RWD Magazine
 | |
| Editor | Danny Walker |
|---|---|
| Former editors | Hattie Collins |
| Staff writers | Nardene Scott, Tego Sigel, Francesca Dunn, James Humphrys |
| Categories | Music, Style, Sport, Gaming, Film, Technology, News |
| Frequency | Monthly |
| Total circulation (June 2013) | 98,683[1] |
| Year founded | 1 September 2001 |
| Company | Rewind Creative Media LTD |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
RWD Magazine (also known as RWD or RWDmag) is a British based magazine which features Music, Style, Sport, Gaming, Film, Technology, News, interviews and charts on hip hop, Grime, Dubstep, RnB, UK garage, Drum and bass and U.S. house music. It is released monthly, distributing 98,300 copies each time and is ABC certified. It's considered the largest magazine on youth music and lifestyle in the United Kingdom.[citation needed]
As well as the magazine, RWDmag has a website which features music videos, tracks and artist profiles.
History
RWD Magazine became a well known name in UK underground urban music circles in mid to late 2003. This coincided with the rise of a new urban music genre, which later became popularly referred to as Grime. Founding editor-in-chief was Matt Mason, who later wrote The Pirate's Dilemma (2008).[2]
RWD Magazine provided a platform for emerging unsigned artists to get their names and their faces into every popular underground music outlet. This works by aspiring artists paying to feature within the magazine. This may not seem very desirable at first, but the magazine's healthy distribution and circulation makes this more attractive. The magazine enjoys a relatively healthy distribution and circulation as readers can pick up the magazine for free.[citation needed]
This new platform (along with music channel Channel U TV) appealed to many aspiring artists from the grime scene and allowed them to do independently what they could have previously only done with the backing of a major record label.[citation needed]
The popularity with the physical paper magazine soon spread online to its website. Its official website was buoyed by a popular forum, the most central point being the Grime Music Forum. This forum allows for the discussion of everything to do with the grime scene and regularly enjoys visits from big names in the Grime scene who occasionally also post.[citation needed]
RWD Magazine recently celebrated 100 issues.[citation needed]
2007–2008
In mid-2007, RWD Magazine underwent a number of management changes, one of the most important being a change of editor. The new editor wanted to expand the magazine's audience in order to feature all types of music that might appeal to a younger generation. In order to achieve this, the content and appearance of the magazine and website changed, much to the disappointment of the users. This resulted in an exodus of users, establishing their own forums; namely ViP2 Forum which evolved from the Flashback993 forums that was established in 2005. Grime Forum was also created where grime music fans who used to post in the RWDMag forum created their own forum website named Grime Forum with its own connected "Grimepedia" encyclopedia of the genre as well as a music store.[citation needed]
2009
On 1 April 2009 RWD launched a new and redesigned website with extended content under the different genres and enhanced social networking features which give users the ability to manage their own profiles, keep in touch with friends, as well as track forum activity. The functionality behind this was carried out by atticmedia and the design by alex donne (aka vector meldrew)[citation needed]
References
- ↑ "Mag ABCs: Full circulation round-up for the first half of 2013". Press Gazette. 15 August 2013. Retrieved 7 December 2013.
- ↑ Q&A: Matt Mason, .net magazine, February 5, 2008.