Original print magazine
The magazine had an extensive review section, featuring new releases, reissues, compilations, film and live concert reviews, as well as radio and television reviews. Each review included a rating from one to five stars. While its content was non-free they hosted an archive of all of their magazine covers.[15]
Much of the magazine was devoted to interviews with popular music artists.[2] According to Alexis Petridis of The Guardian, it was originally set up after the success of "rock’s old stagers" at Live Aid, which co-founders Mark Ellen and David Hepworth had co-presented, to focus on long-established acts that appealed to an older music market, such as Paul McCartney, Rod Stewart, Paul Simon, Elton John, Genesis, and Eric Clapton.[16] It also compiled lists, ranging from "The 100 Greatest Albums" to "The 100 Richest Stars in Rock", with a special edition magazine called "The 150 Greatest Rock Lists Ever" published in July 2004.[17] Q also produced a number of special editions devoted to a single act/artist like U2 or Nirvana, but these magazines stopped in 2018, with its sister magazine, Mojo[2] (also owned by Bauer) continuing to produce specials devoted to artists like Bob Dylan.
Promotional gifts were given away, such as cover-mounted CDs[15] or books. The January 2006 issue included a free copy of "The Greatest Rock and Pop Miscellany … Ever!", modelled on Schott's Original Miscellany. Each issue of Q had a different message on the spine. Some readers tried to work out what the message had to do with the contents of the magazine. This practice (known as the "spine line") has since become commonplace among British lifestyle magazines, including Q's sister publication Empire and the football monthly FourFourTwo.
The magazine had a relationship with the Glastonbury Festival, producing both a free daily newspaper on-site during the festival and a review magazine available at the end of the event. That was first started as a Select magazine spin-off, although as Q moved its focus to the Britpop and indie rock stars of the 1990s, it was decided that EMAP did not need two monthly titles (and Raw magazine as well) covering the same genre of music; Select was shut in late 2000, with Q continuing. In January 2008, Mojo was launched by EMAP as a rival to Uncut and focused on all the rock stars, now viewed upon as being heritage and classic, that Q originally featured in its pages in 1986. In late 2008, Q revamped its image with a smaller amount of text and an increased focus on subjects other than music.
In February 2012, Andrew Harrison was recruited as editor, replacing Paul Rees during a difficult period when on-line publishing had led to a 17% decline in the magazine's circulation in the first half of 2012. It had fallen to 64,596 units; a reduction in volume described by The Guardian as "the worst performance of any music magazine in the period".[18][19] Directly reporting to Publishing Director Rimi Atwal of Bauer Media Group, Harrison's brief said to "refocus" and revive the magazine and to that end he took on a number of new journalists launching the magazine's iPad edition, but decided against a rebranding. Under his tenure, Q was named "Magazine of the Year" at the 2012 "Record of the Day" awards.[20] He left just 14 months later, according to the Guardian, "as print music magazines continue to endure torrid times" and even free titles were failing to compete against blogs and platforms dependent on online advertising.[18]
In July 2020, Bauer published a Special Collector's Issue of the magazine (Q414), which it had intended to be the last edition[21][22] before deciding to attempt to sell the publication to another media group. This issue was more of a 'throwback' publication, similar to what Mojo had been doing, and featured articles and acts from 34 years of Q magazine. With other firms, such as Long Live Vinyl's owner Anthem Publishing,[23] ending the publication of a number of monthly music magazine titles, a buyer could not be found for the title, with editor Ted Kessler announcing that issue Q415 would be the last, on 20 July 2020.[24][16]
