Size does matter?

I love records. They are big and physical and if someone threw a CD and an LP of the same album into the air, I would leap for the LP every time. Music has gone from huge records, to CD’s, to digital (nothingness you could say).

It’s something you get used to as the world turns, everything becoming smaller, phones, cars, but I must say that I was recently surprised when my first issue of Goldmine magazine came.

Goldmine was a magazine that I used to check out once in a while way back when. It was mainly about vinyl in those days and was filled with ads for record shops and private sellers and had articles about bands interspersed. I remember liking it a lot. Recently I picked up a few old copies with good covers at a rock and roll garage sale. More on that later. Based on glancing through these old copies I was inspired to subscribe to Goldmine.

My first issue came this month. Uh… it has changed.

Here I compare a copy I recently bought from 1990 to the one I just got.

Once you get past the hideous picture of Bowie on the right hand cover, take a look at the size difference. Wow. In 25 years the cover price has only gone up a couple bucks, but you can say that it has slimmed down considerably.

Also, in 1990 it was 163 pages long, these days just over 57 pages.

This is obviously attributable to the drastic decline in LP sellers these days. I understand.

I just find it another testament to the shrinking of everything. I flipped through the magazine, and don’t get me wrong, the contents are good. I don’t mean to slight Goldmine in that sense. There is everything here that used to be here, and I even enjoyed the article on John Fogerty and Steve Earl. I hoped to find some record companies in here that may still have paper catalogs, or ads for interesting releases and such. Also, I love to read about musicians and records and music. That is Goldmine and that has not changed.

Interestingly, another thing that hasn’t changed, Bags Unlimited advertises on the back.

I suppose it’s only a matter of time before paper copies of any magazine go away.

You’ll have to read it in your heads up display as your driverless car flies you to work.