On March 12, 2026, contributors to Classical Music magazine received a short email from the Mark Allen Group. The Spring issue, it said, would be the last. After nearly fifty years of continuous publication, one of the UK's most enduring classical music trade journals was being put down.
A Brief History of a Long Magazine
Classical Music started life in 1976 as Classical Music Weekly, launched by editor Trevor Richardson. Within nine months, Rhinegold Publishing took over the title, changed its frequency to fortnightly, and turned it into the industry's go-to source for job listings, audition notices, competition announcements, and arts policy coverage.
For decades, it served a function that no other publication quite replicated. Gramophone reviewed recordings. Opera covered the stage. Classical Music covered the business — the hirings, firings, funding decisions, and policy shifts that determined whether orchestras survived or folded.
Its contributors read like a roll call of British music journalism: Richard Morrison, who went on to The Times; the late John McMurray; Robert Maycock. The magazine was not glamorous. It was essential.
The Sale, the Pivot, the Decline
In December 2018, Rhinegold sold Classical Music to the Mark Allen Group, along with sister titles Music Teacher, Choir & Organ, and International Piano. Mark Allen's strategy was clear: acquire specialist publications and extend them into events, conferences, and sponsored content — the only business models that still work in niche media.
For some of those titles, the pivot made sense. For Classical Music, it didn't. The readership was small, ageing, and not the kind that buys tickets to industry conferences.
In November 2020, the magazine went digital-only. The losses continued. Five years later, the owners lost patience.
What Dies With It
The closure of Classical Music magazine is not, in itself, a catastrophe. Its readership had shrunk to a fraction of its peak. Most of its core functions — job listings, audition dates, competition deadlines — have migrated to platforms like Cadenza, MusicalChairs, and Musical America.
But something is lost when a publication that covered the structures of classical music disappears. Concert reviews survive. Celebrity profiles survive. What doesn't survive is the slow, unglamorous work of reporting on arts funding, education policy, and institutional governance — the stories that don't generate clicks but determine whether the art form has a future.
The Mark Allen Group will continue to publish Gramophone and Opera Now. Whether either of those titles faces a similar reckoning is an open question.
The Bigger Picture
Classical Music magazine is not the first music publication to close in recent years. In February 2025, Mark Allen shut down three other music titles. The BBC Music Magazine was sold. Blogs have come and gone.
The problem is not that nobody cares about classical music journalism. The problem is that nobody has figured out how to pay for it. Advertising revenue has collapsed. Subscription models require scale that niche publications cannot achieve. And the readers who remain — passionate, knowledgeable, deeply engaged — are being served by a shrinking number of writers working for free or near-free on personal blogs and social media.
Classical Music magazine lasted nearly fifty years. That is a remarkable run. But its closure is a reminder that the infrastructure of classical music — the publications, the funding bodies, the education pipelines — is every bit as fragile as the orchestras themselves.
The Spring 2026 issue will be the last. It will land with a thud that almost nobody outside the industry will hear.
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