ABOUT US
"It seems blindingly obvious how to create a great magazine: believe in what you're doing, take a real pride in your work and strive for greatness – or, if not greatness, individuality." – Everett True, October 2003
"Plan B has thrived by refusing to talk down to its readers: the content is hip, intelligent, and sophisticated; often daringly so" - Media Guardian, October 2005
DECEMBER 2006
Plan B builds on the success of editor-in-chief Everett True's acclaimed previous magazine Careless Talk Costs Lives, extending its coverage to champion counter-culture in literature, film, comics, videogames and the visual arts. Confrontational without being cliquey, Plan B is part of a cultural underground that looks outwards.
Since launching with its pilot issues in June and September 2004 (numbered issues 0 and 0.5 respectively), and thereafter published bimonthly, Plan B received a rapturous reception for its stunning photography and illustration as well as the intelligence, warmth and depth of its writing. Upon reaching its first birthday, the magazine launched its first exhibition, aptly titled Exhibit B, which led London's alternative weekly The London Line to purr that Plan B is, "the hippest publication of the minute." From September 2006, Plan B will be published on a monthly basis.
Retailing at £3.30 and printed on thick satin paper, the magazine blends elements traditionally associated with the music and style press (provocative, informed criticism; visually striking, beautiful photography and illustrations; nurturing new talent) with the uncompromising immediacy of the Internet. It encourages readers to investigate and communicate, not passively assimilate: Plan B's purpose is to encourage people to explore their identities as consumers, and to support local communities with an international scope.
Overseen by internationally renowned critic Everett True (former editor of Vox and Assistant Editor of Melody Maker), Plan B features a worldwide creative base – including award-winning writers, illustrators and photographers, and righteous teenage bloggers.
For more information, contact Everett True.
PRESS
"The best magazine currently on the market!" - Piccadilly Records
"Mightily cool" - The Observer
"The best music and culture magazine on the planet" - Dotshop.se
"The hippest publication of the minute" - The London Line
"Catch them before they become too big to talk to" - Creative Week
Why music fans are sticking to Plan B (Media Guardian, Oct 3)
With an apparently permanent advertising recession, and the drift of readers towards the internet, the music press is not supposed to be a going concern any more. Bang, X-Ray, Bullit, Rip & Burn, Logo and others have all closed within months of launching. Yet one publication without the backing of a major publishing house, produced from the bedrooms of a few enthusiasts, is bucking this trend. The bi-monthly magazine Plan B, edited by esteemed Melody Maker journalist Everett True, still does not have office space, but through eight issues since June 2004 it has comfortably reached the impressive circulation of 25,000.
The magazine is billed as being for opinion-formers and agenda-setters, with the kind of bold artwork and passionately subjective editorial content that used to be the preserve of the NME before it became a kind of Smash Hits with guitars (a tactic that has worked if the weekly's 5.2% year-on-year increase in sales is anything to go by). Where the NME keeps making more and more space available for photos, or Pete Doherty, or photos of Pete Doherty, Plan B has thrived by refusing to talk down to its readers: the content is hip, intelligent and sophisticated; often daringly so. This issue's cover stars are Black Dice, an incredibly obscure, experimental art-noise trio, but True is not concerned: "it's three blokes who play guitars and other equipment, what's so daring about that? We appeal to a niche market, sure, but that market is people who are really passionate about hearing new music".
The received wisdom within the music press is: put a new band on the cover each week and watch your sales drop like a stone. Put Oasis - or Doherty - on the cover each week, and no matter how sick of them you become, you can sit back and watch the ABCs rocket. True does not subscribe to this idea, which has its own advantages. It means Plan B has acquired a well-deserved reputation for being ahead of the game; Joanna Newsom, Antony and the Johnsons, Kano, the Arcade Fire, and many others on 2005's hip list have appeared in Plan B first.
Publisher Chris Houghton is keen that the magazine is not viewed as just an elitist fanzine, however, with the accusations of inverted snobbery that tend to come with this: "essentially, we're a very small business with high aspirations competing against much bigger companies with bigger editorial, marketing and staff budgets". They seem to be doing pretty well, considering.
Dan Hancox |
