Death of the music mag

Jonah Weiner has a good article on the slow, creeping death of the music magazine over at Slate. He brings up some good points--especially (and obviously) the fact that many people simply do not need music magazines anymore because the information and creativity is available more readily from online outlets--but I think one additional underlying reason is the very way that readers read.

As we get more in the habit of reading online, we become spoiled with how quickly we can filter our information. If a review or feature article sucks or is too long, we can quickly hit 'back' and find something else of interest. Of course, we can turn the page of a magazine as well, but I think we're getting to the point where we can't stand that annoying physicality. I still enjoy that aspect when reading books, but when it comes to Relix, Paste, or when I'm at the teetering edge of boredom and insanity waiting in the doctor's office, Rolling Stone (gasp), I prefer to seek out that information through my usual routes of blogs and Websites. Reading online provides a certain freedom that the physical chains of a magazine doesn't. It's almost as if we prefer mapping out an online feed because that's how our eyes are being trained to read, jumping all over links and images and soundclips with the attention span of nano-seconds.