BBC to publish digital music magazine

by Robin Parker, Media Week 02-Apr-07, 10:00

BBC Magazines Bristol is to launch its first digital magazine in a one-off promotion for the BBC Music Magazine Awards.

The specialist publisher is to mail a free 16-page digital magazine showcasing this year's winners of the annual awards, featuring video footage of performances and acceptance speeches from the event and streamed recordings of nominated artists. The editor's letter will appear as a video message.

The magazine will also offer links to HMV.co.uk, where readers will be able to buy the featured discs.

It will be sent to a list of 300,000 drawn from registered users of bbcmusicmagazine.com and other BBC mailing lists as well as the classical record industry.It will also be free to view at the magazine's website.

The magazine is based on the Ceros platform, which is used by Dennis Publishing for digital men's weekly Monkey and NatMags for teenage magazine Jellyfish.

BBC Magazines also produces a subscriber-based digital edition of Top of the Pops, based on the Zinio platform.

The promotion continues a multimedia campaign for the awards, which have received more than 40,000 votes online.

The magazine will be published at 4pm on 11 April 2007, following the awards lunch and ceremony. Winners will also be promoted in the May issue of BBC Music Magazine, on sale the next day.