College Media Announces New Electronic Delivery of CMJ New Music Report

Posted on April 8, 1998

College Media, Inc. (CMJ ), publisher of CMJ New Music Report, an industry trade journal devoted to the coverage of new music and the radio stations that play it, announced the launch of a new, electronic version of its music industry trade journal.

While the magazine will continue to be available in its print version, the new electronic version takes advantage of the speed and ease of use of the World Wide Web to deliver the entire magazine -- in a version identical to the print version -- straight to the computer desktops of CMJ's subscribers. And these subscribers will now be able to get the magazine, with chart data, news, and reviews, up to a full week ahead of when the U.S. Postal Service would deliver it.

According to Robert Haber, Publisher of the CMJ New Music Report, "the information we gather each week has become too time-sensitive to wait to be printed and shipped traditionally. We want to get this information into the hands of our subscribers -- the movers and shakers of the music industry -- literally the second it's available." The new electronic version of the magazine will be available every Wednesday evening, while the printed edition ships on Friday.

In order to allow subscribers to download entire copies of CMJ New Music Report, complete with all advertisements and artwork, and without taking forever to do so, the magazine will be employing Adobe Acrobat's revolutionary PDF format (or portable document format). As the Electronic Editor of Business and Technology for The Los Angeles Times, Travis Smith, has stated: "By publishing a Web version of our Washington, D.C. edition in PDF, we capture the exact look and feel of the printed newspaper and deliver visually appealing content to our readers no matter where they are... People can start reading almost immediately with the new Acrobat 3.0 features, such as page-at-a-time downloading and enhanced file compression."