A first-time poster. Clearly no agenda here?

Covermounts are usually awful and I rarely waste time listening to them. Word are the only covermounts I always listen to and I usually put more than 50% of them onto my iPod.

This month's CD is a cracker. Apart from tracks 4 (too down-tempo) and 15 (music is nice but I hate the singing) all of it has been ripped. I've listened to it three times as background music which is a record for a covermount. It really works as a straight through from start to finish listening experience for once. The best covermount I've heard.

Would magazine sales suffer for the lack of it?
Are artist sales increased through it's inclusion?

I'd find out the answers to this first.

Labels are willing to donate tracks to covermount CDs as long as it doesn't cost them anything? Sounds like they're doing OK out of the arrangement: none of the costs, but a share of the benefit. And I thought the music industry was in trouble.

...but I do know that the last two CDs (not including the current one which is sitting there on the table waiting for a proper - and for some reason now traditional - Saturday morning listen) were two of the best I have received for months. So unless the new one has taken a massive dive, I disagree with the idea that the quality has dipped.

Turning to Spinoza's question, although I love the magazine, I'm not convinced I'd be a subscriber if it wasn't for Now Hear This. I see the CD as an essential soundtrack to the magazine, as well as a valuable crowbar to my wallet for the featured artists. I'd hate it to disappear or even, for that matter, reincarnate as a downloadable file. Even the worst discs feature 2 or 3 stand-out tracks, and I love putting an old one on at random to see what suddenly grabs my attention.

Did make me think that record companies might not be giving the better stuff away for free anymore

I joined this blog many moons ago to voice my support for the CD and I'll voice it again. I have a three year overseas subscription and I definitely wouldn't renew it if there wasn't a CD. It's my most important source of new music and not a month goes by without me buying, minimum, two or three albums thanks to the CD. Certainly haven't noticed a decline in quality - almost without exception they're always half good, half unlistenable.

There is surely benefit for all in the CD. Word get added value from the inclusion of the CD. Record labels get an avenue of promotion to the album the track is from and the artist gets direct access to a group of people that spend more than the average on music and will likely buy a CD based upon hearing a good track several times. And I get a cd with (normally) 3 or 4 tracks I really like.

So, as long as all parties are happy to contribute (and those that aren't can surely not allow songs) everyone's a winner (baby).

And the quality doesn't appear to have shifted downwards to me.

It costs us £250,000 a year to provide the Now Hear This CDs. In addition to the costs of manufacturing and packaging, which are climbing all the time, we have to pay over a £100,000 a year in mechanical royalties and we have to pay that on the CDs that go with unsold magazines just as much as on the ones that are sold. In order to reduce our costs we ask either the publishing companies to waive those mechanical royalties or the record company to make a contribution of less than 50% towards them. Most of them are happy to do so because they recognise the value of getting their new artists heard by a readership who are happy to try new things. If we were seeking to exploit songwriters we would obviously be exploiting the names of better known ones. Most magazines' cover CDs consist of sub-prime material by well-known acts. We don't do that. Instead we provide our readers with 180 new names a year. It's the kind of policy that Sir Humphrey would have described as "very courageous". Your point about "coffers" I don't understand, even theoretically. Obviously if people did feel that the standard of the Now Hear This CDs had declined they're free to say so. In fact they generally let me know if there's even a couple of tracks they don't like, which just shows how closely they listen. (The post above, which distinguishes between "good" and "unlistenable", is a standard response. Generally what one reader regards as good another one thinks is unlistenable. That's life.)
David Hepworth (real name)

depending on what's out there and what we can get. But even though I work here, I think the last few CDs have been genuinely strong, we're proud of them, we play them in the office for fun and the stuff we have lined up for the future is particularly good.

I take issue with Bootspinney's suggestion that we're lining up alongside people who download music for free. I've lost count of the number of people who've told us they have discovered and bought music because of the WORD CD. When I was watching the Hot 8 Brass Band at Glastonbury a reader came up and said that he discovered them through THE WORD. Yes, we're a business and anyone who reads the papers knows that times are tight in media, but it seems to me that the CD does a valuable job for artists and readers alike.

who do you work for?

I think the CDs are rather good.

Artists are prepared to stick their tracks up on Myspace et.al. for nothing, why on earth should a covermount CD be any different?

If artists want the royalties to start rolling in they had better get their music out there in front of an audience that is overwhelmed by choice, and persuade them to invest their money. Otherwise, just lock it up in a filing cabinet somewhere and complain that no-one loves you.

Actually I'm a bit surprised that you have to pay royalties on a cover mounted CD, I just assumed that the publicity and interest generated for the record company and artist was more than enough. It is advertising after all.

I'm also amazed at the yearly cost of producing the CD and it is interesting to see some comments from people who say they would not subscribe if it wasn't for the CD, learn something new...

I think the CDs are excellent, for me I would subscribe to the magazine without it but I have always found them to throw up a few excellent tracks on each one and have certainly bought albums from bands I've liked the sound of.

Of course there are going to be some songs that appeal and others that do not due to the wide mix of styles featured, it's sort of like "Later with Jools Holland" - such a cross section that you might tut and moan at one artist but be impressed by something you might not necessarily have listened to.

The only way to stop the difference of opinion would be to go down the Mojo route with their (admittedly excellent) themed CDs where they concentrate on one genre or artist. However you don't often get the unexpected and pleasant surprise of discovering something completely new as you do on The Word CDs.

The Word is the only magazine I have ever subscribed to and is now the only one I purchased... Yes Mojo was dumped after Phil Alexander took over, Uncut dumped over a single album review [ petulant maybe] and the others I've slightly slipped over the age demographic horizon.

I like it's breadth of subject matter ... I like the writing [ on the whole] ... it lacks a barrage of aspirational adverts... and it feels like a small family of like minded people.

Yes it is slightly stuck in it's ways but I generally feel it's an honest Mag which for an extreme cynic as myself is quite an achievemnt.

As for the cover CD ... It's head and shoulders above other offerings...the Packaging is a Joy and although I don't often listen to it ( i'm very rarely near a cd player these days it seems) I do keep them for future reference.

A couple of unsigned tracks a month would be great.

and will carry on regardless of whether there is a free CD because of the quality of the writing. I have bought loads of CDs on the strength of hearing a track on the Word CD. If I have a small gripe it is that in a number of cases the featured track was far and away the best one but it's a chance I'm willing to take and with Spotify it's likely to happen less often in the future.

and have bought stuff as a result of listening to them, so the artists have benefited from that. It works for everyone.

But one thing - when Mr Hepworth says the CDs cost Word £250,000 a year, doesn't he mean it costs us, the readers? Wouldn't the cover price come down significantly if there was no CD?

Though the quality of the magazine can fluctuate quite a bit from month to month I think the cd's are of a very high quality. As for buying albums by bands on there, since hearing 'The Duke and the King' last month i've downloaded their ep, ordered their album and am going to see them play tonight. None of this would have happened without the cover cd. The artwork and design are excellent too.

I love the magazine, and the CD.

the CDs have cost me a lot of money over the years! there's always a couple of nuggets to treasure and more to explore.

I rarely like all of it, but that's absolutely fine. the world would be a far more boring place if we all liked the same thing. and anyway, I don't think my wallet could stand the strain.

The word cds have been the main way I get a taste of the music of new or unknown (to me) artists over several years. They all go on the ipod as soon as I receive them. Of course the music is not all to my taste, but I have bought/downloaded countless albums as a direct result of a first encounter on the cd. Just keep doing what you're doing!

I've found that I've been 'keeping' more of the songs on recent CDs. In fact I almost considered adding a blog entry to say as much.
My process is to audition the CD in the car and to rip only those songs I like (and often go off to by more from those artists). I'm quite happy if only one or two songs pass the audition on any given CD. We all know you have to do a lot of panning to get the gold - this is what listening to Peel was like.
Lately, though, I've been a bit worried that my spirit has been growing generous as more than half the songs have been 'called back' from the audition - Cowell would never approve.

Please don't stop the CDs as I don't have 6music in my car.

I find it particularly churlish for a first-time writer (quelle surprise, hmmmm) to barrel into the room with some staggeringly trumped-up charges, vent considerable spleen and then slink away surreptitiously. Possibly they're some mogul's lackey with an axe to grind on the sposnor's behalf, or merely a barely-talented arriviste artiste who's still waiting to become King Lear Jet, but the splenetic babbling was a) uncharitable and accusatory and b) bleeding dull.

I like the CDs and estimate I have bought at least 30 full-priced albums off the back of the quantifiably cheap publicity handed to acts and their labels. That's not incosiderable when factored across a readership of 35,000, I'd aver.

Companies don't appear to mind shelling out the shekels for ads in magazines and newspapers, thus why should they not do the same to have their songs included on a CD? I'd argue they're way more likely to shift units when people can hear the product, as opposed to reading a few out-of-context quotes hastily chiselled out of a 500-word review. As someone who works in the media, I'm well aware of the attendant pressures we're all working under - about the same as those crushing a submarine's shell in some cavernous ocean trench - and I think Word does a bang-up job. More power to you. Now, about that Redskins retrospective...

This month's is best for quite some time. I am currently in a quandary: will I go for the Tony Allen album risking that the track on this month NHT is one good one on the album?
Also I want more not less CD's including Now HORA This, a collection of rock anecdotes whose voracity is impossible to evaluate.

...Anyone feel that the musical quality of the Now Hear This CDs has declined recently?

No, I don't. I thought the last one was the best so far, mainly because (to paraphrase) it's not the ones you play that make a compilation, it's the ones you don't skip.
Now, when playing a track from them on the radio, should one back announce them by pointing people at the artist, the magazine, spotify, or all three?

I don't think I've ever liked every track but I've bought lots of CDs having originally hear tracks on NHT. As I've said before, I like having the opportunity to hear new things even if I don't like them. It is like a monthly get together with a music obsessed mate who insists you listen to things, some of which you love, some of which you won't bother with. Long may it reign.

Personally I could live without the quarterly non-article about the Beatles, though clearly since they apparently invented evrything which is good about popular culture I am probably in the minority here.

I like the cd and regard it as part of the total value of the offering

It would be foolish to not have it -you will not encourage new readers even if your existing loyal band stick fat

bootspinnney's contribution is no doubt self serving but let's not circle the wagons yet again when criticism appears. It is an interesting issue that would probably have remained "a management issue" if not vented in this forum

featuring Cornershop is worth its weight in gold.

I’d like to firstly point out that we do not ask record companies to pay the mechanical royalties, you obviously haven’t been doing your homework Bootsspinney. What IS happening, however, is this….

As you all should be aware, Development Hell is a small independent publisher who operates from a broom cupboard in darkest Islington. There is no expensive canteen and each staff member catches his or her own lunch. We have no major corporate backing, unlike the vast majority of our publishing brethren, and The Word itself is not particularly profitable – it really is a labour of love and we keep producing the magazine because we love doing it.

The so-called ‘credit crunch’ is affecting EVERYONE, and it has inevitably wormed its way to us. Producing covermount CDs to go with each issue of The Word and our sister magazine Mixmag is a very expensive task, and at the core of this is MCPS costs, which are, quite frankly, crippling.

Every single track that goes on each CD is hand-picked by myself, David Hepworth and Andrew Harrison, and we only include tracks that we genuinely carry a torch for. Many have tried to buy their way onto the CD but our response is always simple; we don’t take bribes and if we don’t like it, it ain’t going on.

We had to make a decision a few weeks ago, because as things were going, we simply wouldn’t have been able to afford to keep putting together the Now Hear This! compilations for much longer, and by proxy lose perhaps our most powerful medium for promoting great new music. As I’ve said above, MCPS costs were absolutely crippling us, coming to thousands of pounds every month, and the only option we saw, short of canning the CD altogether, was to start asking artists who made the final cut to consent to waiver, or pay a contribution towards, mechanical royalties on the covermount inclusion. This is, in effect, a completely gratis use of the track, with absolutely no cost involved to the artist or record label. Granted, they do not receive mechanical royalties for being included on the CD, but they certainly don’t have to pay anything and we feel the promotion that inclusion on the CD grants far outweighs the mechanical waivering.

This option, as we see it, is mutually beneficial to all parties. From our perspective, it allows us to keep putting out the Word CD with every issue, giving our readers added value for their purchase and introducing them to what we feel are the finest artists around. From a record label’s perspective, and this includes you, dear Bootsspinney, the CD opens the floodgates to access a market who love, absolutely love, their music and – crucially for the record-producing industry – have the money to spend on indulging this love. It has been well documented that the Word CD is a powerful tool for selling the records of the artists that appear on it, and we believe that this is a hallmark of the quality of material that goes on the CD every month. If you don’t like what we put on there then fair enough, but I’m sure the vast majority of our readers would be inclined to disagree with this perceived drop in quality, else they wouldn’t still be with us.

We do, however, understand that record labels are under as much pressure as we are in the current economic climate and that the contribution we ask for as an option can seem like a lot of money, although we uphold our belief that the promotional value of being on the CD provides excellent value and justifies any contribution made in this respect.

So, in summary, we still believe that we put together the finest covermount CDs on the market, and record labels and artists are still not obliged to pay anything to be included on the CD. What’s not to like?

... are a great addition to the magazine.

(I seem to say this every month!).

Keep up the good work.

Doing this :

1)Stop the CD for subscribers
2)Zip the CD content & post it here for download
3)Print a security key on the subs' letter to enable access to the file

Not sure how many subs you have (& how many you'd lose doing this - not me), and you'd probably need a dedicated server, but it sounds like a lot fewer CD's to burn, package & shift - altogether leaner & greener.

I rip my CD into iTunes as soon as the tracklisting is accessible. I use lossless encoding so I for one would not be happy to swap that for a 190 Kbps version and of course lossless would lead to higher data overheads on your servers.

I must have very poor critical faculties - I don't think I have disliked more than half a dozen tracks in three years of subscription.

but I'm not bothered about the CD ( I haven't actually listened to the last four or five ). If it makes others happy though, why stop it?

if The Word sells 35000, and 15000 of those listen to the CD and decide to buy/download one album from the featured tracks, and assuming that this is evenly split across all 15 tracks, then that will generate 1000 extra sales for each artist featured on the CD.

Now, I don't know how many CDs people sell these days, but I'm guessing that to sell 3000 copies of an album would be quite respectable for most of the artists NHT features. So licencing one track for free to generate 25% extra sales would be, to quote a horrible management phrase, a "no-brainer" for most if not all of them

I probably play 1 in 3 of the CD covermounts.

I buy the magazine for the articles and interviews and to be honest rarely read many reviews.

If I like the sound of an artist I am unfamiliar with from an article and they happen to be on the CD I might play it, but I am more likely to use Spotify.

I take back what I said in an earlier post re. subscribing, as, innocent as I was back then, I assumed that giving a bit of well-targeted publicity to unknowns cost you little. Now, realising that you actually have to pay said unknowns for the privilege of bringing them before a fairly large segment of the public still willing to pay for the music they listen to, the scales have fallen from my eyes.

I hope you continue with the CDs, against all conventional business logic, but even if not I'll continue as a subscriber because the magazine is still rather good. (Careful with the Beatles covers however.)

Sometimes it takes a while to get around to listening to them, but they are a Good Thing.

And I second the point above - this readership is a pretty good target market for bands as many/most of us still buy records and CDs unlike most of the populace.

It is not uncommon for producers of CDs (including record companies) to ask for a waiver of mechanical royalties - from my own experience New Rose were doing it in 1985, when indie records were living high on the hog, and have done it again recently for some of their re-issues. And it wasn't an "ask" the second time, it was just done.

The CD's are, like the magazine,podcast and blog, superb. I buy more music now than I ever did as a vinyl hungry teenager, and I am HEAVILY influenced by reading the opinions of people I have grown up reading and respecting. Through Smash Hits, NME, Q etc Mark Ellen, David Hepworth, Paul Du Noyer et al have informed me as to where to invest my hard earned, as they do now.

If you are so passionate about your music, if you are willing to get involved in a sensible discussion on the above, why not put your head above the parapet and print your name. Or are you just stirring the brown stuff, to suit an alterior motive.

M Howell (Real name)

It's what is wrong with this country - some people seem to want to grind down anyone and anything for either no good reason, or because they (or their bosses) think they should. Here are some facts for the original poster:

1) The people who write and produce Word *clearly* do it because they love the subject, I might not agre with everything they say, but I love their passion

2) I don't mind reading an article about The Beatles, they were good. People who moan about "yet another Beatles article " are just trying to make a contrary point - rather akin to the "I'm SO weird me" school of 'zaniness'...

3) This month's cover CD sustained me from London to Bath in the car both directions today. I loved about 70% of it - and am going to seek out the bands - but ALSO sparked pause for thought, as I realised the 80's really *are* coming back

4) I susbscribed from early on and I can't see I'll *ever* stop (ever after my own personal Wire-gate, when Heppo gave away a key plot twist, and responded to a subsequent email in an offhand way that irritated me)

5) Its funny, entertaining and informative, and currently shafts all the other music mags out there, well done David, Andrew, Mark, Fraser et al. Don't let the bastards get you down, loving yer work...

and finally 6) Does *anyone* actually feel sorry for record companies, they screwed us over for years and deserve 100% of what has happened to them for not treating their customers with respect, courtesy or (to round out the post) just being *nice*...

They probably won't get this far down the thread (I've been away) but still I've said my piece...

Here goes with some straightforward, but heartfelt, flattery. The CD is always good and sometimes, as is the case this month, downright bloody marvellous.
I would probably buy the magazine without the CD, (although I may have not subscribed) but the total package as it comes makes The Word the most VFM purchase I make any and every month.
The only complaint I have is that "damn has another month flown by" thought I get when it arrives through my letterbox. But this is replaced quickly by the joy of getting the thing in my hand.
FYI, a quick internal audit shows I purchase on average 1.8 (approximately!) CD's recommended on Now Hear This every month, and a couple more based on what I read inside, which of course I may not have read if the CD did not make The Word essential.
Great work and keep it up everyone.

While the OP certainly appears to be trolling, I do remember a diary post from James Grant (an artist I personally rate highly and who in many respects is a classic for the Word demographic)complaining on his website that it cost around £6000 to get one of his songs on an unnamed magazine cover CD. I've no idea whether this was a marketing cost that the magazine charged or whether he was estimating the lost royalties through giving them a free track. I've also no idea whether the magazine in question was the Word or one of its rivals. My (somewhat longwinded) point is that I can understand that some songwriters might feel aggrieved that in good economic times, magazines can effectively sell space on their CDs, while in worse times they can demand that artists forego their royalties to ensure inclusion. Either way the songwriter pays.

As i suggested in an earlier post, the extra sales generated should benefit most artists, but I can understand the point made (indeed Mr H makes the same point in the current issue of the Word, about how the next generation "expects" music to be free.)

It didn't wash with me then and doesn't now. 70% of the music on the cds never receives radio airplay (made up statistic - but you get my drift) and these artists benefit from the exposure of their music to people who have a genuine interest. I still have every cd ever included with Word and have bought a great many albums of artists who have featured on them over the years. I would not have done this had I not heard them on these cds.

I have also introduced friends to stuff and they their friends - it's exponential!

Au Revoir Simone, The Broken Family Band, Camera Obscura, El Perro Del Mar, The Go! Team, Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan, Joanna Newsom, Jolie Holland, Karine Polwart, Laura Veirs, Tilly And The Wall, Willie Nile

All of these and more I have heard on the Now here this CDs and have gone on to buy albums by them.

More power to you- I SAY!

but my cover CD's have been suffering from postal crunch. The discs themselves have survived but the last few have arrived with covers with dog-eared corners.
I'd be very unhappy if the discs were damaged. I don't listen to every one, but a few artists have benefitted from me buying CD's through tracks I've heard on the cover disc that I'd never otherwise have heard.

I can't begin to tell you how much new music I've found thanks to the Now Hear This CDs. There's always something I like each month, and 9 times out of 10 that'll result in a purchase of some kind, if not a whole album then usually a few tracks from iTunes. It's one of the reasons I'll need a new Mac soon; I've clogged up the hard drive with so much good stuff.
Presumably the unsold mags/CDs go into some sort of backlist archive? So they should earn their keep eventually. Or do the likes of WH Smith pulp unsold mags? I work in publishing and it's not unknown for certain retailers to pulp unsold books... (sigh) such a waste...

I've no great love for some book retailers but aren't they sometimes advised by publishers not to physically return unsold titles which fall within returns guidelines? That's if the practise of "returns" still exists in the book trade nowadays, of course. If they're bought firm sale then it's down to the retailer, who has to make the same hard-headed decision that publishers themselves come to when considering unsold stock and the costs and logistics of storing it.

I'd be very surprised if the Word does get unsold back issues returned to them, given the lack of any ads for back issues, the aforementioned costs of storage and the sheer physical difficulty of storage for a small central-London-based company.

On the subject of the Word CD itself, I'm a fairly low-volume music buyer at the best of times, but the CD has several times made me aware of artists who wouldn't otherwise have registered on my radar, and then prompted a purchase or recommendation to someone else.

of listening to the CD this month. Didn't like anything on it.

( Hell, maybe I just don't like pop music any more ).

Good mag though, especially the Ian Hunter piece.

Frazer, I take your points above and I know you'd take the digital route if left to your own devices. So, it's the record companies' fault that you have to carry on slapping very expensively produced CD's onto mags, only for half of them to be unsold & half of those on the sold ones not to be listened to, in an age when we can go somewhere like here or iTunes etc & get the tunes if we want them at a much lower cost to the environment. As someone above said, surely the recotd companies aren't so blind that they don't know every single (already handsomely paid for) track is going to be available digitally on some torrent or other the hour the mag is in the shops?

So, if you're duty bound to carry on with the cover mounts and therefore understandably keen to get everyone to subscribe, why not do what a lot of mags do & offer a 3-month & 6-month sub? I know £42 a year doesn't sound like much but it is when it's a choice between a magazine and a new pair of shoes for your child. OK, your target audience is 50 Pound Guy, but there's a greater potential readership consisting of wannabe FPG's who are impecunious - especially right now - and a more manageable subscription fee would be more likely to bring them in. You could keep the free CD for the full year sub as an incentive.

I listen to every CD.
Some I like, some I dont.
The ones I like I try to find some more of the same artiste wherever.
If I still like, I buy The CD.
Easy.
Between Word and Uncut I have discovered, and bought, amongst others:
Band Of Horses/ Sparklehorse/ Joan as A Policewoman/ Calexico/ Teddy Thompson/ William Orbit etc etc.
Stuff I would not otherwise have been exposed to.
Whats the problem?

The word Cds are just fine, only bought 2 of the albums featured last month but that's my problem

Looking forward to the new issue and at least this post has reminded me to renew my subscription.

EXACTLY!

They are never indispensable but are always welcome and usually have several tunes that make it onto the old IPOD and more than enough to make me go out and purchase the albums from which they are taken.
By the way can I just say that when I renewed my subscription a couple of months back I took advantage of the offer of the free Delta Spirit cd and it is bloody marvellous - I am really surprised that more hasnt been said about it.

I'd be mightily offended by the inference of Bootsspinney's post, particularly the quantum leap of an accusation that the magazine is somehow getting something for nothing by providing the cover CD and that in doing so it is somehow advocating the idea that music should be downloaded for free. What a supremely short-sighted and illogical interpretation of the purpose of the cover CD. It's there to promote quality music and to encourage readers to invest in music which the magazine believes to be meritorious.

OK, the CD IS also there to lure someone to buy the magazine and so there is the argument - on that basis alone - that the magazine is getting a kickback from its "promotional" CD but as Fraser has outlined there are financial risks and losses attached to that approach which the magazine has to bear. Therefore if The Word is asking record companies to either waive or contribute to mechanical royalties it would seem that the magazine has plenty of hard evidence to show why it needs to minimise its own financial exposure by providing the cover CD when magazines are not sold. Besides when all is said and done The Word has to make money for the company that owns it otherwise it disappears from the shelves. Fortunately based upon recent investments Development Hell Ltd appears to be doing well as a company.

Ultimately everyone - magazine, record company, songwriter and consumer - benefits from what seems to be a business model (that includes compromises as all business models must if they are to succeed in the "real world") that sustains everyone's interests through practical, pragmatic and - most importantly - sustainable support and promotion of music per se. Music is having to compete more and more for the attention of successive generations of consumers and to attack one vital cog in the wheel of pitching music to the masses - a cog that is trying to keep focus on good music by emphasising the belief that its value transcends merely the transaction - is just stupid, particularly from someone who it would appear works in music publishing themselves.

The Word editorial slant is to encourage its readership to value the music and the artists who make it despite the ongoing fluctuations in how music gets from the artist to the consumer. The Word may trumpet "free music" enterprises such as Spotify but that is primarily an extension of its ongoing assessment of the ways and means by which consumers can access music through new media and technologies. It would be doing its readers a disservice if it didn't contextualise music beyond the predominant mythologising approach that dominates the agenda of peer magazines such as Mojo and Uncut. I'm not knocking those magazines but The Word is different in the way it approaches music with a far healthier and open-minded approach which encourages debate and isn't afraid of recommending something that is not in the comfort zone of the average reader.

Indeed when compared to Mojo et al The Word is on many levels NOT a music magazine: the name says it all really. It is the print equivalent of those great wide-ranging conversations you have down the pub with old and new acquaintances where everyone without exception has something interesting to say and which ultimately leaves you wanting to know more by going off and buying the book, the DVD or - critically in the context of this discussion - the album. In my mind The Word represents the best printed context in which to discover recommendations precisely because it positions the reader as a valued contributor to the conversation that the magazine stimulates.

Finally if The Word was somehow aligning itself with the "free download" brigade- as bootsspinney implies - then why use yesterday's technology with something so old-hat as a CD? Why have a download store on the website which charges for downloads?

Sorry for the rambling nature of the post but I'm just amazed that someone who apparently works in the music business could write a blinkered post that can't see the woods for the trees.