Electronic Beats Discontinues Print Magazine

UPDATE [Thursday, November 19th]: In a statement to THUMP provided over email, Electronic Beats' Editor-In-Chief A.J. Samuels has explained the move to online-only—and why he is stepping down from his position.

The main reason is for EB to focus exclusively on online content. It's also far easier for controllers to measure the efficacy of online content through metrics like clicks, likes, shares, retweets etc. than it is to gather large scale data about the popularity of a print magazine. And of course, online is less expensive.

As for my departure: Electronic Beats is made up of multiple editorial staffs.The website functions as a hub into which these editorial staffs – Slices (video), EB Radio, EB Mag, EB.net, and EB Booking– feed in. I had 5 excellent years at EB Magazine with maximum editorial freedom and almost complete editorial independence. My focus was exclusively the magazine, though I was also responsible for choosing and setting up the editorial staff at EB.net. Continuing on as editor-in-chief of EB.net would have meant doing a fundamentally different kind of job – one which involves not only curating/creating your own content but balancing content in the hub that was commissioned elsewhere.

It's important to note that the magazine will not be continued online. The magazine concept, devised by Max Dax, was highly specific: limit the amount of POV journalism and create new journalistic formats which focus on the artist's voices and spoken language. Structurally, these formats were divided into the separate magazine sections of Monologues (artists voices alone), Interviews (journalist interviewing artist) and Conversations (artists talk to each other). Visually, the focus was mostly on portraiture, documentary photography and a clear graphical language. This is not the specific concept of EB.net, though online does feature some of these elements. That said, my colleagues Elissa Stolman and Sven von Thülen, for whom I have the utmost respect, have done an excellent job at developing EB.net's own identity and continue to feature excellent content.

Samuels also sent us the full editorial that was included in the print edition of the magazine's last issue, writing, "I think it does a pretty good job of explaining the reasons why the mag was discontinued." We've reproduced it below.

In an editorial introduction to the Fall/Winter issue of Electronic BeatsMagazine, Editor-in-Chief A.J. Samuels has stated that the magazine will discontinue their quarterly print edition. But don't toll the death knell just yet: the publication will continue to live online, with editorial content posted on their website.

Electronic Beats is based in Berlin, and was started in 2000 as the electronic music program of German telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom. The company also runs live music events around Europe, a DVD division called Slices, a radio station, and an online shop.

Electronic Beats Magazine covered music, culture, fashion, and lifestyle, with an emphasis on artist-driven interviews. In the About section of their website, it positions itself as "the cultural self-image of those who see electronic music and culture as the foundation of both the digital revolution and, in turn, analog evolution."

The entire statement reads as follows:

"Electronic Beats Magazine has been around for 11 years. I've had the pleasure of working on it for the last five, while serving as editor-in-chief for the past 12 months. In 2011, art director Johannes Beck and myself helped former editor-in-chief Max Dax realize his vision of transforming Electronic Beats from a theme-based quarterly into a magazine focused on interviews and oral history. Artists' perspectives became the nucleus of the publication's identity. The idea wasn't only to create a magazine that stood as a model for the future of print, but also as a vehicle for a metadiscourse about the the future of print—and the role of corporate publishing in that future. We won awards. Corporate publishing awards. Lots of them. It's with great regret that I inform you that this will be the final issue of Electronic Beats Magazine."

THUMP has reached out to Electronic Beats for comment, and are waiting for a response.

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