Probably the best independent music magazine when it came to championing alternative rock and punk music, Skyscraper Magazine ceased print publication in 2009 to focus instead on a digital online strategy. And whilst its website may have gone down since, to commemorate the passing of one of the last great independent music magazines, here is an interview which I conducted with one of the magazine's founders 10 years ago. Enjoy!
Why only publish 4 issues a year?
The reason for not publishing more frequently was a pretty organic decision. Skyscraper was never a full-time occupation and so the combination of publishing a magazine as an unpaid, part-time “hobby” but also keeping the magazine at the size it was pretty much demanded we publish at that frequency.
Aside from publishing / advertising revenue, what other factors influenced your decision to stop publication?
The financial factors have always existed, to some extent, because the majority of our advertisers were independent labels and there was always a high turnover of advertisers each issue, meaning we didn’t have too many labels that consistently advertised in the magazine each issue. There was always a large number of new advertisers each issue, and so as the music busines...