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Online Magazines

© Steven Lind

Okay, You've seen the Country Music magazines in the racks at your local bookstore or newstand; or maybe you've seen the subscription cards asking you to spend beaucoup bucks to get the lowdown on your favorite artists. Just how many magazines can you get before your significant other draws the line. For this fourth article in the series, we'll explore a few of the online versions of the most popular Country Music magazines. For those of you who are just joining Suite 101 and have an interest in Country Music, I urge you to go back and peruse some of the past articles on charts, record labels or the artists themselves.

Country Music Magazine Sites

There are many sites that provide information on Country Music in an "e-zine" (electronic magazine) format. Some of such sites are associated with paper publications that are available by subscription or at a newstand. Others are only provided on the Web. This article will deal with the former subject. Down the road, we'll explore some of the online-only sites. If you want to venture out on your own, you'll find them listed at the Yahoo! search site referenced in my Top 5 Sites.

Today's Country

Today's Country is a quarterly publication. The online version contains abbreviated versions of several of its regular articles and features including artist profiles, album reviews and a travel feature. The articles are nicely written and entertaining to read. One of the interesting features of this site was a section containing links to four discussion groups. These are different than chat rooms in that the conversation is not real-time. You can read notes posted on the newsgroup and then post a new note or reply to an existing discussion on the newsgroup. Your browser needs to be configured for Usenet News Groups. I tried to browse these but couldn't read any of the notes; I'll have to keep trying and will report any success in a future article.

Country Weekly

Country Weekly is a weekly (no duh) publication that most of us are familiar with finding at the supermarket checkout line. The online version presents information from the current and previous weeks' issues. Well, almost. The site contains video and audio clips for 6 different selections each, a tour schedule for the US and Canada, and a comment section. The tour information is the only thing that duplicates information from the magazine.

The audio and video clips require the use of MovieStar, a new QuickTime plug-in. There is a link from each page to the download site for the plug-in, so it's easy to get and install. The clips are reasonably new and most are from the current artists. The audio player provides a control bar to start, pause and scan forward/backward the clip. The trick to using the video plug-in is to right-click the movie image, once it has finished downloading, and then select "Play the Movie." You can also save the movie to disk for subsequent, offline play.

The copyright of the article Online Magazines in American Country Music is owned by Steven Lind. Permission to republish Online Magazines in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.