Audiojunkies

Audiojunkies, occasionally shortened to AJ, is a UK based Internet publication devoted to new music commentary, artist interviews, music related comics and humour. Its central focus lies with up and coming bands from around the world.

One of the main features of Audiojunkies is its 'forum' or 'community' which is one of the busiest and well loved in the UK. Audiojunkies has been in existence since 2003 when it started as a fortnightly web based 'zine'. Once it became popular it became a daily internet publication which continues to grow at a rapid pace, even attracting mentions and being quoted in popular national media, such as the NME .

History

Audiojunkies was created in London in June 2003 by Jed Shepherd, music writer and horror film aficionado, as he was sick of being forced to write for music magazines that had no imagination or humour. Jed had just been nominated for an NME Brat award for another music based project, and thought he could do the same again but on a bigger scale. The idea for Audiojunkies came to Jed while on his first date with his then girlfriend. He told her to be quiet and not to bother him while he brainstormed his ideas over the phone to his friends. On that train journey he roped in music journalist friends and weirdos to participate in this new musical project. By the time he was dumped by this girlfriend a year later, Audiojunkies was in full flow, producing left-field interviews, music reviews and bizarre cartoons involving Electroclash Eggs.

Audiojunkies started out as a weekly 'webzine' in the style of a tabloid, with features splashed willy-nilly onto lurid purple and yellow backgrounds. These early days featured interviews with the biggest bands of the day, articles by Barry Nicolson (NME) proclaiming his hate for the Pixies, Mash-Up challenges; where people such as Mark Vidler of GoHomeProductions fought tooth and nail with contemporaries in the mash-up field (ILD mostly) to see who could produce the best 'remix/mash/bootleg' of songs. Audiojunkies would vote for the winner and 9 times out of 10 it would be GHP. Audiojunkies issue 1 also featured the regular addition of the AJ Camgirl. This girl would pose almost nude with a musically relevant slogan across her chest. It has been argued that this feature is misogynistic. It has also been argued that boys like to see girls half naked with witicisms about Pete Doherty on their breasts.

Audiojunkies in this weekly magazine format took a turn for the worse when Jed's girlfriend complained that every weekend would be spent editing and writing Audiojunkies, ready for the Monday release. In a momentary lapse in sense, Jed agreed and changed the frequency to fortnightly. This still was not good enough, so it was suggested that Audiojunkies should be turned into a proper website with a database of information (old articles/interviews/features) that can be updated daily/weekly/monthly/whenever. This backfired and all of Jed's time was spent updating and organising for the new website. Shortly thereafter Jed was dumped which was nice really as he could spend more time writing about what would happen if you time travelled back to when Razorlight was formed and stabbed Jonny Borrell in the leg.

As Audiojunkies became more popular it was decided to make it a bit more user friendly and ever so slightly professional. Tina T. was press-ganged in to work her magic on the redesign. Her instructions were to "Keep the logo and make everything as pretty as pie". Tina unfortunately took these instructions literally and redesigned with a Greggs The Bakers/Pastry feel to it (including photos of pasties and sausage rolls). Once she realised her error she just painted everything black and blue and it was done. It has been suggested that the colour scheme is black and blue as "that is how we are feeling man", but the truth is that in Media Studies GCSE, Jed was taught that 'blue' connotes 'cool'. Thank you Mr. Reid. There is a rumour (Feb '07) that there is to be some radical redesigning, including a different colour scheme and the addition of some secret features. In January '07 it was leaked that the new site will be in a 3-D format and will only be truly enjoyed if a user sellotapes a red translucent square to their left eye, and a green one onto their right.

Audiojunkies Television (AJTV) and EMO: THE MOVIE
On May 31 2008 hundreds of emo fans protested in London over newspaper The Daily Mail's coverage of the Hannah Bond suicide.
AudiojunkiesTV (AJTV) - the televisual division of Audiojunkies and headed by Jed Shepherd, the man responsible for Slashed - was present for filming of a documentary relating to the emo sub-culture and the run-up to the protests. They subsequently released a trailer on YouTube which received considerable coverage from Perez Hilton and the NME, amongst others. At the time of writing, the trailer is the most viewed and discussed video in the music section of Youtube. The documentary will be released on AJTV in June 2008 through Audiojunkies.net. There is some discussion regarding the film being shown on terrestrial television channels in the UK but details have yet to be confirmed.

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