Skope Magazine
Skope Magazine is a music magazine founded in Boston, Massachusetts and privately owned by Michael Friedman, and published by Skope Entertainment Inc. The magazine is currently 168 pages (October 2007), printed bi-monthly in glossy full color. They have teamed up with Autism Speaks to help raise money for the cause while people party the night away.
Issue #1 (the Skope Eye issue) was published in 2001, in black and white, totaled 20 pages, and focused its content on Boston area musicians and emcees. An initial tag-line stated that Skope was "Boston's Premier local music magazine," an idea based on the vision of featuring only local area musicians or independent artists that were beneath the MTV radar. However, as the magazine grew, the focus on "beneath the MTV radar" artists progressively diminished as larger national and international artists were given preference. It is and has always been the scope of Skope to feature artists across all genres of music including rock, hiphop, jazz, reggae, and folk. Briefly during 2005, the magazine started including a monthly column that featured an interview with a [...] star. This column lasted only three issues.
Distribution
Distribution started with 1,000 copies handed out for free throughout Northeastern University and at live music venues and cafes throughout Boston. Publication began on a quarterly basis, and moved to a consistent bi-monthly release in 2004.
Skope switched to 4 color with the April 2004 issue (the "Polyphonic Spree" issue), switched to a pay publication, and opened a distribution contract with Newbury Comics and Tower Records in New England to sell the magazine for a $1 cover price.
In 2006, Skope Magazine increased its page count 60 pages and entered into a national distribution contract with Ingram Periodicals, placing Skope into bookstores such as Barnes and Noble.
In May of 2007, Canada based CTC Magazines extended the distribution of Skope to newsstands.
www.skopemagazine.com
The Skope website, www.skopemagazine.com, was launched April 1, 2001 to host additional time-sensitive articles, contests, news, artist biographies, event calenders, and sound clips. The intent of the website was more aligned with the original plan of supporting the local and independent musician. Pre-Myspace, the site was designed to help expand the musician network; end users (the artists) were given the capability to create a free account, and publish and manage their own biographies, photos, event calender, and mp3 listening station. Within 6 months, the site was generating over 450,000 page views per day, and hosted biographies from artists originating in The United States, Canada, Sweden, Europe, and South America. Each artist could associate itself with other artists of a similar genre or interest, and then refer fans to these new artist. Skopemagazine.com was maintained internally by the Skope creative department until November of 2004, when senior management decided to switch the hosting provider to Nimbit, an outside agency that provides standardized templates and a simplified web content management system. The design for the site changed dramatically and conflicted with the branding of the printed magazine (it has since become more aligned). After the change, the content quantity increased noticeably, but lacked categorical organization, and the artist-managed features disappeared. As of October 2007, the site receives over 10,000 readers per month and 30,000 page view, and continues to publish articles, a music player that artists can submit songs to for inclusion, advertisements, news, giveaways, blogs, tour dates, and forums.
Skope Live!
Skope Live! was established in November of 2002 as a live music concert promoter. The first show was held at Harper’s Ferry in Allston, MA, and sold out with John Brown’s Body headlining the event. Other Boston venues to host Skope Live! events include Bill’s Bar, The Middle East, The [...] Room, FELT, and The All Asia.
Cover stories
2007 cover stories included: Ludacris, My Chemical Romance, Linkin Park, Maroon 5, 50 Cent and KT Tunstall.
2006 cover stories included Pharrell, Living Things, Jurassic 5, Taking Back Sunday.
2005 covers included: The Flaming Lips, T House of The Almighty, Fall Out Boy and Thrice.
2004 cover stories included: The Polyphonic Spree, D12, The Dresden Dolls, The Donnas.
External links
Featured Artists
Natalise
Adam Barta