Electronic Musician’s Final Print Issue

They’re moving to a digital format, but EM was one of the first to serve our industry and many of us here were involved with it

And so we come to yet another end to the same era: Electronic Musician’s editor Si Truss announced that their current print issue is the last one, that they’re moving to an all-digital format.

No doubt viewers of Synth and Software get that there are a lot of advantages to a digital publication. We include audio and/or video examples so you hear what we’re talking about. It’s not necessary to describe buttons and knobs that you can see quite clearly on the screen.

Everything happens quickly, and we’re able to cover breaking news right away. Print has a long lead time before issues reach the stands. And so on.

Still, many of our contributors were involved with the print edition of that magazine, whether they were on staff or just free-lance writers. They – we – can’t avoid having… a reaction.

Synth and Software publisher and co-founder Joe Perry was EM’s publisher, and he worked on the magazine for a decade and a half. I wrote for EM when I wasn’t the editor of Recording magazine, later editor/publisher of Virtual Instruments magazine. Former Synth and Software editor Geary Yelton was an EM editor for many, many years.

Everyone in the publishing business understands how satisfying it was working on a paper magazine, the excitement of seeing the office copies when they came back from the printer, cringing at the inevitable typos you missed. Ooh. Maybe not that.

But what we did was equally important to musicians and to the industry. In addition to introducing their new products, manufacturers relied upon us to “educate their market” – which is very important when you’re building music and audio equipment that does things no one understands… either because it never existed before, or because it had previously been far too expensive for individuals to afford.

And you know what? That hasn’t changed. Professional music tech journalism is still just as important, which is why we have so much fun presenting it in the digital format. The advances in music technology may not be as flashy as they were when all this was brand new, but they are still coming at a furious pace.

Simultaneously, we musicians have been rediscovering forgotten instruments from decades ago. Not only are the originals getting dusted off, they’re being recreated in both hardware and software. I personally have been having way too much fun working with some of the latest softsynths.

Who knows, maybe we’re poised to enter another golden age of music? The world could sure use it right now.

So we urge everyone to continue supporting professional music tech journalism. We hope you’ll subscribe to Synth and Software (it’s free!), and we wish our colleagues at EM much success in their new format.