State, Ireland’s newest music magazine launches today. Can State over come expensive production costs and capture enough readership and advertising to be profitable? If I want my ‘music payload’ I have a myriad of web sites which can deliver that instantly for free. Do music blogs and a publication such as this come into conflict in any way or are there enough young people who still want their information in static printed form? I’m genuinely interested to see if it can pull the masses away from hot press. Anyway, best of luck to them.

There’s a few gigs to celebrate the launch in Tower today. Details here.

More: Check out this post and comments at On the Record for loads more related stuff.

The print edition of Mongrel, everyone’s favourite exquisitely printed free magazine, seems to be M.I.A. David Maybury says on his blag:

Aoife has heard, through an unnofficial informant, that the operation to fill the streets with a smile and some much needed sarcasm is Missing In Action.

He says though, that the rumour originates from The Indie Hour.

If it is gone from the meat world, then how does this stack up for new forays into the print world? Is there really any market beyond glossy cack-mags with 98 pages of ads for every 1 page of sponsored endorsement based articles?

I emailed them just now. Will update if I get a response.

Update: They responded to say they never print in January. February issue is out end of next week. Hurray!