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Paste magazine went online-only in September 2010, much to the chagrin of folks who grew up with the mixtape-toting mag. Now Paste has launched a new, interactive version of the print product, called mPlayer.
The beta version of mPlayer will be available for free until September of this year (after that date, the product will cost $36 for a yearly subscription). A new issue will hit the web every week, and previous issues will exist in an archive within the product.
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"The mPlayer lets us do more than what we could do with print," says Nick Purdy, Paste's publisher. Given the choice between print and this newest version, he says, the magazine would go with mPlayer.
Paste 2.0, at first glance, looks a lot like iTunes. You have a navigation bar on the side with the cover of that issue, along with a table of contents. To the right, you'll find the stories, designed to look like album art. At the top of the page, you'll find a music player that streams a selection of seven MP3s per week, which you can also download (Paste suspended its famous music sampler last year). Either link the song to the article (so that it only plays when you're reading about the band in question), or unlink it, so that you can keep listening no matter where you roam.
When it comes to content, mPlayer will feature little material Paste website, which will live on after the new product's launch. Both will have the same music reviews, but mPlayer adds long-form features, as well as video (original and otherwise) and other exclusive content, which could come in the form of chapters from reviewed books, say. There's not much of a social integration -- you can "Like" articles via Facebook Connect and share them via various channels, but no commenting is allowed. Purdy and Co. say that could come soon, though.
If you check out mPlayer today, you might balk at the freshness of the content -- there's a review for Bridesmaids, for one, and a feature about The Decemberists, whose latest album came out in January. But Paste President Tim Regan-Porter says that this issue's articles are not indicative of future iterations. This launch is more about format than content, and further issues will be much more timely.
Paste is a well-respected, iconic brand, but asking folks to shell out cash for an online edition is a bit risky. After all, there's scores of music blogs out there, and many of them offer free MP3s daily. There are also services entirely dedicated to free downloads, like mySpoonful, RCRD LBL and Epitonic.
"The biggest thing that Paste brings is our point of view, our curation, our editorial layer," Purdy says. "It's not as simple as finding free MP3s around the web. You need to have some kind of guide." RCRD LBL, mySpoonful et all do offer a guide -- they hand-curate a daily dose of MP3s complete with artist info, delivered to one's inbox. So what Paste will offer -- in a way short-form blogs do not -- is a more editorial, writerly point of view, an experience for the leanback crowd.
Paywalls have been a dicey subject of late -- traffic to The New York Times declined after its wall went into effect in April -- and long-form journalism can be a tough sell. We're not sure seven free MP3s per week will be enough to warrant a price tag for most people.
Still, Paste plans to expand mPlayer beyond the just the browser, launching a tablet app for both iOS and Android in the coming months. A tablet app lends itself much better to the leanback experience than a computer screen. Still, the app would have to compete against preexisting products, like Spin's stellar offering, which offers a streamable mixtape of music in the issue.
What do you think of the new Paste? Will you open your wallet when September comes?
This story originally published on Mashable here.
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