By Jeff Bercovici

    Though they’re both ostensibly music magazines, to the aficionado Rolling Stone and Spin could hardly be more different.
    While the 1.25-million circulation Rolling Stone profiles Top 40 tunesters and MTV mainstays, the much smaller Spin has been home to those on the fringes: angry garage bands, acclaimed but little-known singer-songwriters and experimentalists of every stripe.
    Or so it seemed until last year. That’s when Spin veered sharply into the mainstream with cover stories on bands like No Doubt, Matchbox Twenty and Creed.
    Suddenly, the magazine was looking a lot more like its pop-loving competitor. Longtime readers puzzled at the swerve, questioning whether Spin had cashed in its indie cred for good.
    Fortunately, Alan Light says he can explain everything. 
   Editor in chief of Spin since 1997, Light says last year’s forays into the middle represented not a change of direction for the magazine but a deliberate experiment aimed at triangulating readers’ tastes in a fragmented, confused market.
    "We very consciously knew we were trying some things to try and learn about our audience," says Light.
    He first became aware of the need to experiment in late 1999 after a run of covers that were expected to generate big single-copy sales but ended up disappointing at the newsstand. 
   Meanwhile, new releases from artists that Spin had embraced for years were suffering from mediocre sales.
   "What you would think of as constituting the Spin franchise—Beck, Nine Inch Nails, Tori Amos, Rage Against the Machine—weren’t doing all that well," says Light. "It was clear that the moment of a couple years earlier had passed. Our audience has moved on."
    The realization was a jarring one for Light, who is used to being able to predict his readers’ preferences.
    "I was shocked to see a Beck cover not do that well for Spin. Two years ago, Beck and Trent Reznor [from Nine Inch Nails] were our biggest covers."
    He chalks up 1999’s newsstand disappointments to what he sees as an instant-gratification mentality on the part of music fans, who increasingly decide their allegiances on a day-to-day basis instead of sticking with a musician from album to album.
    "There’s been a loss of any sense of loyalty to artists. People either like the newest song or they don’t."
     Though Light doesn’t say so in so many words, the late ‘90s have been a disorienting time for Spin. 
   In the early part of the decade, Spin, propelled by the explosion of grunge and alternative rock, reached new peaks of financial success and visibility. Circulation grew steadily, going from 322,000 in 1992 to 517,000 in 1997.
   In the last few years, however, as rock has given way to mass-marketed teen pop and rap-metal, Spin has seemed somewhat adrift, its biases—towards the weird, the dark and the anti-commercial—marking it as something of a throwback.
    Not surprisingly, circulation has hit a plateau at 533,000.
    Though Spin has been around since 1985, Light acknowledges that the dominance of grunge was "clearly the greatest rallying point for the magazine." In the time since its decline, he says, "that notion of alternative has been something of an albatross for Spin."
    But with mainstream music getting less interesting by the day, one can hardly blame Spin if it wallows in nostalgia now and then.
     "We are to an extent dependent on what happens in the music landscape," says Light. "We can’t complain about it. We just have to ride it out until the next direction presents itself. Everybody is waiting to see where all these teens are going to go as they grow out of Britney and *NSync."
    Light is philosophical about the continuing ability of teen divas and boy bands to top the charts.
    "There’s a simple explanation for why pop has been so powerful. You have more kids with more money and less to worry about than ever before."
Fortunately, Light sees relief on the horizon for those over the age of 17.
    "I think it’s about to be a really interesting time in music," he says, predicting that a downshifting economy and a Republican in the White House will create the kind of widespread dissent that fuels interesting, countercultural music.
      "We’re only seeing the very leading edge of what’s out there. There’s a lot of stuff bubbling under the surface right now."
     In the meantime, Light says he has learned much from toying around with putting pop stars like Matchbox Twenty and No Doubt on the cover: to wit, that Spin readers don’t like it.
      Newsstand sales for the July issue with Matchbox Twenty came in well short of the average, at 88,167. The October issue, with Christian rockers Creed on the cover, sold better, but it also prompted more angry mail, says Light.
     "The lesson there is that Matchbox Twenty is as boring as we think they are. Still, I have no regret about trying it."

April 4, 2001 © 2001 Media Life

-Jeff Bercovici is a staff writer for Media Life

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