Not long ago, alternative music geeks from around the world logged onto the Paste Magazine Web site in hopes of reading a first review of the just-released album from Chicago alt-rock sensation Wilco.
Fans got much more than a capsule review of "Wilco (The Album)." Paste had staged a Web event entitled "Wilco (The Takeover)" and devoted almost the entire Web site (www.pastemagazine.com) to news and notes about the band. There was a story about lead singer Jeff Tweedy punching someone, a reader poll, an analysis of nonsensical Wilco lyrics, a look at the Wilco iPhone app, and a recap of every last word Paste had written about Wilco. The site even featured the new album streaming online in its entirety.
Somewhere in this massive coverage was a generally negative review of "Wilco (The Album)" that said the usually experimental band was playing it too safe.
Paste readers — more than 1 million unique monthly online visitors and 205,000 print subscribers — expect nothing less. Nothing less thorough, critical, clever or unabashedly geeky.
"We've always wanted to be like our tagline," says Josh Jackson, the quiet-spoken, 37-year-old editor of this Decatur-based music magazine. "You know, 'Signs of Life in Music and Culture.'"
But is Paste demonstrating signs of life or is it on life support?
Like so many other publications today, Paste has faced a free-fall decline in advertising this past year that threatened to shutter the operation. The situation has been particularly dire for print music magazines. Resonance and No Depression — two small, well regarded titles — folded in 2008. Blender ceased publication earlier this year, despite a circulation that topped 800,000. On the same day as the Wilco Web event, Vibe threw in the towel.
"Paste has never been a cash cow for anyone," says Jackson from Paste's cavernous and half-occupied offices near downtown Decatur. "But we were getting in debt and behind on paying people. We had to do something."
In early March, Jackson and his two partners, Nick Purdy and Tim Regan-Porter, began mulling over the idea of appealing directly to the magazine's readers for stopgap funds. Within the week, they launched the "Campaign to Save Paste" online. Though they didn't share the sum of money they needed, it was daunting: $300,000.
"I think there are two kinds of people who love music," says Jackson, a tall man with a taciturn demeanor, short cropped hair that has just started to gray, and boxy black-framed glasses. "The first kind listen to what's on the radio, to whatever the DJ's choose to play. The second kind actively seek out the good stuff. Those are our readers."
Jackson and his friends — he has known Purdy since they both attended Dunwoody High School and Regan-Porter since Jackson was a journalism major at the University of Georgia — launched Paste as an online music retailer in 1998. They specialized in independent music that wasn't getting airplay. They soon saw that plenty of fans wanted more discussion and critical appraisal of this music, and they launched the first print edition of Paste in 2002. (The name comes from the old Web site's tagline: "Connecting music to the soul.")
"When we first launched, the bands we liked to write about — say, Arcade Fire — weren't getting much coverage. Now they're likely to show up on 'Saturday Night Live.'"
From the beginning, the Paste team understood its role as a conduit between bands that were trying to break out and listeners looking for a fresh sound. Every issue contained a CD of tracks from the artists covered in its pages.
"Most of our readers have truly discovered new music because of Paste," Jackson says.
Paste rode the growing interest in independent music into larger and larger Decatur offices — eventually ending up in their present location with a recording studio where touring bands could cut special tracks for Paste readers.
Despite Paste's rising national presence, Jackson and company were never tempted to relocate to a media capital like New York. "We work so much with writers and photographers all over the country," says Jackson, adding, "we could never have a set-up like this."
Beyond that, Paste contributes to the Decatur community. Jackson sends his three children to Decatur City schools, his wife works at a local church, and the Paste staff supports local businesses.
By 2007, Jackson saw that the Web site had built its own distinct readership and community, and he hired a Web editor. The Web team developed clever side projects that generated millions of hits, such as the "Obamaconme" site that let people recast their online avatars in the style of artist Shepard Fairey's iconic Barack Obama poster. (More recently, visitors to the site encounter "Iranicon," which lets them tint their pictures green in support of fair elections.)
But as Paste's readership continued to grow, it wasn't enough for advertisers. In late 2007, the magazine invited readers to pay what they wanted for a year's subscription. In a letter to readers, Regan-Porter said that he was in part influenced by a similar campaign the band Radiohead had launched for the download of its album "In Rainbows."
"We were curious to know what our customers thought we were worth," says Regan-Porter. "And what better way to find out, than to let them tell us?"
The pay-what-you-want campaign was not hugely successful, but it did serve as a dress rehearsal for the current effort.
After spending a night crunching the numbers in early May, Regan-Porter determined that the magazine couldn't publish another issue without a sudden infusion of cash. Jackson spent the next week contacting artists, asking them to donate rare and unreleased tracks as a reward for readers who contributed. More than 70 artists — including Neko Case and the Decemberists — responded.
Before Jackson was ready to announce the campaign on Paste's Web site, the media gossip site Gawker broke the story and raised the question: Can a magazine survive by pleading for money from its customers? Some consider this a line that should never be crossed.
"I hope they don't go out of business, but if you can't make it, you shouldn't beg," says Jeff Clark, who publishes Stomp and Stammer, a 15,000-circulation music magazine for Atlanta and Athens. "It kind of compromises what you do."
But Eric Levin, the owner of Criminal Records store in Atlanta and current president of the Alliance of Independent Media Stores, says the campaign and its response show what an important role Paste plays.
"It speaks to their position in the national music community. The fact that all those artists stepped forward to offer free tracks was amazing," Levin says.
He also believes that Paste's voice is more important than ever now that so many independent music magazines have folded. "A lot of mainstream publications choose the art they're reviewing to show off their supposed cleverness. The mission of Paste, clearly, is to celebrate the art."
After Jackson announced the "Save Paste" campaign on the Web site, he figured that donations wouldn't come close to meeting the goal. But the pledges started rolling in, and after five weeks, more than 9,000 readers has contributed upward of $240,000 — well en route to the $300,000 needed. Writers and photographers responded by canceling invoices. Decatur businesses, such as Leon's Full Service, invited staffers to Paste appreciation days.
"I can't say enough about how much we were blown away by the response," Jackson says.
Paste has not yet devised a new business model, but it has bought some breathing room — time to figure out a way to give both recordings artists and music lovers the forum they both depend on.
Though he remains sceptical, Clark is watching the outcome for the impact it might have on the publishing industry. "If this is successful for them, I can guarantee a lot more magazines will be doing the same thing."
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