Zines For Amoeba

An open letter to Amoeba Music from the editors of The Big Takeover, Dumb Angel Gazette, Roctober, Scram and Ugly Things

Dear Amoeba,

We the undersigned, the editors of five of the most long-lived and influential underground music magazines in America, wonder why your stores, which are otherwise such cool temples of musical knowledge and commerce, carry no magazines.

With the recent closures of L.A.s Arons and Rhino Records, there are two fewer places where our kind of independent and unbiased publications are easily available to music fans. Reviews and features in our magazines, uninfluenced by ad sales or record company payola, have demonstrable effects on record sales and labels decisions to reissue vault recordings. More significantly, in stores where our magazines are available, customers can read reviews and immediately purchase music. Our readers are the people who shop at Amoeba Music, so why cant they find our magazines--or any other magazines--when they are in your stores?

As our repeated attempts to discuss the lack of magazines in Amoeba with your owner Marc Weinstein and L.A. store manager Karen Pearson have met with no reply, we issue this open letter requesting a dialogue.

We believe that our five titles would sell very well in your stores, and that they would be welcomed by your customers. We are asking that people who would like to see these or other magazines available at Amoeba sign the attached petition, in the hopes of inspiring Marc or Karen to contact us and discuss what concerns need to be addressed in order to begin bringing magazines to Amoeba.

With best regards,

Jake Austen (Roctober, www.roctober.com)
Kim Cooper (Scram, www.scrammagazine.com)
Domenic Priore (Dumb Angel Gazette, www.dumbangelmagazine.com)
Jack Rabid (The Big Takeover, www.bigtakeover.com)
Mike Stax (Ugly Things, www.ugly-things.com)

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PETITION

Dear Amoeba Music:

We respectfully request that your management meet with representatives of The Big Takeover, Dumb Angel Gazette, Roctober, Scram and Ugly Things magazines, to discuss the addition of their and other publications into the stock of your retail stores.

We believe that independent music magazines are an integral part of the record business, and that by not making them available in your stores, you are doing your customers, musicians and publishers a disservice.

We look forward to visiting Amoeba in the future and having an opportunity to peruse these and many other interesting publications.