It's sad. I had some comments on the mag, but it still had great content. My magazine had an agreement with Bass Player, so I could use some of their content, translated to Dutch in my magazine. Sometimes I just couldn't reach certain basssists, so I used their interviews a couple of times. For us with five magazines (guitar, bass, drums, recording, musicians') it's also hard, especially with rising prices and covid. We need advertisements and that's hard when container prices from China have risen from 1000 dollar to 15.000 (!). And the following:
Drums aren't sold, PA stuff isn't sold, so no ads. Interfaces and acoustics are sold to good and aren't available, so no ads, haha.
"Apparently people still read it. I'm surprised."
Our sales is going up a bit every year, we also offer digital subscriptions and for 10 euros a month you can read us on Readly, among a gazillion other magazines (Think car mags, photography mags, specialty mags as VW Camper or Land Rover mags, juist eveything).
Apart from the magazines we have podcasts, websites, facebook pages, facebook groups, instagram accounts, our own events, events we work together with, a radio programm, a video channel, our own Tiny Desk kinda concert series, all to be visible and not to be just a magazine. Every year we do more with less people, but it's fun.
"Finally, they were pretty much talking about bassists I had never even heard of (and didn't want to hear about"
It's quite hard to please everyone. I make four issues a year and I always try to make a mix between male, female, famous, coming up, old, young, Dutch/Belgian of foreign, all the music genres/styles, So every year I try to have famous bass players, up and coming players, men, women, and then also metal, punk, pop, funk, jazz, blues, rock, country.... I think one of the tasks of the magazine is to introduce players to our readers. There's one thing I hate: twice I had a metal bassist in it with a great story for each and every bass player. Some people told me they didn't read it, because they were metal players and those people weren't into metal. But as said the story was very good for any musician in any style. I really don't like that.
We were very early with Joe Dart, Michael League, I love to talk to people like John Stirratt of Wilco (twice), JMJ (twice) or unsung heroes like Gus Seyffert who plays or played with Norah Jones, The Who (last record), Black Keys, and who's toring with Roger Waters. Nobody knows him, but he makes a great story!
My love for magazines: If I go to Spotify I listen to certain music. If I go to a big instrument website I go to certain basses. Through mags and real stores I disocver new music, new brands, new models. I really miss Q magazine to discover new bands and read about it.
I think it's a pity, I prefer real books and mags over Readly mags and my ereader (both very handy while traveling). I hope we can continue making our mags, but there aren't many bass mags left. I think a French one, maybe an Italian one, a German one I think. Maybe in Asia? I wish all the BP people lots of luck and I hope the online content will be great!
