Q magazine to close after 34 years

Editor of influential music monthly says coronavirus accelerated problems caused by a declining print media market

Classic Kurt Cobain covers of the influential UK music magazine Q (Phil Rees/Shutterstock)

Influential UK music magazine Q is folding after 34 years, its editor has announced.

Ted Kessler broke the news on Twitter, announcing that the forthcoming August issue will be its last.

“I have some bad news about @QMagazine,” he wrote. “The issue that comes out on 28 July will be our last. The pandemic did for us and there was nothing more to it than that.”

In his editor’s letter, Mr Kessler wrote that the problems the magazine had faced in a declining print media market were exacerbated by the Covid-19 outbreak.

“We’ve been a lean operation for all of my tenure, employing a variety of ways to help keep our head above water in an extremely challenging print market,” he wrote. “Covid-19 wiped all that out.”

He added: “I must apologise profusely for my failure to keep Q afloat.”

Q’s owners Bauer Media said in June that the magazine was one of the most high-profile titles to face closure amid uncertainty in the print market. It said that it had reviewed its titles, which include Empire and Grazia, and apprehensively considered selling or closing a number of them.

“The pandemic and lockdown has further accelerated the trends already affecting the publishing industry,” Chris Duncan, the chief executive of UK Publishing at Bauer, told The Guardian. “Some titles that were already challenged, unfortunately, are not expected to be sustainable after the crisis.”

Q, which was founded in 1986, has long been a newsagent mainstay and one of the most famous print titles devoted to music in the UK.