January 21, 2013 | By Billboard Staff
The Jan. 26 edition of Billboard features a cover-story interview with Prince, but that world exclusive is accompanied by something else: A whole new magazine. This week, Billboard relaunches, and from the new logo on the front cover to the information packed graphic on the back page, the magazine is dedicated to the delivery of business journalism that leads and informs the essential conversations around the music and businesses it covers.
As Billboard editorial director Bill Werde puts it in an editor’s letter in the new issue, “The music industry is a dynamic place, and this book will serve your information needs more than ever, going deeper into the trends, technologies and ideas shaping your decisions. If you don’t learn something that will help your business in every issue, we aren’t doing our jobs.”
Among the changes:
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• An Expanded and Reformatted Charts Section: a top-to-bottom redesign of the charts section adds eight pages, expanding the Hot 100 to two pages and the Billboard 200 to four pages. These charts are easier to navigate and more information-packed than ever, and have more room for analysis by Billboard’s charts team on what’s moving and why. Billboard has also deepened its coverage of the burgeoning dance scene by launching Dance/Electronic songs, the first-ever ranking of the nation’s top dance songs combining digital download sales (tracked by Nielsen SoundScan), radio airplay (monitored by Nielsen BDS) and streaming data (tracked by BDS from such services as Spotify, Muve, Slacker, Rhapsody, Rdio, MySpace, Xbox Music and Guvera) and reported club play from a select national panel of 140 club DJs.
• The Deal: an-depth report on the most important music business negotiations of the week
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• The T&E Report: event-driven coverage of the places where the music business unfolds, narrated by dealmakers and experts
• Gear: a look at what tools the musicians, producers and business people use in their jobs
• Coda: An information graphic back page that details and explains chart movements every week
In addition, the new Billboard is now available for the first time on your iPad. The Billboard iPad edition features exclusive videos, music and photos, along with expanded, interactive charts that are playable on Spotify. The Billboard iPad edition is free to subscribers and available for $99.99 per year or $9.99 per month.
To buy this week’s relaunch edition of Billboard, go HERE. Stay tuned for information on how to buy Billboard’s iPad edition.