The slow, painful dying-off of the music magazine industry continues apace with today’s folding of Paste, that eight-year-old chronicler of “Signs of Life in Music, Film, and Culture” (according to its tagline). Paste began as a Decatur, Georgia-based quarterly, and over the years expanded into a monthly magazine that carved out its own niche covering primarily Americana music and the softer, gentler side of indie rock. Like most print-based publications, it struggled in recent years to compete with the flood of online media sites, memorably (and only briefly) staying alive by adopting a Radiohead-inspired model of the pay-what-you-will subscription in 2007. That turned to openly soliciting donations from its readers last year, as well as a campaign to save it launched by some of the musicians and celebrities it had covered—a campaign that now seems to have failed. Yesterday its employees were apparently given two hours to clean out their offices, after which a few of them took to Twitter to share their pain and look for jobs. There but for the grace of our advertisers go we, etc.
UPDATE: Paste has now issued an official statement, saying that while it will end print publication—a move it qualifies as a "hiatus" and "suspension"—it still hopes to focus on "its digital assets," including its website. Meanwhile, subscribers will still have access to the digital versions of the magazine through the June/July issue.