Monthly music magazine the Word is to close after nine years with editorial director David Hepworth blaming "dramatic changes in the media and the music business".
Hepworth announced on Friday morning that the August issue of the Word, to be published in the second week of July, would be the magazine's last, with all seven full-time staff being made redundant.
Hepworth, a founding partner of Development Hell, which publishes the Word and dance music title Mixmag and also operates social media site dontstayin.com, said in the nine years since the Word had launched there had been "dramatic changes in the media and the music business".
"These changes have made it more difficult for a small independent magazine to survive and provide its staff with a living," he added. "This hasn't been made any easier by the economic climate of the wider world."
The title's website, wordmagazine.co.uk, an "open blog" that does not include material from the magazine, will remain open for the immediate future as a point of contact, according to Hepworth.
Hepworth added that Development Hell would continue to publish Mixmag and would also "expand on new platforms".
The most recent ABC figures for the Word, covering the last six months of 2010, showed that the magazine's circulation dropped 5.7% year on year to 25,048.
The Word's demise is symptomatic of the extremely difficult environment for paid-for music magazines, which face a squeeze from an increasing number of free titles and the music industry's falling advertising budgets. In the last six months of 2011, all paid-for rock music titles experienced year-on-year falls in circulation, according to the ABCs.
Reacting to the news on Twitter, Simon Harper, editor in chief of Clash Magazine, said the Word was "victim of incredibly hard times that we're all feeling". "The print world mourns a respected friend," he added.
"When we came up with that slogan – 'The Word – a magazine, a website, a podcast, a way of life' – we were being a bit tongue in cheek," Hepworth said. "But it was, wasn't it?"
The final issue of The Word will include interviews with Lou Reed, Robert Smith, Martin Amis and Mick Jagger, as well as a piece from editor Mark Ellen on the magazine's nine-year history.
Guardian Media Group, the parent company of the publisher of the Guardian and MediaGuardian, owns a 29.5% stake in Development Hell, the company that publishes the Word.
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