Relix Redux
Steve Smith

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Oddly enough, one of the most revered magazines covering live and cutting edge-music was until recently almost too hip for the Web. Relix started 35 years ago as a stapled newsletter for Grateful Dead fanatics. It grew into a beloved monthly that made its reputation on maintaining person-to-person contact with readers at a string of summer festivals and concerts. In its topic and its relationship with readers, Relix was notably, almost proudly, analog in a digital age. By the time former publisher Zenbu Media (owned by Steve Bernstein; see min, February 18, 2002) ran into trouble last year and was about to put the book on extended hiatus, the Web presence was rudimentary. And so in the transfer last May of Relix to the newly formed Relix Media (owned by entrepreneur Peter Shapiro) the brand was like a great acoustic guitarist who had yet to discover how to plug into an amp.

"On the Web site we knew we needed help," says Relix Media senior vp/associate publisher Rachel Seiden. "From the very beginning of building the budget we knew that even though the magazine was the brand, if you wanted to do anything in the future we had to relaunch the site." Seiden and her now-husband, editor Josh Baron, were among the Relix staffers who approached Shapiro about buying the publication. "It was a very easy phone call," Seiden recalls. Not only was Shapiro connected to music through concert venues he owned, but Relix itself was doing fairly well in maintaining its circ and ad bases during the recession.

Shapiro has been fond of saying, "We didn't lose Detroit because we never had Detroit." The book never was dependent on broad brand ad categories so much as artists, labels, and festivals in a live music world that has only become more integral to the recording industry in recent years. The magazine went to the new owners without dropping an issue, Seiden says. "Our goal was not to miss a beat...and that is what we did."

Relix enjoys an enthusiastic fan base and a lot of small bands and alternative music groups that need this venue to get the word out about their tours and get their music discovered. "We rely on our friends and our family, the people putting out records, the labels, and smaller bands," says Seiden. "We give these smaller bands a chance to be on the same CD as [Eric] Clapton or [Steve] Winwood. They want us to succeed."

Nevertheless, the revived Relix is considerably leaner. "Everyone took a healthy pay cut," says Seiden. A former tier of Zenbu management did not make the move to Shapiro's company, and the nine surviving full-timers are supplemented by 15 to 17 unpaid, music-loving interns in the Manhattan office.

And with the RELIX.COM relaunch earlier this month, the last piece of the plan is in place. Relix has 250,000 e-mail addresses, which of course are gold for concert promoters. Also part of the Relix family is the concert news and reviews site Jambands, which recently brought its 20,000-article archive (since 1998) online.
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