# Annoyed with the Gramophone



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

In the busyness of life I realised I had missed delivery of two issues of the Gramophone Magazine. When I rang the girl told me my direct debit had (mysteriously) expired and so they had stopped sending it. When I enquired why I had not received notification she said they didn't send out letters just cancelled the magazine. As a reader of 50 years and a subscriber for many years I would have thought I was due a bit better treatment than that. Appears that you are no longer a valued subscriber but just a number to be deleted. However, with everything available on the Web I think I can probably do without the Gramophone.


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## Andreas (Apr 27, 2012)

DavidA said:


> In the busyness of life I realised I had missed delivery of two issues of the Gramophone Magazine. When I rang the girl told me my direct debit had (mysteriously) expired and so they had stopped sending it. When I enquired why I had not received notification she said they didn't send out letters just cancelled the magazine. As a reader of 50 years and a subscriber for many years I would have thought I was due a bit better treatment than that. Appears that you are no longer a valued subscriber but just a number to be deleted. However, with everything available on the Web I think I can probably do without the Gramophone.


Right, we're just numbers in their systems. Any corporation. However, if you try to cancel your subscription/membership, they're suddenly all over you with special offers, deals, discounts etc. At least that's my experience. And after you've parted ways, they keep bugging you, saying how wonderful it would be if we would get back together. If you fall for that, you're back to number status again.


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/...ank-axed-direct-debit-without-telling-me.html

Just had it happened to me for a monthly subscription service. Didn't get canceled though, got a "you are overdrawn" letter. Irritating but I see it as a positive, giving you a chance to reassess if you want the service. If you died you could have Gramophone bleeding your bank account and sending your corpse glossy magazines for years.


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## Badinerie (May 3, 2008)

I subscribed for a while in the late eighties until I reached the Cecilia Bartoli event horizon...


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

I used to subscribe, but found it overbearingly stuffy. Moved to Fanfare for 17 years and will not renew there anymore. The reviewers suck big time. Nobody I can respect.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

I get all the reviewers that suck I need for free on the internet!


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## rspader (May 14, 2014)

Last spring, I subscribed to BBC Music Magazine which meets my needs. When we recently moved, they had a heck of time getting it to our new PO box. Never did figure out what the problem was but they sent me the missed issues and extended my subscription for an equivalent number of months for my trouble. Good service there.


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## Radames (Feb 27, 2013)

I used to go to the bookstore and skim the Gramophone and Fanfare. Fanfare is better.


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## Guest (Dec 6, 2014)

Indeed there is no need for an expensive magazine as the grammophone because you can find so much information on the internet and complete with audio samples.This forum is also a good place to seek and discover, so why by a paper for the opinion of one person?


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## SimonNZ (Jul 12, 2012)

Wow. I completely disagree with all of the above. I think that on the whole Gramophone magazine does an excellent job (though I've never had a subscription). They're not the last word, of course, but I've always found their reviews helpful, and not at all "stuffy".

(I do wish, though, that they'd left their back issue search as a free service.)


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

I've never bought the magazine but have had a couple of their yearbooks which did serve as a useful reference of sorts in my early years of collecting (assuming you could sidestep what seemed to be a Simon Rattle fixation).


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Radames said:


> I used to go to the bookstore and skim the Gramophone and Fanfare. Fanfare is better.


Fanfare was once much better than Gramophone, but the "features" section of Fanfare, which takes up about half the magazine, is a joke. In that section, an unfavorable review is not allowed. If a reviewer has a negative take on the recording, the Editor simply passes the disc on to another reviewer and so on. Once again, money rules.


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## SimonNZ (Jul 12, 2012)

Bulldog said:


> Fanfare was once much better than Gramophone, but the "features" section of Fanfare, which takes up about half the magazine, is a joke. In that section, an unfavorable review is not allowed. If a reviewer has a negative take on the recording, the Editor simply passes the disc on to another reviewer and so on. Once again, money rules.


Giving the job to a _sympathetic_ reviewer is not the same thing as asking for an _uncritical _review.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

elgars ghost said:


> I've never bought the magazine but have had a couple of their yearbooks which did serve as a useful reference of sorts in my early years of collecting (assuming you could sidestep what seemed to be a Simon Rattle fixation).


It´s been decades since I was a regular reader, and maybe 5 years since I browsed an issue, but the Anglo-angle & -recommendations have always been a strong feature there (whereas the German _FonoForum_ and the French _Diapason_ for example represented other nationally influenced priorities). 
I´d assume that it is still quite so.


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

I was looking for the latest issue of Gramophone on the shelves of the Gateway Mall Barnes and Noble and it looks like there is an October 2014 issue. Shows me how much classical music magazines get updated or cared for by the general management of the bookstore.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

albertfallickwang said:


> I was looking for the latest issue of Gramophone on the shelves of the Gateway Mall Barnes and Noble and it looks like there is an October 2014 issue. Shows me how much classical music magazines get updated or cared for by the general management of the bookstore.


My November issue arrived in my mailbox Dec. 1.


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

Bulldog said:


> My November issue arrived in my mailbox Dec. 1.


Hmm so maybe Barnes and Noble is just late with its current issue then.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

After writing to the editor of the Gramophone he wrote me a nice letter and sent me the two back issues I'd missed. I was then persuaded to subscribe to their on line issue which wasn't a lot cheaper but did mean you could mine the back issues. First they didn't send me the link to the website as they had my email wrong. Then when I finally received the link I found it impossible to log on to it as the site had been apparently designed by a user-unfriendly computer geek. So I asked for a refund and sadly the Gramophone is no more in our house after 50 years. Amazes me how these publishing firms dispense with customers.


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

DavidA said:


> After writing to the editor of the Gramophone he wrote me a nice letter and sent me the two back issues I'd missed. I was then persuaded to subscribe to their on line issue which wasn't a lot cheaper but did mean you could mine the back issues. First they didn't send me the link to the website as they had my email wrong. Then when I finally received the link I found it impossible to log on to it as the site had been apparently designed by a user-unfriendly computer geek. So I asked for a refund and sadly the Gramophone is no more in our house after 50 years. Amazes me how these publishing firms dispense with customers.


Sorry to hear this.


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## Lord Lance (Nov 4, 2013)

Gramophone might be taken a bit more seriously if they didn't endlessly restate classics [composers, works, etc.] as their cover issues and a notorious British bias. Their "Top 50 Recordings of All Time" is a very good example. I downloaded one of their issue a few months ago. For knowledge, certain articles were helpful starting points.

Long story, short: It has its pluses and minuses.


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## Polyphemus (Nov 2, 2011)

Sadly 'The Gramophone' has ceased to be the magazine once regarded as the music lovers bible. It has in recent years taken on the guise of a money hungry corporation. The days of Greenfield , Layton and Marsh have passed and as has already been stated on this site comparable content is available online.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

I subscribed to it for a year. Found it "stuffy" and a bit full of itself. Never again.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

I was a subscriber to Gramophone for decades but dropped out about 10 years ago and, for the most part, I don't miss it. The primary reason that I valued it for so long was the predictability of the reviewers. By that I am not being critical, rather it is helpful to understand their likes, dislikes and biases in order to evaluate the desirability of buying the item.

I did subscribe to Fanfare for a while but got rather irritated at it because the general 'eliter than thou' tone of many of their reviewers. Not only were their biases showing, they were being flaunted.

So for now I pick and choose the opinions that are found everywhere on the internet and do my best to filter out the tidbits of useful opinion ... i.e. that which will agree with mine


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## manyene (Feb 7, 2015)

As a long time subscriber I have stayed with the Gramophone though over the years they have made some regrettable decisions. Their website was never very good, and quite difficult to get around; the forum which they ran for several years was never properly moderated and was filled with spam; the new website has limited facilities and you need to pay extra to access some of them (they were free before). Despite some protests about the new cover made some three years ago, they persisted with what is now very cluttered arrangement, presumably to attract those customers who pick it off the shelves. There is still perhaps too much in the way of fairly ephemeral material, although the coverage of non review items has improved with pieces on individual composers which will be valuable those exploring new repertoire. There were many who regretted the disappearance of the CD of samples and its replacement with extracts on the Internet replacement, but I was not one of those. The actual reviews are still the thing I tend to read first, and the standard does not seem to have fallen -although if you go back to the 60s, the one thing you notice is how much longer these to be. However how many CDs were coming out at that stage every month?


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

Becca said:


> I was a subscriber to Gramophone for decades but dropped out about 10 years ago and, for the most part, I don't miss it. The primary reason that I valued it for so long was the predictability of the reviewers. By that I am not being critical, rather it is helpful to understand their likes, dislikes and biases in order to evaluate the desirability of buying the item.
> 
> I did subscribe to Fanfare for a while but got rather irritated at it because the general 'eliter than thou' tone of many of their reviewers. Not only were their biases showing, they were being flaunted.
> 
> So for now I pick and choose the opinions that are found everywhere on the internet and do my best to filter out the tidbits of useful opinion ... i.e. that which will agree with mine


Oh I know!

Where's the likes of a Robert Layton or a Richard Osborne_ today _at _Gramopone_? The magazine is just a PR gloss for new releases. The analysis and criticism is sophomoric.

So what is to be done?

I hitch my wagon to a star and find people with exquisite taste and large collections and talk to them- which I actually prefer to do- like the old days of shopping for cd's at Tower Records.


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## jim prideaux (May 30, 2013)

I used to buy the magazine in the 80's and then gave up. Last year six months subscription and was very quickly bored-essential point is that I would now really miss Talk Classical but have not really missed Gramaphone!


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

I do like looking at the Gramaphone just for fun once in awhile and sometimes may pick up an issue (rarely) just because it's cool to have something to read on the train.


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