I've never been a subscriber to Mojo, but used to enjoy it a lot and stil buy it if I see a copy on the local market stall which sells cheap back issues. On the plus side, their CDs are usually very good (particularly when they concentrate on a style), on the other side I can rarely remember a single thing about it after I close the cover. More than once I've bought duplicate copies at the market-stall mentioned above because I had completely forgootten that I had already read that issue (it's 60p a mag, so no great loss).
A few years ago an odd shuffle seemed to happen, whereby Mojo transformed into Q (albeit with a greater emphasis on 'classic' bands) and Q morphed into the anodyne publication it is today, and I'm not completely sure who the market is for either.

but it seems to have run out of things to say, Although I agree with Gatz, they do have cracking cds now and again.

I buy all four monthlies (Q, Uncut, Mojo and Word) every month just because I love reading about music even if it's something I don't like.

Mojo can be educational - unlike Q it can often tell me something I don't know about an artist I love and that's all I ask of a music magazine. When they do an in-depth feature on someone I like I'm usually pretty excited

for no other reason that I found I wasn't reading it.

... it's just not as good as it used to be. The quality of writing is generally pretty good, but their focus has become a bit more pedestrian over the last few years and (dare I say it) a little more mainstream. Take this month's issue as an example - a Queen retrospective, plus interview with the "new" Queen. Pointless, and has been done before (I recall an excellent Queen feature circa 1999). But I think it'll be a long wait before we see another in-depth feature on (for example) Talk Talk, like they did a few years back.

In summary, it's just not an essential purchase any more... I'll have a quick look to see what's inside, and unless there's something compelling they don't get my £4.20 or whatever it costs these days. Uncut is going the same way...

BF

You read Q. You turn 30. Christina Aguilera appears on the cover. You stop reading Q.

You read Mojo. You turn 40. Radiohead are on the cover every bloody week. You stop reading Mojo.

You read The Word. You turn 50. Lemmy appears on the cover.

You read National Geographic.........

and so on.....

...it's good, never minded it even though I don't buy it now. It's less fashion-led than Q and the writing is much, much better too in my opinion. Their free CDs are much better than most as well, I think, they sometimes work as compilations that I probably would have paid for on their own.

I will agree though that the recycling of cover stars is tedious; this is the 3rd time at least that Queen have appeared on the front cover, and I've lost count how many times The Beatles or Pink Floyd have been on the front (and I love all three bands). Uncut is even worse in this respect.

Mojo blew it for me when they gave the third 'drugged up the eyeballs' Oasis album a heroes welcome.
It's far to reverential, like being in an old mans library.

... Radiohead, Rolling Stones, Beatles (List).

Right, that's the Mojo cover list for 2009 sorted, now onto Q...

Radiohead, Coldplay, List, List, List, List, List, Nirvana, List, List, List.

I have only bought Mojo on the recent offer of 3 issues for one pound*. It's just ended and I won't be buying it again, although to be fair they did have a couple of great songs on the Sub Pop retrospective CD.

* the offer was to give them your DD details and you get 3 issues for a quid. The idea is that you then forget to cancel the DD and out pops £10.80 every quarter for three more copies. Unluckily for them, I didn't forget to cancel.

that bloke from Kerrang took over, Queen on the cover of the new issue for god's sake and yet another article on the Beatles.

Used to have some cracking CD's though and very good in-depth interviews - CD's can be very good though, in fact, dare I say better than the Word's!

after a while, then they have a re-vamp which alienates most of their core readership, then they limp on, then they die. I think Mojo is in the limping on stage.

Thankfully, Word hasn't shown many signs of getting tired yet, although the completely pointless issue on dead rock stars (about a minute's thought must have gone into that one) was perhaps a warning sign.

but do think that it's running out of steam a bit. They can however still produce a good article on a non-classic band, or artist, when they want to(I really enjoyed the recent Specials article), but I really liked when they used to do the in-depth features on albums (Kind of Blue and What's Going On come to mind). They were always really well researched, and written. Maybe Word could do some of those, or was it only me that liked that?!

But - and I'm not fawning - I prefer The Word because it's not just about music.

MOJO does the same old thing time after time. It's refreshing when they're NOT doing old blues legends (who I have no interest in) or yet another Beatles or Pistols feature. It could do with a bit of a revamp too. And the reviews are dull.

.. in that it goes beyond music.

David Peace, The Wire, There Will Be Blood among many other things are non music related stuff I came across via Word. Even the best editors will struggle to fill a mag with nothing but classic rock and have the writing sparkle all the time.

I reckon Mojo is better than Q and Uncut these days. I like that Phil Alexander is shifting the magazine onto some of the less obvious bands sometimes and I agree with everyone else that their CD's are very well put together. Comparing Word and Mojo is comparing apples and pears though...

I bought the first edition. Loved it. Carried on, religiously, for five years. Then the fire went out. Now I buy it occasionally at airports. The last time was a month ago, and it didn't seem like I'd missed much.

I subscribe to Uncut and have done for some years. Having said that, it is sorely trying my patience with some uninspired and repetitive leading articles (I particularly dislike the dreaded lazy list)and its hyping of particular new favourites.
Mojo I would buy occasionally, but am more likely to browse through it in the newsagents.

above. I buy 4 every month, Mojo (on subscription because I wanted a Neil Young DVD that was their offer), Word, Uncut and Record Collector (which has been re-vamped of late and is all the better for it). I used to get Q but I grew up and they didn't. Bring back ZigZag I say. And Streetlife. And Crawdaddy. And Rolling Stone when it was about the music.
Anyone for the early 70s?

Uncut is just awful now, Mojo is still interesting every now and then and the cds are often very good. While nothing beats the Word I did enjoy a recent edition of Classic Rock which really does what it says on the tin. I really enjoyed the reviews section which had a lot of stuff I wouldn't normally read about.

As for the Word that recent issue was a real nadir, but like the iPod on shuffle came up with a classic the following month with Lemmy on the cover. My one beef with the Word at the moment, John Waters not withstanding, is that the celebrity recommendations section had got soooooo dull. It adds nothing to my knowledge of film, books or music as celebrities seem to have ether banal taste or play it safe.

A few months ago the topic of cover stars and their ability to sell the magazine (the Dido issue raised it's head again) was debated. I'd love to know if the same debate goes on at MOJO. Do music magazine sales "spike" if The Beatles are on the cover?
I don't mind MOJO, but it's stuck in this bloody late 60's early 70's stasis. I'm sick of the bloody Beatles, Dylan, Pistols, Oasis (all of whom I don't like), and agree with a previous contributor that praised their articles on Talk Talk and The Specials.
Their reviews are rather dull but quite broad-ranging and I'll normally cross-reference with Word and (God help me for all the good it does) Q.
Funnily enough. on Adam and Joe's recent podcast they mentioned that Q's circulation was dropping (along with Heat's - Huzzah!)

Sorry, I can't comment on Mojo, I've picked it up once or twice, struggled through it, yawned, put it down and then not touched it again. Same with Q. My first music mag was Melody Maker, then Select, then the NME and now The Word and occaisionally Songlines whenever I can find a copy. Plus the odd fanzine and a copy of Uncut sometimes.
I do enjoy Songlines because it covers genuinely interesting stuff, interviews people who have genuinely interesting stories and takes the reader on journeys to far away places. It's CDs are fantastic, the last one was really incredible. However I do find that it's sometimes lazily written, they seem to employ people who are experts in their feild, but not nessecerilly great writers, plus they plug their package tours slightly too much and it feels like you're being pitched at. I would love to travel to India for a fortnight to go to some Indian classical music festival in the desert but I can't afford it so please stop going on about it.

I subscribe to Mojo. Have done for about 3 years, though bought it for about 4 years beforehand. I got the subscription when there was a great Led Zep freebie - a large photo book and The Song Remains The Same. I still think it is good but it doesn't feel as though there is as much in it anymore. Stil, they're only charging me £3.30 a month. I usually buy Word but am waiting on a really good freebie before I subscribe, as mostly it's just an album that I already have or aren't that bothered about.

Bought Q and NME from about 1995-2000 but then stopped bothering due to their twinned decline. Uncut, I used to buy religiously up until a year or so ago but it rareley has much to offer now. I did get a recent issue for a short feature on The Wire, and there was a fair bit more in it too, but this month's has little of interest.

Only to Word - never done it with any other magazine (mainly because only a select few shops seem to stock it and there is financial saving !). Used to be a regular reader of Mojo but as others have said it went downhill a few years back. In the past have been a regular reader of Q like many others, until it turned into a comic, and also used to love Record Collector until it changed its focus and I guess rare records got a lot more available via CD and then downloads so the hours spent poring over listings were gone.

Now, I guess I may be the only person here to also be a regular reader of both Vogue and the Radio Times !

I do get a bit frustrated with the list type articles sometimes in Word - when I look back at older editions there do seem to be more substantial articles in there than there are now.

I bought Q from the very first issue and even remember hearing Mark Ellen being interviewed on the radio before it came out. I bought it for several years (and still have at least the first 2 years' editions somewhere - any offers?) but it was repositioned by the publishers and Mojo came out and was much more interesting for me.

I stopped buying Q around that time and subscribed to Mojo for several years. In the early years it was terrific but I realised around 18 months ago that it was repeating itself terribly. And the album reviews seemed to become wilfully obscure to the point where I hardly ever bought something based on its recommendations and if I did was too often disappointed.

I purchased Word on and off for a year so from when it first appeared - usually at airports - but when my Mojo subscription lapsed about 8 months ago the roles were reversed. Now I subscribe to Word and sometimes buy Mojo at airports if there is something interesting in it.

Why? Well Word is just better written and clearly targeted right in my demographic. And many of the recommendations work for me.

A point on airports in case "the management" are reading this: in the past 12 months I have rarely seen Word on the shelves at airport newsagents. I'm not sure why this is or whether you should be having a word (ha!) with your distributor.

please, readers, sell me The Word!!
I subscribe to Uncut (though it's not as good as it used to be, with a seemingly ever-narrowing range of interests/enthusiams) and Mojo, and I DO excitedly wait for both to land on my mat each month. I picked up 'The Word' in an airport earlier this year and really enjoyed it, to the point of considering swapping my Uncut subscription for it, my continuing reservations being (a) there's not nearly enough album reviews. (b) far too many light/'filler' features, like 2 pages or whatever for 'who cares?!' recommendations from celebs, not hugely amusing 'amusing' lists and (c) it's just so thin for the money! Wouldn't everyone agree less glossy paper and more (contentful!) pages would be an improvement? I'm not even mentioning Q 'cause I can't take it as seriously as the others, it for - younger, less passionate about music - Virgin Radio listeners who don't want anything new or challenging when there's Oasis, U2, Coldplay and Kaiser Chiefs in the world.

..extensive reading of The Word, Uncut and Mojo on the train back from London to Sheffield tells me that Mojo lasts until Kettering, Uncut to Leicester and The Word all the way back to Sheffield with one of the main articles left over for later on-the-bog perusal.

Those big portmanteau features on Pink Floyd/Oasis/Punk who/whatever that Uncut and Mojo do were skippable enough the first time round and some of them are on their fourth or fifth incarnation.

That said I agree with other comments: Mojo does the best CDs, especially when themed, Uncut has Andrew Mueller and those novelty list articles appearing in Word of late have allowed the peloton to close on you a bit.

Sometimes I buy Word, sometimes Mojo, sometimes neither. It depends on who's inside, really.

Word is generally interesting, but I find Mojo does more in-depth historical pieces that are particularly well written - its tributes to Vivian Stanshall and Mick Ronson were terrific and fascinating, even though I wasn't a fan of either artist.

It's only downside, as others have pointed out, is its constant recycling of the same artists - The Beatles' White Album again?

The Word and When Saturday Comes for me. Both best in their field because of the quality of the writing.

Mojo occasionally if I am in the Spar and I'm bored (usually around this time of month - when my others are read and re-read by the loo), and it's ok.

The last few issues of Word have been poor. I put it down to the summer holiday you've all been on. Fair enough and Mojo and Uncut havent been much better, but please let it return to its usual place at the top of the heap. Aside from Word my fave monthly is Record Collector with Mojo a close second.

I'm not really minded to buy magazines at all these days, to be honest. Word is a big exception though, obviously. The exceptional quality of writing sets it apart from me and I'm fine with a smaller, more selective reviews section. Uncut used to be really good, much like Word now it covered a range of stuff other than music and would often introduce me to new favourite authors as well as music and films. The thing I really started to hate about Mojo and Uncut was their stubborn resistance to all things internet for so long.

There's a clear progression for me. As a teenager, you buy NME. You progress to Q / Mojo / The Word in your twenties/thirties then proceed onto Record Collector or give up altogether!

Although, i'm 34 now and read nothing but Record Collector and The Word. The two together provide a pretty comprehensive overview.

http://www.adriandenning.co.uk/

Had to say it - sorry. I haven't read the other replies yet (apologies all - I will later).

I buy Mojo very occassionaly. To be honest I think it went downhill over the past couple of years and started to rely on the 'they were so mad on drugs etc' stories (which are the staple diet of Uncut). I just tired of all that.

Mojo used to do very good indepth articles/interviews that would cover a good 20/30 pages as I recall but not any more. Essentially I don't bother getting it any more - it would have to have a very desirable cover cd to sway me at this point.

They say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover but with MOJO one can't help but do just that and immediately one turns away because! of! the! amount! of! exclamation! marks! that! are! liberally! dished! out! all! over! it!

The exclamation! mark! problem arrived the moment Phil Alexander took the editor's chair. With metal mags Kerrang! and Raw! Phil was an excitable hairy voice of reason and enthusiasm, and you didn't mind his over use of exclamation! marks! on the covers because when one is young, one cannot help but be anything other than excited about a four page on-the-road feature with Ozzy, Big Jim Martin, Dokken or Ronnie James Dio, a fourteen page Donington poster special or yet another look at what the NWOBHM did for us all.

So, every cover of Kerrang! and Raw! screamed rock! and! roll! It was loud! It was proud! It was shit! But as a nipper, you devoured said shit with a passion.

Transfer that winning formula to a flagging "quality" rock title that, when it came out first was a refreshing, weighty and intelligent opus, and you get rock! without the roll, boogie! without the woogie and an editor hopelessly out of his depth when his musical tastes say one thing, and his mind says another.

What his mind does say is The Beatles! Dylan! Beatles! Floyd! Lennon! McCartney! Harrison! Dylan! Stones! Beatles! Jagger n' Richards! Beatles! Beatles! Beatles! Oh, and have you heard the one about the Beatles Shite Album? When I see The Beatles on a cover of any magazine I refuse to buy it (but I made an exception with George Harrison on The Word recently because it seemed tongue in cheek). I hate the fucking Beatles with a passion, but obviously I'm in the minority as it seems the more you put the two dead ones, the suddenly-getting-old one, the fifth one and Ringo on the cover you seem to sell more magazines. MOJO is by far the worst offender of all the mags with its mop top fascination. But there's more to its decline than that.

The MOJO cover CD's have taken an awful tumble for the worse in recent years. There was a time they started this excellent MOJO Guide to blues/garage/soul/funk etc which were universally brilliant, but endless compiled-by-the-stars and MOJO presents... (insert random theme and hundreds of bands from the 60's you've never heard of as well as pointless, pitiful covers) and other such travesties from budget, filling station record labels and they rarely make it out of the shrinkwrap anymore.

The reviews are also fairly substandard, with the lead album review inevitably a 'big name' (albeit with a nice drawing) but they do, granted, make some wonderful exceptions.

The rest of the mag is just one predictable article about the same old faces after another sadly. But every month the bastards pull something out the bag that make you pine for the old MOJO, be it a Hawkwind article, a retrospective on some overlooked 70's or 80's icon or the occasional tearjerking obituary or article by Sylvie Simmons about some old goat like Neil Young, Kris Kristofferson or George Jones. But these are few and far between, and the deep-seated problems seem to be coming from the top - from the editor. MOJO's "voice" as such is meaningless and non-existant. There's no house style, no prevailing sense of humour, no irreverance, just a load of tired old hacks protecting their jobs with the same articles and reviews month after month after month.

Similarly with UNCUT, the main problems seem to stem from the top man. No offence to the man, but Alan Jones stikes me as a real ale bore who wants to "thrill" you with tale after tale of being on the piss with Dr. Feelgood and someone who was once signed to Stiff Records. He doesn't seem to like anyone telling better stories than him, so when regular contributors get too big or too clever for their boots they are reigned in or replaced by someone who has discovered an unseen Beatles picture and can fill 16 pages with it or another list of their 30 best songs.

Jones also sees the dollar signs in putting the same tired old faces on the cover month after month after month, and in recent months it seems he has put the Beatles/Neil Young/Pink Floyd/Led Zepp and the Rolling Stones on the cover so many times in the past few years he has actually ran out of colour pictures of the cunts!

He also sliced the once excellent movie coverage from the mag, and criminally abandoned it to a straight-to-DVD sub section at the back which serves as little more than a column with links to You Tube movie trailers as well as the odd review and a Q&A copied from either a press release or the web.

UNCUT's 'news' section is criminal and so out of date it hurts me to read it, whilst its discovery of 'new bands' ten months after they have made it is lamentable. As is it's coverage of 'hot' acts like, er, Oasis and REM. UNCUT has it's strengths though. Like MOJO, it constantly throws up at least one decent article a month, be it on someone like Mark Lanegan or Tindersticks, and its CD's can be occasionally blinding ("Comets, Ghosts and Sunburnt Hands: The New Psychedelic Outlaws" is one the all-time greatest cover-mounted CD's) but are so often bargain basement they are certainly not enough to justify it's cover price. It's funny that THE WORD seems to have copied the UNCUT 'best guide to new music' template from a few years ago with winning results! Arf!

I still occasionally buy both MOJO and UNCUT but having been a regular never-miss-an-issue man for many years I gave up on them both earlier this year. Equally HOT PRESS in Ireland is another criminal deserving of a wide berth, but it (like MOJO) doggedly hangs on as pretenders to its throne come and go (the best example was the excellent, intelligent but short-lived FOGGY NOTIONS; In more recent times STATE bit the dust after just 5 issues when they put Abba on the cover). I haven't bought Q in years so I can't bore you with my feelings on it (or the NME) and I'm terrified of becoming a RECORD COLLECTOR reader. The only mag I buy now every month without fail (since issue one too might I add) is THE WORD. I hope it clings on as it's a truly refreshing read and the only monthly with a voice and a style all of it's own.

I'd been a Mojo subscriber for a couple of years, getting bored with the endless lists, but decided to let it expire after they named Solomon Burke's CD Don't Give Up On Me as album of the year. It was nothing against the album per se, I just didn't understand how an album they had never reviewed could suddenly appear as Album Of The Year.
Being a bit pedantic I checked back over the previous year's issues to see if it was simply my failing memory, but the only mention anywhere was one month when they listed a song from the album in that month's office favourites. I couldn't even see an advert for it.

I got back from a 2 week sojourn in Cuba yesterday. I opened the door to a mountain of post - the inevitable bills and my beloved Mojo (subscriber since about issue 4).As soon as I stripped the polythene outer cover I was aghast to find yet another article on a group I have no interest in ie.Queen following on rapidly from last months insipid frontcover artwork hailing the masterpiece which is the Beatles White album. Be that as it may it was bloody 40 years ago and you have already exhausted the subject!! There has been a deterioration but I still cannot bring myself to cancel the subscription lest I miss something earth shattering. Word is now unrivalled and I dont agree that the last couple of issues have been poor as said by some observers here. The Lemmy article was great even though I dont like his music. I am probably in the minority though by saying dispense with the free cd or change the format.Highlighting new bands that are likely only to be around in most instances for barely one album is not stimulating to me.I am pretty sure you could be more innovative by bringing stuff out of the vaults that we would have more interest in. Or doesnt that give you enough revenue from the labels?

but am willing to put it to the test. The earlier Word CD's tended to have more tracks by artists that were acclaimed although not necessarily commercially successful.Examples that come to mind are My Morning Jacket, Sufjan Stevens, Mariam and Amadou and Toumani Diabate. More recent cd's seem to have a track or two by an artist whose album I have already bought or definitely will purchase such as Ry Cooder or Nick Lowe but then the rest of the cd is filled up with wilfully obscure artists who are obscure for a good reason ie. they are not very good.
I have no problem with labels donating songs by artists they are trying to plug but do feel that Word could exercise more quality control.Dont get me wrong this is not a specific criticism of Word as all of the magazines have had the same problem. I do feel however that some of the themed cd's from Uncut and Mojo have been exceptional for example the Uncut New Country cd's and tracks compiled by the likes of Keith Richards plus a couple of Ska and Reggae cd's that Mojo put out.Putting out cd's of exclusively new artists seems to lack some cohesion.
However it seems most of you download onto your ipods and dispose of anyway so maybe its only me that is interested in trying a different direction.Apart from that Word is head and shoulders above the rest and yes getting back to the original thread Mojo is not what it was.

a music mag for a few months now - largely due to the credit crunch, baby on the way, housing difficulties etc. If I am going to part with a fiver I'm going to have to be enticed. The Beatles on the cover - George on The Word AND Uncut two issues ago, then the White Album cover on Mojo isn't going to cut it. With the latest Word - had Molesworth been on the cover I would no doubt have grabbed it without a second thought, as it was, I read the article in the shop.

As a recent subscriber to Uncut I've just been offered 3 issues for 3 quid. Well it's worth that (probably 3 decent articles and maybe 15 reviews worthy of my time, perhaps the odd ok track on the cd over those 3 editions - enough to get me from Leeds to Doncaster on each occasion)). But I'll be canceling afterwards.

My tipping point with Q was when they gave the best of Mike & the Mechanics 4 stars - please!

best of Mike and the Mechanics is a 5 star for goodness sake!!

Still subscribing to all 3 - Mojo, Uncut and the veritable Word - the only problem is that month by month the pile on the coffee table is getting higher as I try to catch up with all the reading matter.
Word is so different to the other publications in terms of genre and content. I often find myself asking if it is even a 'music' based publication. I find it an all embracing tome with strong nostalgic elements.
Uncut is changing again and almost overnight it has lost the Americana feel of the last few years. It is now dabbling in the more rockier side of things as they champion 'The Hold Steady'and bands of a similar ilk.
Mojo is like a collection of trends and old times assembled under one roof for general consumption. Many years ago I switched when the other EMAP mag 'Q' became as interesting as an Argos catalogue.

I really didn't care much for Queen even in at the height of their powers. Mojo putting the re-formed Queen on the cover is an example of where their agenda (IT WAS GREAT BACK THEN!) diverges from mine. I was there, it wasn't that great for me. I cancelled my subscription because the last half dozen Mojos have been getting more and more poor, (less than an hour from arrival to recycle pile) but Queen put the tin lid on it.

Uncut also had a run of features that were "Detailed analysis of the time around " which generate little light - I might give it another shot

The sad fact is that it's all been written about before. There is so little that is genuinely NEW. In any given month there is going to be a fair amount of repetition with the same pile of stuff to review across the aforementioned magazines.

Interviewees no longer have the wit of a Dylan or a Beatles in their prime (Noel and that useless twat Doherty are not going to fill any pages with their wit and wisdom).

Have all the great albums/books/films/tv shows aleady been made? Has the law of diminishing returns set in? I only ask since Word devoted a whole page to the latest reissue of Carole King's Tapestry (which I have still to hear - there must be a hundred other "legendary" albums I've never heard either! - and this review didn't make me want to bother this time around).

I want to read an article that makes me want to get up and go to a record shop because I MUST own the record I've just read about. Is it the music press or the music industry (or even the musicians) that are to blame for this state of affairs?