Stylus Magazine is closing!

Just a quick note that my favourite music review website, Stylus Magazine, is ceasing publishing from today (31st October 2007).

This is a very sad day for me. I am an avid reader of online music publications, and Stylus Magazine has always stood out from the crowd. Their website had a real sense of community about it, with the comments section (for each article) allowing everyone to have their say. While this was sometimes to the detriment of the site when some flame wars were flared up (sometimes amusingly), it always separated them from their peers like Pitchfork Media.

But it was probably their features sections which made them my website of choice. Staff Top Ten, Playing God, On First Listen, On Second Thought...these sections were Stylus inventions and they always made fascinating reads. Stylus Magazine has been one of the major reasons why I have such a passion for music, and was also probably the biggest influence on this blog (which I'll admit has been kind've quiet lately).

I'll miss you guys! I'm looking forward to a great spinoff website from some of your very talented writers (my favourite being the fascinating Nick Southall, but I'm also a fan of Ian Mathers' work). I'm hoping all of the great Stylus articles are archived somewhere for prosperity, but we can always resort to the Internet Archive I guess.

And just to show that I'm not just jumping on the Stylus Magazine bandwagon now that they are closing down, here's a blog post from over 3 years ago where I named them as one of my favourite music websites.