Mandolin Player Magazine!

[Sue Rieter]

[QUOTE=Glassweb;1861745]

Huh, ukulele players get a magazine.....

Well there you go...

You know, at the music schools where I teach the ratio of ukulele students to mandolin students must be like 10 to one. It's one thing for a kid (or an adult) to learn to tune a ukulele... quite another thing for mandolin. Uke is the "anybody can play" instrument. Thus their own magazine...

[Mando Mort]

Couldn’t agree more…

[Altivo]

I'd subscribe too. But as an experienced librarian with a few years spent working for Time-Life back when they were in Chicago, I can tell you that in today's market place the print magazines are all running on fumes and nearly out of fuel. The work that goes into assembling, writing, editing, and distributing even a quarterly magazine is humongous too. Unless you have a bunch of retired people donating their time as volunteers (i.e., no payroll to meet) it just isn't practical any more. The same is true of electronic/digital materials: you still need writers and editors. And that costs.

As a relative newcomer to the mandolin (just the last 5 years or so) I'd love a print magazine that can be put on the shelf and referred to at will. The websites are great for social interaction, but don't work so well as reference materials. I expect to be scouring online and brick and mortar sellers for used copies of some of those "extinct" mandolin materials.

An example of how thin the mando resources can be: My number one mandolin inspiration is Peter Ostroushko. In fact, he inspired me to take up the mandolin eventually, even though I have a houseful of musical instruments and do play most of them. He wrote a lot of good music and performed a lot more written by others, but finding anything of his or about him in print is very difficult. He passed away a couple of years ago, so there won't be more forthcoming either.

Aside on the ukuleles... I play those too, but they are a totally different thing. Easy for beginners once they learn to tune the thing, but much more limited in capabilities. I use a baritone uke as a sort of "tenor guitar" when playing with our local quartet ThingamaJig, but I do more flute and banjo work than I do uke. The mando parallels as a fiddle, in my opinion, rather than the as a uke.

[Mandobar]

Paper and print costs are killing the small presses.

[Jeff Mando]

Magazines aren't what they once were. I subscribe to a half-dozen home handyman type magazines and some are lucky to hit 60 pages an issue, and some only come out every two months, at that. About like reading a pamphlet, keep in mind half of it is still advertising! But, still kinda cool to have 'em on the coffee table, IMHO.

[CarlM]

.....An example of how thin the mando resources can be: My number one mandolin inspiration is Peter Ostroushko. In fact, he inspired me to take up the mandolin eventually, even though I have a houseful of musical instruments and do play most of them. He wrote a lot of good music and performed a lot more written by others, but finding anything of his or about him in print is very difficult. He passed away a couple of years ago, so there won't be more forthcoming either.

I don't know if you ever listened to his podcast he did the last year or so of his life. If you haven't you should. It is priceless. It is near the bottom of his webpage at the link below.

https://www.peterostroushko.com/

[j. condino]

I used to write for and make a significant portion of my income from many of the old print media sources listed.

Hipsters will shave their beards and learn to drive manual transmissions before print media comes back....

[Steve Mead]

I emailed Acoustic Disk (Dawgs folks) and asked if they would consider doing a reissue of the Mandolin World News but never got a response. I guess the answer was no! I would buy them.

[Mandolin Cafe]

I emailed Acoustic Disk (Dawgs folks) and asked if they would consider doing a reissue of the Mandolin World News but never got a response. I guess the answer was no! I would buy them.

I believe David and Acoustic Disc and related Dawg ventures no longer own Mandolin World News. My understanding is that ownership was transferred to Dix Bruce long ago and he passed away recently. He was selling reprints and related publications from it. I can guarantee you that was not a profitable venture. Still pretty easy to find copies of those and if you can't, a Want Ad in the classifieds will scare some up pretty easily.

[Mandolin Cafe]

Here's the evidence Dix had control of this:

Purchase old MWN

No idea if this website is still functioning and if someone is monitoring purchases. His passing was announced on this site here.

[Steve Mead]

I guess I was thinking they could be made into digital downloads but I guess not. Thanks for the update.

[Perry]

This site serves as a magazine of sorts but with less advertising. Unless you are going to go to extremes like the Fretboard Journal print is dead. Some print guitar mags seem to still be going strong though.Bigger audience than mandolin players. Personally I do appreciate paper and stepping away from digital devices. Check out this digital jazz guitar mag as an example of a digital mag

https://jazzguitartoday.com/in-the-issue/

[BillWilliams]

I have enjoyed reading the Dave Grisman Mandolin Workshop articles from the old Frets magazine that can now be purchased from Acoustic Disk.