This is the first intro I've written for the mag. This issue of Tape Op coincides with the AES show in New York City where Larry, Andy, Laura and I will be hanging out with other audio geeks preaching the gospel of Tape Op. This marks a milestone of sorts. Six years ago I was at the AES show in San Francisco passing out copies of Tape Op #10, a black and white zine with almost no advertising in it to any one who would look at it. I thought it was the coolest audio mag I'd ever seen, but almost nobody at the show seemed interested. Nonetheless, I asked Larry if I could help him broaden Tape Op's distribution because I thought more people should see the mag than the 200 or so subscribers at the time.
Now, six years later, we're tied with our friends at EQ as the third largest (in circulation) recording magazine in the world! And, of the 40,000 copies of Tape Op that we print, over 35,000 of them go out to subscribers. This brings me to the reason why I'm writing this intro and not Larry.
We recently took some criticism on the Internet and via emails for our efforts to renew our subscribers. First, let me explain that while I love magazines (as opposed to computer screens) I'd rather kill as few trees as possible. I'd also rather not pay the post office to deliver magazines to people who've moved or maybe just don't care about getting the magazine any longer. Secondly, although I think this should be obvious, Tape Op is an advertiser-supported publication. We send the magazine to you for free and our advertisers pay for this. The more ads there are, the more pages of editorial we can print. This is why we ask you to support our advertisers as they're the ones who make this all possible. This is how we choose to run our business. I feel that this allows us to put the magazine into as many people's hands as possible.