Today in the death of the print industry: Spin's evolution from magazine to music blog continues apace

Hastening the day when all our descendants will regard print magazines with the same bafflement as this toddler, Spin has taken its latest step toward the New Flesh with a sale to digital media conglomerate Buzzmedia—a deal that should extend its online life, but would seem to herald a looming end to its existence as a clump of paper that puts Kurt Cobain's face on it every year or so. Spin now joins the ranks of Buzzmedia's broad swath of other music blogs like Idolator, Stereogum, Hype Machine, Brooklyn Vegan, Gorilla Vs. Bear, PopMatters, Pure Volume, Punk News, RCRD LBL, and, perhaps most tellingly, XLR8R, which also recently transitioned into an Internet-only publication.

This, coupled with the magazine's shift late last year to only publishing bimonthly and its dwindling circulation, would seem to suggest that Spin's print edition is probably not long for this world. Although, both the publication's official statement and the interview that Buzzmedia's CEO gave to the New York Times about the sale veered away from saying anything definite, preferring to instead play up the positives of expanding Spin's website and digital staff, as well as its joining a company with a much larger advertiser reach and a reader base of around 120 million visitors per month, across all of Buzzmedia's sites. (Not mentioned: How many of those visitors are accounted for by the Buzzmedia-run sites for celebrities like Kim Kardashian.) Still, for anyone who's already feeling nostalgic for music news that you can crumple in your hands, the end of that era definitely seems nigh-er than ever.