Development Hell Eyes Digital Focus
Independent magazine publisher, Development Hell, has appointed its first digital editor, in a move billed to fuel the relaunch of the websites of music titles Mixmag and The Word.
Fraser Lewry will take up the role, which will be both creative and editorial, bringing a serious amount of experience to the job, including previous experience with Development Hell.
The two sites, wordmagazine.co.uk and www.mixmag.net, should be relaunched by the end of the year, partly in response to interest from music, mobile and auto brands that want to advertise on the sites, which both publish exclusive web content rather identical material from the print magazines.
According to the publisher, Mixmag‘s site had 4,570 unique users in December 2005, and this dropped to 3,620 in May 2006, remaining static until March this year.
This is in comparison to 1.6 million unique users for NME.com in March 2007, according to a publisher’s statement, 49,469 for mojo4music.com, 200,000 for Uncut‘s site in March, and 143,909 for q4music.com in the same month.
Both Development Hell sites will remain free to access, supported by advertising revenues.
In May, Former FHM Collections editor Nick de Cosemo became the new editor of Mixmag, with the then editor Andrew Harrison moving to editor-in-chief and across to The Word (see Dance Music Monthly Nabs New Editor From Emap).
The dance title’s print incarnation shed copies from its circulation at the last consumer magazine ABC release, with its total down 7.6% year on year for July to December 2006.
The title now records a circulation of around 39,000 after a decline of more than 3,200 copies in real terms (see ABC Results Jul-Dec 2006:Q Mag Remains King Of Music Sector Despite Circulation Decline). Development Hell bought the title from Emap in 2005.
Meanwhile The Word has steadily increased its circulation since its creation in 2003, now boasting a total of more than 33,500 issues.
At MediaTel Group’s ‘Future of Consumer Magazines’ seminar in February, Development Hell’s editorial director, David Hepworth, exercised a note of caution on magazine brands moving online. “We shouldn’t bullshit ourselves that just because we’ve got the same computers are everyone else, that we’re as good at communicating with those people as… people doing brilliant websites are, or that our skills are all transferable, because they might not be,” he said.
Other panellists stressed that the key to the success of magazines online was evolution of content to take readers online, rather than the replication of the print product (see Magazines Must Work Harder To Evolve Content For Digital Platforms).
Development Hell: www.developmenthell.co.uk