Paste Magazine is back, sort of. Does anyone care?

edited June 2011 in General
I used to subscribe to PASTE until last year when they declared bankruptcy and stopped the print addition in favor of an online only website. Yesterday, I received an email announcing a weekly online subscription edition called mPlayer:

Dear Paste Subscriber,

On September 1 of last year, we announced the suspension of the print edition of Paste magazine on our website. The economic downturn and mounting debt forced this decision, one that broke our hearts and disappointed our legions of subscribers. Since then, we haven't communicated anything further, and for that, we are very sorry. We don't blame you if you were frustrated by lack of response from customer service and lack of any statement beyond the one posted on our website.

It's our hope to earn back your trust and to that end, we've got two pieces of great news.

First is recent news—the acquisition of Paste by the team that brings you Wolfgang's Vault, Crawdaddy and Daytrotter, our new sister companies. The Paste founding team remains in place.

Here's the even better news we've been dying to share with you: Paste Magazine is back. Today we announce the launch of a wholly new, unprecedented digital magazine experience—The Paste mPlayer, complete with a weekly Paste Sampler. The new Paste was created by the same people that brought you the print magazine.

We asked ourselves: If we could invent a smart pop culture magazine right now, what would it look like?

mPlayer is the answer. Get to it here.

It works in your web browser and later this year will work as an app for both iOS and Android devices. (Yes, you can use it via a web browser on an iPad or other tablet, but we can’t promise it’s perfect in that environment quite yet.)

Here's 3 important things to know:

The Paste Sampler: It’s back, but there's a nice twist: Paste is now WEEKLY and you'll be receiving 7 NEW SONGS PER WEEK. Exclusive Content: mPlayer content is exclusive to the mPlayer and isn’t repeated on PasteMagazine.com (except Reviews, which appear in both places). Free issues for loyal subscribers: This summer, as a way to show our appreciation to you for being a subscriber to Paste in the past, you’ll enjoy the Paste mPlayer free for 9 weekly issues during our Beta Preview (and when the paid version launches in September, you’ll receive a token for more free issues). You can get to Issue #1 right here.
In September of 2011, each weekly issue of the mPlayer will sell for 99 cents per issue or $36 for a yearly (48-issue) subscription.

We’re thrilled to be back producing the kind of substantial pop culture coverage you came to expect in Paste Magazine. PasteMagazine.com continues to be the home of our with news, reviews, blogs, photo galleries, video and fun pop-culture lists.

Thanks for hanging with us and we hope you enjoy the new mPlayer as much as we do.


Your friends at Paste,

Josh, Tim & Nick




You can read about it here here and here.


I've been getting an e-mail newsletter and read reviews on their website, but honestly am not willing to pay for this weekly service, with so many other websites and magazine still out there. The weekly playlist seems to be web based, compared to their old download model.

Comments

  • Oooooh! If I can afford, I want to try it. I had just started subscribing to paste, I think a year before they closed their doors. I loved their samplers.
  • Paste Week 2 is out. Some Gillian Welch (mp3 and vid), Civil Wars, Amos Lee, Wanda Jackson, and a link to the Belle Brigade on Daytrotter. Some early glitches, though. The CIvil Wars article is really an Old 97's article.
  • It looks like they've tweaked things abit according to and email I received today:

    “We know it's easy to miss email, so we're sending the letter below a 2nd time. The new Paste Magazine mPlayer has gotten off to a great start, and Issue 2 was posted yesterday. If you did get this letter last week, here's a few bits of news about mPlayer:

    We've added a Download All button - it's a blue button next to the player that says "All" with the downward arrow. This will download a folder with all seven weekly mp3s. Then add those files to your iTunes.
    To sign up to use mPlayer, we recommend using Facebook or Twitter to login, but you can choose to simply use email instead. If you had an account on PasteMagazine.com, you can use the same email but you must create a new account for mPlayer, so you have to click "Sign Up" rather than "Sign In" the first time you log in.
    This week's issue has our longest-awaited cover subject, Gillian Welch on the cover.”
  • Looks like a couple of Paste rooms have sprung up on turntable.fm.
    No idea which is the real one - they all say "Where Paste magazine's fans and staff play good music" in the room description.

    http://turntable.fm/paste_magazine
    http://turntable.fm/paste
    http://turntable.fm/paste2
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