Sad news. No, make that inexcusable news!!

[DannyKeys2]

For anyone who is thinking about scanning old magazines, there are a number of free phone apps that make scanning extremely simple these days. I use the dropbox one on my phone, though I think that defaults to black and white only.

[Stephen Fortner]

Thank you mu:zines for bumping up this topic from almost a year ago. Since the last flurry of activity on this thread, there really hasn"t been any official movement on this. For my own part, I can say that the Covid year really forced me to focus on essential work and labors of love such as this got put on the back burner. I am interested in rejuvenating this idea, though, as in the interim, online access to Keyboard articles has only gotten worse.

 

I have always seen a Keyboard archive as being its own site slash part of MPN but maybe a strategic partnership is a conversation worth having. I'm strictly thinking out loud and not speaking for MPN as an entity.

[muzines]

Thanks Stephen - like I say, we've always been open to help, and are happy to discuss working out a way forward that works for everybody if we can.

 

How do we continue this conversation?

 

(We have a private mu:zines Slack channel and we can set up a Keyboard section and invite yourself and other interested parties along with myself and Mike to discuss, if that would be useful?)

[Magman]

With a great deal of help from Dr Metlay, I now have a lot more Keyboard magazines in my collection and a few more hopefully arriving shortly. I will likely hold off on scanning these though till we have a consensus on if or how an archive project can go forward (I have plenty of other magazines still to scan, and synths to build and fix, so I will be plenty busy regardless).

 

As Ben and I have found out, when there is sufficient community interest, it is surprising how quickly content can be gathered. With Polyphony magazine it was effectively weeks from the archive going live on mu:zines to the collection being completed. Admittedly, a much short production run, but Keyboard also has a larger audience and a larger community of interest.

 

For the community to support it though, one key aspect is that access to the archive should be free if at all possible, or the community will be reluctant to provide content for free so that someone else can make profit from their efforts. This can be mitigated to some degree if the access costs are to maintain the archive, but again, donations or Patreon contributions are a better model than a paid access site.

 

Anyway, here"s hoping we can work out a good way forward for this archive. I will be watching developments with interest.

[DJkeys]

I started subscribing to Keyboard in 1982. I kept my subscription until they changed to Electronic Musician. I kept that for a year and then dumped it, as it had less and less pages and relevant information for my needs.

 

What I really would like to see is an ad-free gear review mag (much like Robert Parker's Wine Advocate) which is not supported by any outside money and is brutally honest about the gear.

 

-dj

[Doerfler]

With a great deal of help from Mr Dr. Metlay,

 

fixed. Cheers.

[Poly6Programmer]

Hope this happens!