Q Magazine Punk'd

I picked up the March 2006 of Q Magazine because I had some spare cash and it promised to be a special on Punk. I've got the NME Punk special from a few years ago and a volume on Electro music and they start a game with me and my SO of what have we got and what should we go look for.

This issue offers 50 free Punk MP3's through Napster. Of course it's one of those subscribe for a month, download, then unsubscribe/regular withdrawal deals. (We've already got all but 6 of the tracks, so not worth it) It's a pretty decent selection with all the usual suspects (Sex Pistols, The Stooges, DK's, Bad Religion, XTC, Ramones, Buzzcocks) and while you could question how punk some of the bands are, they are pretty much what has come to represent punk 30 years on. They include Sound of The Suburbs, The Members; Debaser, Pixies; No More Heroes, Stranglers and Another Girl, Another Planet, The Only Ones - all of which I love (NMH is one of my favourite songs of all time). But they also leave off some fantastic stuff like Oh, Bondage Up Yours, X-ray Spex or Ca Pleine Pour Moi, Plastic Bertrand both of which caused more of a furor at the time than songs like Heart of Glass, Blondie.

After a long hiatus from purchasing music magazines (about the time the frustration with never seeing anything about the music I want to listen to set in) it's really interesting to see the way that 'new media' has truly infiltrated this magazine. On nearly every page there's a note to 'download song' and it's designed to look like a button on a website to reinforce the notion of connection between the page and the web. In fact most of the features are designed using web conventions which is an interesting development in terms of the ongoing debate between old and new media.

It's also interesting that their suggested downloads are through itunes, napster and wippit. Although the whole download symbolism has an aspect of 'free' implicit into it, like when we download program updates or utilities, all of the downloads offered in the magazine are tied in some way. From the main page on the website, and the advertising in the magazine, the essential 50 downloads for the month are highlighted. For free you get 30 second samples - the files themselves are available to download, mostly from Itunes which brings me to draw the conclusion, tongue-in-cheek, that the Q stands for Quicktime who must own the magazine with all its advertising revenue.

Q Magazine Punk'd

I picked up the March 2006 of Q Magazine because I had some spare cash and it promised to be a special on Punk. I've got the NME Punk special from a few years ago and a volume on Electro music and they start a game with me and my SO of what have we got and what should we go look for.

This issue offers 50 free Punk MP3's through Napster. Of course it's one of those subscribe for a month, download, then unsubscribe/regular withdrawal deals. (We've already got all but 6 of the tracks, so not worth it) It's a pretty decent selection with all the usual suspects (Sex Pistols, The Stooges, DK's, Bad Religion, XTC, Ramones, Buzzcocks) and while you could question how punk some of the bands are, they are pretty much what has come to represent punk 30 years on. They include Sound of The Suburbs, The Members; Debaser, Pixies; No More Heroes, Stranglers and Another Girl, Another Planet, The Only Ones - all of which I love (NMH is one of my favourite songs of all time). But they also leave off some fantastic stuff like Oh, Bondage Up Yours, X-ray Spex or Ca Pleine Pour Moi, Plastic Bertrand both of which caused more of a furor at the time than songs like Heart of Glass, Blondie.

After a long hiatus from purchasing music magazines (about the time the frustration with never seeing anything about the music I want to listen to set in) it's really interesting to see the way that 'new media' has truly infiltrated this magazine. On nearly every page there's a note to 'download song' and it's designed to look like a button on a website to reinforce the notion of connection between the page and the web. In fact most of the features are designed using web conventions which is an interesting development in terms of the ongoing debate between old and new media.

It's also interesting that their suggested downloads are through itunes, napster and wippit. Although the whole download symbolism has an aspect of 'free' implicit into it, like when we download program updates or utilities, all of the downloads offered in the magazine are tied in some way. From the main page on the website, and the advertising in the magazine, the essential 50 downloads for the month are highlighted. For free you get 30 second samples - the files themselves are available to download, mostly from Itunes which brings me to draw the conclusion, tongue-in-cheek, that the Q stands for Quicktime who must own the magazine with all its advertising revenue.