Blender pops

I’m very saddened to learn that Blender magazine is ceasing publication, effective immediately, according to the very reliable Nat Ives at Ad Age.

The music magazine ranks have been thinned in the past year or so, but this is a major blow. They did great work, kept the other mags on their toes, and in the five or six years I’ve been contributing I wrote a lot of pieces I’m proud of, thanks to ace editors Rob Tannenbaum and Craig Marks.

Paid subscriptions at the end of last year were 768,000, down 8 percent from the year before, according to Ad Age, while newsstand sell-through, the number that the bean-counters pay most attention to, was down 18 percent, at 44,000.

RIP. And, ahem, let’s hope that Alpha Media Group makes good on those freelance debts.