Rolling Stone has announced that it’s changing it’s format, effective the end of October. It’s losing it’s over-size format as well as it’s staples, and will be printed on different paper. I’m sad to hear this icon is changing. It’ll be easier to stock, likely make more money, and perhaps even invite new readers with it’s smaller size, but for me, I’ll miss the nostalgia, as Jann Wenner willingly admits.

I remember the day I bought my very first issue, and I remember exactly who was on the cover. I spent summer holidays floating in the pool at a friends house, reading Rolling Stone, Raygun, & Spin. My walls were covered with the full-page photos from these massive publications, and I still have many of these issues today, albeit in poor condition. I don’t consider the look, feel and texture of Rolling Stone in the same way I do other magazines, because nostalgia has so much to do with it. As a reader, I’m not just handling a magazine and extracting the content, I’m remembering what it was like the first time I discovered music and life outside suburbia. With Spin having already made the switch, and Raygun sadly long gone, Rolling Stone is the last vestige of music mag culture before the digital age. It may be a necessary change, long overdue, but I’ll still shed my tear for the loss of it’s special format.