Comments on: State fails to find a paying market

By: Gareth

Gareth — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 00:47:24 +0000

Not to retreat into pedantry, but the headline implies nothing of the sort. It merely suggests that State was unable to find a paying market. For the sake of argument,
if I printed thousands of copies of a highly desirable magazine, and then left them to rot in my basement, I too would have ‘fail[ed] to find a paying market’.

Incidentally, if you are – as implied by your comment – privy to State’s sales figures, I’m sure folks here and elsewhere would love to hear what you have to say :).

Finally, and this is just out of curiosity… How might a magazine increase it’s distribution – without street teams – by becoming free? AFAIK, it’s more difficult to get newsagents to stock a publication which does not contribute to their bottom line. By contrast, distributing to non-traditional outlets like clubs and bars is a much more difficult (and potentially expensive) undertaking.

By: Ivan

Ivan — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 23:43:09 +0000

The headline for this article assumes that State didn’t sell very well. It sold very well where it was placed. The trouble was getting it into the stores and tracking the distribution. The middle man has now been taken away. I see a lot of assumptions on a number of blogs, which is expected, but this headline is factually incorrect ;)

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:43:41 +0000

I preferred the first design too, but it didn’t allow for much content. As my girlfriend said, “it looked like one giant ad.” I’m sure they’ll tweak the design as they go on, but I think the current design will work out better in the long run.

By: Gareth Stack

Gareth Stack — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 13:28:11 +0000

I realise this will be interpreted as sour grapes; but I’m really disappointed with the new state website. As far as I can see it’s just an uglier wordpress theme. The look of the original state.ie was one thing I really admired about the magazine. We’ve had to muddle through with the look of the Analogue site (not having a professional web designer on staff), though I couldn’t be prouder of the content on the site. With State’s resources I was expecting something special on the web end – perhaps integrating new community technologies to help make the site a hub. As is, it just seems like a more regularly updated, worse looking blog.

By: Karl

Karl — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:25:25 +0000

In an actual serious comment – maintaining it with a professional staff and paying what they pay per CD review might be tough for them now. Like Una was saying, and Bren points out a lot, we have a load of young people with pretty strong opinions who are willing enough to put the time into writing for free. State have those people too (gleefully reviewing for pocket money), but it might be hard to get their top tier to accept pay cuts for doing what they might be able to do for a newspaper or another magazine for more money.

In fairness to them, most of them do seem quite personally invested in the magazine, so maybe they’ll do it for the love. If they wreck our buzz we might have to fight them though.

By: Orla Graham

Orla Graham — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:24:39 +0000

Fair play to them for changing it. The reaction Gareth gave could only be expected to the previous ill-thought out attempt. I think it will be interesting to see what they come up with for the first free issue.

By: Karl

Karl — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:16:39 +0000

Might start reading State now.

By: Aidan

Aidan — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 10:48:24 +0000

BREAKING NEWS! There's a different statement on the site this morning, with this contentious point addressed: Of course we’re not the first to take this approach (props to our colleagues at Mongrel, Analogue and Connected) and the way things are going we’re sure we won’t be the last, but we are genuinely excited by the prospects that await us.

By: adam

adam — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 10:36:48 +0000

Man, it’s tough out there. State probably should have launched as a freesheet..if at all. Foggy Notions and Mongrel had just folded (metaphorically) when State came out and, to be honest, they were never gonna top the quality of Foggy Notions (for a cover price) and the free lunacy of Mongrel which got picked up by people other than music fans. It was really bad timing.

By: Ciarán Gaynor

Ciarán Gaynor — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 10:29:04 +0000

Sorry, hate the way I phrased that last comment. Flicking through State for the first time in Eason I thought “Wow, this is great!” And I like that they put ABBA on the cover last month, but noted the usual apologetic tone at the start of the ABBA feature itself. All-in-all though, a very good read; nice layout and design, great content.