magazine: Some Things Are Meant To Be Connected Forever, Like Magazines & Music. The Print & Vinyl Love Affair Continues – The Mr. Magazine™ Interview With Ian Peel, Founder & Editor At Large, Long Live Vinyl Magazine…

A Mr. Magazine™ Launch Story…

“How valuable is print? Well, it’s incredibly valuable within the context of coexisting with online, because if I think of all of those people at BMG Records working away, they all look at email newsfeeds every morning. Then when you walk into their reception area, there are print magazines everywhere. And both have to exist, they each have their role.” Ian Peel…

Ink on Paper and vinyl records have always had an easy courtship. From Rolling Stone to Spin, these music magazine couplings usually turned into magic. That is, until the world decided both genres were dead or dying a slow, digital death. Of course, those with their fingers on the pulse of both industries knew that evolution did not necessarily mean extinction. In the 21st century our airspace is large enough for turntables and iPods; tablets and print magazines; and just about anything else the innovatively, creative human mind can come up with. No reason to fret.

And that’s exactly what the founder and editor at large of Long Live Vinyl magazine knew when he thought about the many ways you could make a print publication about vinyl records interesting in this day and age. As simple as “American Pie” really.

Ian Peel is a freelance journalist, marketing consultant, and magazine thinker and maker. He has contributed his fresh and innovative ideas to Anthem Publishing in the U.K., and so far, together, the two have created Classic Pop and Long Live Vinyl magazines, which are both increasing their frequency from bimonthlies to monthlies. Not bad for two industries that are on the verge of extinction, hmm?

I spoke with Ian recently and we talked about the newest edition to the fold, Long Live Vinyl, and about the creative design, a 12-inch format that, as Ian put it, lacks only the hole in the middle to actually fit on a turntable. Ian is a man with two obvious passions: music and magazines. And his adoration for both runs deep, as I soon learned early in our conversation when I asked him what he’d say to people who would accuse him of using two dying or vanishing industries to create this magazine. His answer: I’d say to them they’re not dying, they’re changing. And his success is proof of that belief.

So, I hope that you enjoy this look into the relationship between magazines and music, because just like Diana Ross & Lionel Richie sang: it’s an “Endless Love.” OK – music puns are over – enjoy the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Ian Peel, Founder and Editor At Large, Long Live Vinyl magazine.

But first the sound-bites:

On that moment of conception for the magazine and how he brought it to fruition: I started to talk to the team at Anthem Publishing about my ideas; how you could do a really interesting magazine about vinyl records. And of course this happened at the exact same time that the vinyl revival began. So, they thought about it for about two years, and then eventually we decided to give it a go.

On what he would say to those who would criticize him about combining two supposedly vanishing industries (print & vinyl) to create a new magazine: What would I say to them? Well, I’d say that these industries aren’t really dying, they’re changing. And with the changing times too, you have to be really, really bold, and try and strike out and do something new. When vinyl and magazines were both flourishing, it was probably harder to take risks, so it might have been harder to have done this 10 years ago, because there was far too much in the publishing world and the music world, so it was easy for people to just sit back and carry on with what they were doing and had always done. But when people’s backs are against the wall they have to be a bit more creative and daring. So, that’s what we did.

On why he thinks it took the magazine industry so long to realize that print and digital must co-exist with each other: Sometimes it’s just easier, isn’t it; to keep doing the same thing all of the time. And this is why maybe it was quite an interesting role for me, because I’ve never launched a magazine before Classic Pop. What I had been doing was working in the music business creating CD compilations and album reissues, and then trying to sell them into the media to get press coverage. So, I was coming from a slightly removed standpoint, and I was finding it very difficult in the case of classic pop music to get the page space in the traditional music magazines and newspapers.

On the biggest challenge he’s had to face: I don’t know if it was a challenge, but there was always a concern that I was just in a bubble and no one else would agree or see the value in it. That was a concern. There’s always this challenge that you have to create the magazine, or at least the structure and the style, before the publisher can start selling ad space, so there is a challenge, which is to get over that initial hump of going from concept to actually being able to gauge the revenue that the publication can generate.

On his most pleasant moment: When Anthem said yes, it was a surprise, because don’t forget, I had pitched Long Live Vinyl about two years ago to them, so they had sat very quietly and watched the vinyl revival grow for two years and remembered the proposal. So, it was a nice surprise when they phoned and said we will do this. We will make it happen.

On whether he thinks he could have achieved what he’s achieved with just a digital platform and no print component: We could have, but there are lots of vinyl blogs out there already, and I really like them. In fact, it’s interesting, because when I was devising Long Live Vinyl, there were some really great websites about vinyl, in terms of how they looked and what they said and their viewpoint. And I thought, none of that exists in print. There wasn’t a cool, contemporary vinyl print magazine. So, there was another reason, to replicate how far forward with vinyl journalism the Internet had moved.

On what role he will play at Long Live Vinyl now that he’s there full-time: On the masthead I’m founder plus editor at large. And in fact, that’s the title for both Classic Pop and Long Live Vinyl. So, that involves something that Anthem is quite keen on, and that is monitoring and developing what they call the DNA of the magazine. And I think they know from experience that it’s possible for the DNA to drift if it’s not sat up on a regular basis. And that could be anything from a font that someone has used temporarily for one issue that still accidentally in place 10 issues later, because no one has sat down and had a proper font discussion. Or it could be about the tone of voice that’s used.

On anything new he’s working on now: Yes. (Laughs) The third one is going to be brilliant. (Laughs again) Classic Pop was great and exists in its own way; Long Live Vinyl is kind of broader and a slightly wider platform, then the third idea is broader and wider still, but with a quite unique sense of purpose.

On whether he believes we’re seeing a return to a broader-topic type magazine with a niche audience, rather than a niche magazine itself: That’s a very interesting question, actually, because I think that one of the reasons that Classic Pop magazine did very well is that the four or five music magazines in the U.K. are all general list. They’ll have a Rock front cover, then they’ll have an Electronic front cover, and that was fine in the ‘70s and ‘80s, when the only way that you could get music content was to buy a magazine. They were duty-bound to cover all of the genres. But now that I can’t avoid music content, it’s coming out of my phone, computer, TV and everywhere, I think the job of the magazine is to be specialists, to celebrate more specialist areas.

On what advice he would offer to someone who came to him with an idea for starting a new magazine: If someone has a great idea for a print magazine, then I would encourage them to go and see a print publisher, because you’re taking them a revenue stream. And it would be great if that idea for a print magazine had really good unique content. And maybe you do start to blog, but I think if what we’re asking is, would it be best to do it online for a year and see how it goes, the answer is no, because you’re creating a totally different product than the one that you wanted to create in the first place. The best case scenario is they coexist together, straight on.

On what someone would find him doing if they showed up unexpectedly at his home one evening: There’s quite an easy answer to that, which is, as soon as the magazine goes to bed, I go straight on to the next one. And it’s because it’s like this weird zone that you get into, when you’re finishing an issue, you just can’t stop. You’re on a roll.

On what keeps him up at night: (Laughs) I think the easy answer to that is the idea for magazine number three. It does keep me up at night, because when I look at this proposal, I’m excited. I’m excited and happy to read the proposal through.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Ian Peel, founder and editor at large, Long Live Vinyl magazine.

Samir Husni: Can you relive that moment of conception, that moment when you came up with the idea for Long Live Vinyl, and how did you bring it to fruition?

Ian Peel: It’s quite a long story, so I’ll try and give you the abridged version. There’s a magazine in the U.K. called “Record Collector” and I started writing for them when I left school in 1988. And I had lots of fun, really, writing for them. But I always had strong views as to how you could do a magazine for people who loved vinyl and loved records. And I would pitch these ideas to Record Collector over the years at different times and in the intervening 25 years. And some of those ideas they listened to and took onboard and some of them they didn’t.

Then flash forward to 2011when I had a great idea for a magazine about Pop music that I called “Classic Pop.” I went to Anthem Publishing and they really jumped onboard; they loved the idea. They set the magazine up and we made it a great success, so Classic Pop has been running for three years as a bimonthly.

And once that was doing really well and it was in supermarkets in the U.K., I started to talk to the team at Anthem Publishing about my ideas; how you could do a really interesting magazine about vinyl records. And of course this happened at the exact same time that the vinyl revival began. So, they thought about it for about two years, and then eventually we decided to give it a go.

We did a test issue for Long Live Vinyl in November, 2016. I wasn’t hugely involved in anything other than conception with that, because I was doing a long consultancy with a record label called BMG, so I was working in-house with them on lots of vinyl releases as it happens. Aside from kind of setting Anthem Publishing up with the idea for Long Live Vinyl, and some very strict notes initially about pitching and selling in stage around two or three years ago, I left them to go ahead and put the magazine together.

One of the most exciting things was seeing Issue One on the shelves in November and it being pretty much exactly what I’d hoped for and exactly what I had dreamt we could do. All that time ago during the pitching process, I’d written really detailed notes about the style, tone and how the pages should be laid out; the type of fonts that should be used and the writers that should be in the magazine, and they worked through all of those notes and it came out really well. So, it was a good team effort, albeit quite remotely for me during Issue One.

So, then we sat back and looked at how Issue One had sold in November, and it sold very well and advertisers had picked up on it, so it was enough for me to leave BMG, and as of this month, turn Long Live Vinyl into a monthly magazine. We go monthly in April, and at the same time, we’re going to expand the remit of Classic Pop magazine, which is really the forerunner of Long Live Vinyl, and that will switch from bimonthly into a monthly in May.

Samir Husni: What would you tell the naysayers who might come to you saying that you are taking two supposedly dying or vanishing industries and combining them to create a very well-crafted, beautiful, album-sized magazine?

Ian Peel: What would I say to them? Well, I’d say that these industries aren’t really dying, they’re changing. And with the changing times too, you have to be really, really bold, and try and strike out and do something new. When vinyl and magazines were both flourishing, it was probably harder to take risks, so it might have been harder to have done this 10 years ago, because there was far too much in the publishing world and the music world, so it was easy for people to just sit back and carry on with what they were doing and had always done. But when people’s backs are against the wall they have to be a bit more creative and daring. So, that’s what we did.

And it was quite daring to do the magazine in 12-inch form, which was one of the initial ideas that we came up with. I wanted to go one step further and that was put a hole through the middle. (Laughs)

Samir Husni: (Laughs too).

Ian Peel: But I couldn’t get approval on that. We’re still going to drill some holes though, for promotional type things.

Samir Husni: If we consider magazine makers the most creative people around, why do you think it took the magazine industry so long, almost a decade, to recognize that print isn’t going anywhere; digital isn’t going anywhere, and we have to live in an environment where all forms of media exist?

Ian Peel: Sometimes it’s just easier, isn’t it; to keep doing the same thing all of the time. And this is why maybe it was quite an interesting role for me, because I’ve never launched a magazine before Classic Pop. What I had been doing was working in the music business creating CD compilations and album reissues, and then trying to sell them into the media to get press coverage. So, I was coming from a slightly removed standpoint, and I was finding it very difficult in the case of classic pop music to get the page space in the traditional music magazines and newspapers.

But I knew there was a market for it, because there were festivals and they were booming and the CD and music business was booming with classic pop music, and there were television stations launching. It became quite clear that it should be very straightforward for a magazine to work in tandem with all of those other areas of media. So, why do we find it difficult? I don’t know, maybe a lack of objectivity.

Samir Husni: What has been the biggest challenge that you’ve had to face and how did you overcome it?

Ian Peel: I don’t know if it was a challenge, but there was always a concern that I was just in a bubble and no one else would agree or see the value in it. That was a concern. There’s always this challenge that you have to create the magazine, or at least the structure and the style, before the publisher can start selling ad space, so there is a challenge, which is to get over that initial hump of going from concept to actually being able to gauge the revenue that the publication can generate.

With Classic Pop magazine, it was a challenge to get certain businesses onboard, in terms of seeing its value, but not so with Long Live Vinyl. Every record label is producing vinyl editions, and when I went out to them; it was like a one-word pitch. What’s the magazine? Vinyl. And then they were straight onboard. So, it wasn’t too much of a tough sell in that respect.

There is this other magazine that has existed in the U.K. for a long time called “Record Collector” that I’ve written for and that gave me my first job in journalism. And I love that magazine; I have a lot of respect for it. And long may it continue. But I set myself the challenge of looking and feeling completely different that the Record Collector, in terms of tone of voice, type of photography used, because I wanted them to carry on being successful in their world, and I wanted us to be successful in ours. And I also wanted to avoid any confusion between potential readers as to what to buy.

Samir Husni: What has been the most pleasant moment? Was it when Anthem said yes?

Ian Peel: Well, when Anthem said yes, it was a surprise, because don’t forget, I had pitched Long Live Vinyl about two years ago to them, so they had sat very quietly and watched the vinyl revival grow for two years and remembered the proposal. So, it was a nice surprise when they phoned and said we will do this. We will make it happen.

I think the nicest part of it was as I described earlier when I saw the first issue. Once I’d gone off into the corporate world and seen that we’re all on the same page, it was great; all of my notes and ideas really gelled with theirs. That’s always a worry, especially if people work remotely, in different offices, emailing, rather than sitting at the same desk. To realize that everyone is thinking along the same lines is great. On which note I should mention Andy Jones, the editor of Issue One, who did a great job, and Jon Bickley, who is the CEO of Anthem Publishing and a big vinyl lover. And a big music fan. The two of them especially, and then Simon Lewis, who is our commercial and advertising man It didn’t take too much description on my part, we could see what it could be quite quickly.

Samir Husni: You combine your passion, music/journalism, and you’re in the music industry, you’ve worked with the labels; what value do you think print, as opposed to digital, brings to this genre? Could you have done what you’ve done with just a digital platform?

Ian Peel: We could have, but there are lots of vinyl blogs out there already, and I really like them. In fact, it’s interesting, because when I was devising Long Live Vinyl, there were some really great websites about vinyl, in terms of how they looked and what they said and their viewpoint. And I thought, none of that exists in print. There wasn’t a cool, contemporary vinyl print magazine. So, there was another reason, to replicate how far forward with vinyl journalism the Internet had moved.

How valuable is print? Well, it’s incredibly valuable within the context of coexisting with online, because if I think of all of those people at BMG Records working away, they all look at email newsfeeds every morning. Then when you walk into their reception area, there are print magazines everywhere. And both have to exist, they each have their role.

Samir Husni: Now that you’re at the magazine full-time, what role will you play at Long Live Vinyl? Are you going to be the editor in chief or the editorial director?

Ian Peel: On the masthead I’m founder plus editor at large. And in fact, that’s the title for both Classic Pop and Long Live Vinyl. So, that involves something that Anthem is quite keen on, and that is monitoring and developing what they call the DNA of the magazine. And I think they know from experience that it’s possible for the DNA to drift if it’s not sat up on a regular basis. And that could be anything from a font that someone has used temporarily for one issue that still accidentally in place 10 issues later, because no one has sat down and had a proper font discussion. Or it could be about the tone of voice that’s used.

So, really I will be monitoring and measuring the DNA of both publications, while at the same time I’m doing lots and lots of writing. For issue two of Long Live Vinyl, I will be news editor and reviews editor. With Classic Pop, I think I wrote 80 percent of the first issue, partly to build structures and templates for the different sections so everyone could just go off and replicate.

Samir Husni: After Long Live Vinyl, is there anything else in the hopper; something new that you’re working on now?

Ian Peel: Yes. (Laughs) The third one is going to be brilliant. (Laughs again)

Samir Husni: (Laughs too).

Ian Peel: Classic Pop was great and exists in its own way; Long Live Vinyl is kind of broader and a slightly wider platform, then the third idea is broader and wider still, but with a quite unique sense of purpose.

Samir Husni: Are we seeing a return from the ultra-niche magazines, or what you refer to in the U.K. as the “Patchwork” magazines, to a broader topic type magazine with a very niche audience, rather than a niche magazine?

Ian Peel: That’s a very interesting question, actually, because I think that one of the reasons that Classic Pop magazine did very well is that the four or five music magazines in the U.K. are all general list. They’ll have a Rock front cover, then they’ll have an Electronic front cover, and that was fine in the ‘70s and ‘80s, when the only way that you could get music content was to buy a magazine. They were duty-bound to cover all of the genres. But now that I can’t avoid music content, it’s coming out of my phone, computer, TV and everywhere, I think the job of the magazine is to be specialists, to celebrate more specialist areas.

So, Pop is a specialist area; vinyl is a specialist area, because people are in love and they want to read about vinyl for one, number two, is what’s on it, the actual music that’s on it. But the number one reason is the love of vinyl.

With my third project, it’s broader, but you’re right, it has to have an absolute purpose and that purpose might actually be quite niche, and that audience might actually be quite niche. Even if it’s maybe covering, without giving too much away, various area of entertainment, there has to be a twist or a particular unifying factor.

Samir Husni: You’re a believer in print and bringing new ideas to the forefront, and you’re also, it would seem, more of a believer in protecting that DNA. So, if somebody comes to you and tells you that they have an idea for a new magazine, a new print entity; what do you tell them? You’re out of your mind, go start a blog, or you offer them different advice?

Ian Peel: If someone has a great idea for a print magazine, then I would encourage them to go and see a print publisher, because you’re taking them a revenue stream. And it would be great if that idea for a print magazine had really good unique content. And maybe you do start to blog, but I think if what we’re asking is, would it be best to do it online for a year and see how it goes, the answer is no, because you’re creating a totally different product than the one that you wanted to create in the first place. The best case scenario is they coexist together, straight on.

Even with Long Live Vinyl, two or three years ago when I first pitched it, Anthem did say why don’t you start it as a section within Classic Pop magazine, and as a section within Vintage Rock, which is another of their print music listing magazines. But from the start we created it asking the question: how would it look in print? As opposed to let’s start a Twitter page and see how many people we can amass.

So, I think if someone came up with a great print idea, they have to absolutely work hard to get it into print. And then bring everything else along with it. I would encourage someone, instead of starting a blog; I’d encourage them to mock up the first issue, to lay out the pages and think about the type of paper or the page size, and what other print magazines that it would sit alongside.

Samir Husni: If I show up at your house unexpectedly one evening, what do I find you doing; reading a magazine; playing your vinyl; watching television; having a glass of wine; or something else?

Ian Peel: There’s quite an easy answer to that, which is, as soon as the magazine goes to bed, I go straight on to the next one. And it’s because it’s like this weird zone that you get into, when you’re finishing an issue, you just can’t stop. You’re on a roll.

And that’s why I think that bimonthly magazines are quite hard, because there’s that dip for readers and potential purchasers, of two months, where they might forget about you in the middle of those two months. But there’s also this kind of dip in energy between the two months, which is why a monthly is great. It keeps the energy levels up all of the time. With Classic Pop, when it was bimonthly, I would literally finish one article and start making the next one, because I couldn’t get out of the zone.

Samir Husni: My typical last question; what keeps you up at night?

Ian Peel: (Laughs) I think the easy answer to that is the idea for magazine number three. It does keep me up at night, because when I look at this proposal, I’m excited. I’m excited and happy to read the proposal through.

Also, whether these ideas work or not, it’s a lot of fun and very rewarding to put them together and to try them.

Samir Husni: Thank you.