The music magazine ‘Rockdelux’ has announced this Monday its farewell after more than 35 years in the kiosks and about 400 numbers due to the “generalized crisis experienced by the printed press” and the hit of the coronavirus pandemic, and it does so with a May issue in which 55 firms collaborate.
In an editorial posted on his website, he pointed out that the crisis in the printed press “has been undermining a project that has remained on the fringes of large editorial groups, defending a freedom and a line of work that has become more difficult to keep. “
He has argued that a small publisher like that of ‘Rockdelux’ depended on a balance between kiosk sales, increasingly scarce, and advertising revenue, a balance that has been “cracking” for years.
To this, they add, it has been added that the “unexpected hit of the coronavirus pandemic has been (is) a brutal slap that makes the project even more unfeasible”, since he has said that he has always tried to maintain quality standards and a decent remuneration, within their means.
“Journalism (musical and of any other kind) is not done (or should not be done) for free. In ‘Rockdelux’ we have always tried to support this aspect of professionalism in an environment dominated by a willing (and often blushing) amateurism “, has held.
The magazine has assured that he is leaving “with his head held high, with the satisfaction of a job well done and with the sadness of not being able to continue doing it”, and has thanked the work of all those involved in the project throughout these 35 years.
Likewise, on a digital version: “A digital magazine, right now, is only viable highlighting a return to that unpaid amateurism against which we have always fought.”
The latest issue of the magazine, 394, has been proposed as an open guide for collaborators to take out their affiliates and extend their cultural preferences to readers in these times of confinement, without the need to adapt to the present day, with 55 signatures: “Kind of like a summary of the philosophy that has always run through the pages of the magazine.”
