Magazines, Obits — December 21, 2012 at 6:14 pm

Spin, 1985-2012: Magazine unceremoniously halts publication, goes web-only

Back in July, when Buzzmedia bought up Spin magazine, the online media company announced it would print a September/October issue in late August, but that there wouldn’t be a November/December edition because it was “still determining exactly how print fits in with Spin’s multiple distribution points and growth initiatives.”

Since then, there’s been no announcement about the fate of the 27-year-old magazine, but now it’s official: As The Daily Swarm points out, Spin subscribers are receiving the current issue of Car and Driver with letters advising them that Spin “ceased publication” after that September/October issue, and that they’ll now receive Car & Driver for the duration of their subscription.

While Spin lives on as a robust web publication, it’s an unceremonious end for the magazine that, in the late ’80s, chronicled the rise of college rock and the indie underground — from American heroes The Replacements, Hüsker Dü and R.E.M. to Brit imports such as The Cure and Morrissey — and bravely covered the AIDS epidemic and bashed the PMRC’s war on music.

If you’d like to reacquaint yourself with Spin’s great late-’80s music coverage, check out the collection of links we assembled in 2010 when the magazine was added to Google Books.

LINK: Spin in the ’80s: The Cure, R.E.M., Morrissey, The Replacements and much more

 

 

9 Comments

  1. is there a single SPIN subscriber that will be satisfied by a CAR & DRIVER substitution?

  2. Would Martha Stewart Living be more appropriate? They probably did the best they could. I’m trust C&D hopes they might pick up a scribe or two.

  3. A refund would have been appropriate.

  4. Car & Driver? Car & Driver? I am so mad and now I will probably have to jump through some hoops to get a refund…Thanx, Spin douchebags.

  5. I haven’t opened a Spin in a decade, but going through the issues of the 90s on Google Books is like going through a photo album. So many memories.

    http://books.google.com/books/serial/ISSN:08863032

  6. Wow Car and Driver? What an insult. Such is the way of progress, but I loved leafing through those glossy pages.

  7. ola…

  8. Darn! No where am I going to get my news on rap, more rap, and still more rap?

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