Stylus closing

BMW07 publication Stylus will be closing at the end of this month, as written about in the Observer and discussed on the magazine page. Read their "bluffer's guide" for a best of glimpse back into the archive. I really liked the Stylus writing format because it felt both knowledgeable and also fan-driven, more like the content of zines and print mags of yore than the bite-sized glib of contemporary mags and buzz-blogs. This of course was a drawback to the site as well - it took some dedication to sit and read through the often rambling ideas of the staff, as great as they often were. Christgau mentions this about the Stylus piece in his introduction for this year's BMW - it seemed "unedited" in that it was speculative. I think it was meant to be speculative, opinionated, and personal and as such was a good bookend to Douglas Wolk's much more straightforward piece about compression in the EMP book This Is Pop!

Stylus Magazine, Respected Online Music Publication, Will Fold After Halloween

by Leon Neyfakh
Published: October 26, 2007

P4RK's Scott P on the loss of Stylus:

"One disappointing thing about it is that there aren't very many music magazines anymore," he said. "Even online, since having a blog has simply been a matter of hosting a song and then saying, 'hey, here it is.' That's been pretty much the end of the conversation in a lot of places about music."

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This year's book

Best Music Writing 2008 will arrive in shops October 6, 2008.

Best Music Writing 2007 has been available since October 22, 2007. Get it from:

Your favorite indie book shop, Powell's Books, for $15.95

Or:
Border's, for $15.95

Barnes & Noble, for $14.35

Books A Million, for $11.51

Amazon, for $10.85

Praise for the BMW Series

“A diverse time capsule that grapples with pop music’s most engaging issues.”—Blender

“The stories behind the music can be as inspiring as the music itself…
will likely inspire the reader to seek out a lot of new music.”—New York Press

“…one of the few regular publications to be dependably open to every type of music imaginable…Whether an authoritative aggregation or merely a starting point,
it’s a shame it’s only an annual.”—Relix

“In all it’s quite a celebration of the vast enterprise known as music.”—Signal to Noise

Praise for the 2006 Edition

“Our favorite year-end read.”—Cleveland Scene

“Terrorism, sexual misconduct, and wholesome nostalgia, treated with a discernible backbeat and sprightly writing make for an excellent anthology.” ––Booklist

“the book finally reflects the current state of not just music journalism but music listening… These essays encapsulate a chilly, malefic year for music indeed.” —The Stranger

“Da Capo’s Best Music Writing 2006’s essays create a confrontational, challenging, and varied portrait of music criticism that highlights a visceral reaction to music over academic posturing…”—VenusZine

Stylus closing

Best Music Writing

This year's book

Praise for the BMW Series

Praise for the 2006 Edition

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