James Hendicott magazine editor of long-running Irish music website Goldenplec talks about taking the brave move into the world of print
It’s been twelve years since GoldenPlec started out, a hobby website made large over time by a great community of artistic, music-loving contributors. We cover music in Ireland (distinct, incidentally, from Irish music). The remit really is that simple: there’s no niche, no entry standard in terms of scale (though if it’s bad, we’ll call it), and no genre direction. If it exists, we’re interested. More so if it’s good. Last month, against the best advice of almost everyone in media, we went to print.
If you think the music industry is flailing unsuccessfully against a rabid decline, take it from a journalist, it’s got nothing on the world of print media. We understand why people love the internet - it’s our main market, after all. Where else can we launch footage of our first cover stars Kodaline playing acoustically in the corridors of their old school? Or get reviews live the night after a show takes place? Where else is so up the minute? What other platform allows a kind of natural forum for anyone who cares to contribute? And it’s all free. We’re not about to slow down.
There’s something about print, though. It’s tangible, traditional and respected. It has a shelf life beyond the week it’s published, and – when it’s as free as the website, at least – people feel like you’re giving them something real and substantial. Even modern journalists fetishise it just a little, and so do savvy musicians. It makes a firm statement, and it opens doors.
Fortunately, when it comes to print, we’re uniquely positioned. Like a few of Ireland’s better moments, no doubt, GoldenPlec Magazine owes a lot to Guinness. Their funding - provided following our successful Guinness Amplify campaign – allowed GoldenPlec to bring our website bang up to date, and to put the infrastructure and seed capital in place to develop our quarterly (initially, at least) freesheet. Given the dearth of print opportunities for young, passionate writers and photographers, it wasn’t hard to get our team on board. The rest largely came down to design, direction, promotion and dogged determination.
We’re confident we’ll last. We’ve watched other freesheets rise and often fall, and we think they’ve started too fast, leant too much on a single financial resource, or that they haven’t got their core product quite set up, that they’re under too much pressure to earn too fast. Twelve years and some happy circumstances mean we have our house in order.
What you can expect is more of what you find on our website, but feature heavy, and with that gorgeous heady scent of the printing press. We’ll be talking Irish music big and small, putting the scene under a microscope and listening to some disparate voices. Sometimes it’ll be about the same old names. After all, we love them for a reason. Other times, we’ll nod at some stand-out newcomers, such as Loah and Meltybrains?, who feature amongst our ‘Plec Picks’ as acts to look out for in 2015 in this issue.
You can find issue 1 below. We’re stunned to hear the physical copies have all but evaporated off the shelves around Ireland, but you might be able to chase them down at these locations. If you don’t want to leave the house, but you’re dying for a hard copy, we’re doing eBay/ post, too. We hope you enjoy it, and perhaps even help prove us right: we’re not all that crazy!
James Hendicott, Editor, GoldenPlec Magazine
Read the Issu version of the first print edition Goldenplec
Watch Kodaline perform for Goldenplec at their old school, Colaiste Choilm in Swords, Dublin.
