After 17 years The BRAG mag is kaput, but its legacy lives on

The BRAG magazine has gone the way of many print publications in recent years.

Publisher The Brag Media has announced that the final physical issue of the music mag will be published on March 4.

After spending six years as Revolver, the publication became The BRAG in 2003 under Adam Zammit’s Peer Group Media (also a former publisher of The Music Network).

One of Australia’s leading independent street publications, it spent its first 15 years in weekly rotation in Sydney.

It was incredibly popular during its pomp, available on street corners, record stores and venues.

It helped launch the careers of many a journalist, including this one. It was after completing an internship there in 2016 that I knew I wanted to forge a career in the music industry.

Covers of The BRAG down the years

In an announcement via The Industry Observer, managing editor Poppy Reid said that the digital age has left behind a time when music fans would thumb over the pages of a magazine to find a gig or spot their friends in social picture galleries.

“Times have evolved, gig guides are sophisticated and online; breaking news happens on your phone in mere seconds, and people now look to print issues for a premium experience that they can’t have online, something tangible which moves them with longer form deep dive editorial created over months of money-can’t-buy access to artists and celebrity figureheads,” she wrote.

The BRAG was, for a time, co-owned by Furst Media, publisher of Melbourne’s Beat Magazine, before it was purchased by Seventh Street Media (now The Brag Media) in 2016.

The writing may have already been on the wall when, in 2017, it was changed to a fortnightly edition.

By late 2018, it had become quarterly, but there would only be four more issues before the publisher announced that Q1 would be the last.

As the announcement points out, The Brag is no longer a music portal, but rather a “hub for music fans to explore all their interests outside of music, including food, travel, and culture”.

Its name lives on in The Brag Media, which publishes online titles including The Brag and TIO, as well as Tone Deaf, Don’t Bore Us, and more recently, a newly re-minted Rolling Stone Australia.