When OffBeat came about, the music business was very different. There were musicians, recording studios, labels, distribution companies, and retail record stores. By the time OffBeat was first published, CDs had taken the place of the old fashioned LP (which I grew up with, along with 45s).

Over the years, of course, the entire music industry was knocked upside down by the Internet and digital distribution. The musicians remained as the creators of the musical content, but the business side had a pretty difficult time coming to terms with changes. For years, the labels resisted any changes in their business model and protested free distribution (i.e., Napster and its ilk), to the industry’s ultimate detriment and to its demise as we knew it. The entire music industry and the fortunes of many musicians were made on royalties from songs, and the music publishing business. The labels “financed” the industry through their marketing and publicity muscle, and they also controlled, for the most part, the distribution of musical products.

Most of that model is gone now, or drastically changed. Now there are musicians: recording can be done at home with the appropriate computer equipment and a decent engineer; labels have shrunk to probably half of what used to exist; distribution companies, the same, and retail record stores are hanging on by a thread, with most of the large chains of years past having closed.

Buying music is digitally controlled, by the user. Music on CD is dying. What remains on CDs are catalog—the older stuff—that music freaks like me want because the packaging is usually enhanced with newly mastered CDs, photos and nice liner notes, and rare bonus tracks. We’re the collectors; we still look forward to what I call the “fondle factor”: looking at the packaging, checking out the photos, blah, blah.

Newspapers go the way of the CD? (Courtesy www.ep.tc)

Not so for people who are used to getting their music digitally, song by song. Interestingly, we used to buy 45s because it was a cheaper way to buy a couple of songs, then LPs became the standard for music and 45s went the way of 78rpm records. So we’re sort of back to the same model as before: people buy single songs digitally for 99 cents the same way as we did those old 45s.

A topsy-turvy upside-down business model now also applies to media. Some years ago, in my view, it was obvious that the web was going to have huge impact on OffBeat. So we created our first website in 1996, much ahead of the curve at the time (we had the first magazine website in Louisiana). NOLA.com didn’t exist, nor did Google. Keith Spera was still the editor of OffBeat. For a long time, we’ve been very aware of the changes that the Internet would bring to the magazine, because we were seeing the radical changes in the music business.

Our first Weekly Beat newsletter appeared almost 11 years ago. As a monthly magazine, we wanted to be able to do a few things: first, to be able to cover more stories and events than we could in a monthly format; second, to be able to strengthen the connection we’d worked so hard to develop with our readers; and third, to extend our “brand.” The Weekly Beat helped us accomplish that.

Next came our smartphone applications; we’ve plans to create a mobile site, and a lot more. But of course, all that takes financial resources. It’s difficult for a micro-business like OffBeat to be able to serve its readers and, at the same time, be prepared to change our delivery of information to our readers with technology that costs a lot more money than we have to work with…which leads me to the Times-Picayune issue.

The venerable 175-year-old Times-Picayune is scheduled to be title=”Times-Picayune Plans to Cut Staff and Publication Days”>downsized to a three-time-a-week print version this fall, with the bulk of the editorial content—and reportage—being moved to NOLA.com. Massive staff cuts are predicted, not only in production and distribution, but in the editorial staff as well.

Newspapers have been in decline for some time now because advertising revenue and subscriptions have fallen consistently as a result of the free distribution of news content on the internet—exactly like what happened in the music industry. Using the music business analogy, free information (music) means that less people will pay the price for the printed page (CDs).

We totally expect that to continue to happen in the magazine business. For as long as our readers want it, and we can afford to print it (which, of course, means we’ll need the advertising to support it), we’ll continue to publish a print version of OffBeat. But we are stepping up our game on the web. We’ll be putting more and more content—some of it exclusive—on our website at OffBeat.com, in blogs and in the Weekly Beat.  Our print edition will be more graphically oriented, with longer-form features and interviews.

Times-Picayune readers are understandably upset about the demise of the daily paper. I’m a newspaper person (I’ve tried getting my local news from NOLA.com, and I just find the site way too difficult to navigate, to read and to find information. I’m certainly not alone in this feeling. I don’t know anyone who’s ever told me that they prefer NOLA.com). But as the paper migrates to a digital format,  I think this move foreshadows the possible end of the in-depth news coverage and journalism that the daily paper provided. We’ll be spoon-fed what NOLA.com wants us to see (one tends to absorb a broader range of information when perusing a print newspaper than a bulleted web page). But I am convinced that there’s nothing we can do about it. The Internet monster has become a Frankenstein for many business models, but the fact is that consumers have embraced it. We either adjust to it and change our business model to move into the future, or we die—look at the music business. It took way too long to understand that you can’t stop technology.