Thirty year old British metal magazine Metal Hammer is no more after its parent company Team Rock Ltd went into administration due to losing 8.8 million pounds last year. The printed mainstream media was unable to compete content wise with zines back in the day and the internet has finally put it down. Seventy three shills are rightfully out of work.
Thirty years of fellating major label trends and whatever currently was being pimped proved no match for an over-saturated and rehashed market in which the sheep get to listen before payihg money to drink the Kool-Aid that the major labels, shills, and funderground are attempting to force feed them through saturation of traditional outlets. Hopefully the mainstream “metal” websites like Vice Noisey, Metal Injection, and MetalSucks are next.
Tags: funderground, mainstream metal, metal hammer, shills
Good riddance.
Now THIS is what I call a Christmas present.
That’s not quite correct: The »Team Rock«-company was run into the ground by its directors despite getting a £4.5 million cash injection and a £8.9 million debt reduction last year (2015). That’s bad for the 73 people who were made redundant (and for the creditors) but MetalHammer (and other magazines published by the company) are now assets with a certain commercial value for sale to anyone who might want to buy them. This may eventually lead to some or all of this magazines going away but more likely, they’ll just end up being published more cheaply, eg, (totally contrived example) cut all the non-content of Classic Rock, Metal Hammer and Prog by two-thirds, publish all three of them together. There’s already a significant overlap between the audience.
Like everything else, this brand will be sold to a clearinghouse that has one recent college student write everything by aping press releases. That is how you make profit in the Obama economy.
Still more insightful than watching hardcore lispers defend faggy emotional bands of yesteryear.
The media is dying. First, the internet challenged them; next, being idiots, they failed to offer greater value. The long-form stories were their last attempt, but missed the big point, which is that their news reporting is vapid and always represents the perspectives of those with money trying to control markets. So they were abandoned… and now die in horror.
I didn’t even know it was still around.
I see them on sale at the hardware store all the time.