On the surface the rationale for this new publication is plausible--it is a niche that is not currently filled. However, I strongly suspect that is because it's not a very big niche. It was prudent of them to manage downward their first-year circulation expectations. To get beyond that level will require one of two things to happen. Either there really are hordes of older music consumers out there, aching to learn more in-depth information about music and musicians, who have somehow been missed all these years by all the other trendspotters in the magazine and entertainment delivery industries (unlikely, but possible); or the appearance of this magazine will become a catalytic event, mobilizing older, somnolent music consumers to care suddenly once again about having a level of involvement with their music that they mostly abandoned many years before, or never previously enjoyed at all ("unlikely" doesn't begin to cover it).
While there are exceptions (some of whom post here), it is
generally the case that as people age, they are less and less intensely involved with the recorded music they listen to. It becomes a soundtrack, or backdrop, to the rest of their lives rather than a primary activity. Very few people my age will simply sit and listen hard to a CD end-to-end, trying to relate actively to whatever the artist is laying down. Listening for them is mostly passive, intermittent, and accompanied by involvement in other activities requiring the better part of their attention.
Two things (at least) contribute to this change in listening habits. One is that as people get older, there are more demands on their time and they acquire other primary avocations. It's harder to budget the time to music appreciation--especially recorded music appreciation--that a younger person might. A second, related factor is that really getting inside a genre, artist, or even a particular composition is almost like learning a new language. To the hardcore music fan, this discovery process is one of the real joys of fandom. To many aging and disengaging former hardcore fans (and 100% of casual listeners), learning more languages becomes harder and harder to commit to. So their musical tastes increasingly get frozen in time. Sting may be a pale caricature of his former incarnation as a Policeman, but the people who once learned how to appreciate his musical and songwriting techniques don't have to work very hard to get
something out of his latest CD. For them, it encapsulates some of the feelings and responses they once had to his earlier work, just by being recognizably his. So they'll buy it.
Does that mean they'll also buy a magazine full of a former rock star's meandering thoughts, pictures of his home furnishing choices, and copious advertising for expensive knockoffs of those choices? Nobody asked me, but I don't think I'd have invested in that venture.
Interestingly (to me anyway), the relationship which those same over-the-hill maybe-pseudo-former fans have with live music is much more similar to the way fanatics like the readers of this board relate to live performances by the newer, more original, and generally more passionate artists they favor. That's why you'll see the geezers coming out of the woodwork to pay stupid prices for Eagles tickets. And carrying on at the shows (to the extent their atrophied sense of rhythm and arthritic joints permit) like they think they remember they did 25 years ago.
