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Today in the mail I received two of my three magazine subscriptions. (The third, as a bi-monthly mag, won’t be here for another month.) All three are related to creating music, and tend to focus on using computers to do that. Most of the articles center around DIY music creation and gear, as opposed to the idea of showing up to a studio, booking time and sitting back while someone else creates your “sound” and record (that’s rec-ord, not re-cord) for you. But I digress…

The first music magazine I subscribed to was Future Music. In addition to experimenting on my own, blogs, forums and other online recording websites had formed most of my working recording knowledge, but I was looking for a more passive form of keeping up with gear and other developments in music creation. The depth of most online content is rather shallow (and shrouded in noise and heavy amounts of clutter); the beauty of print is that by definition the content needs to be succinct and relatively good, if only because people must be convinced to actually buy it.

Future Music wasn’t a bad mag, but they canceled the U.S. version a few years ago and I had to hunt down a new subscription. I’d long since looked to pick up Sound on Sound or the UK version of Future Music, but both ran pretty close to $100 for a year’s subscription.

So I settled on Electronic Musician. For me it was a step back from Future Music. The gear reviews were all glowing, and the interviews and highlighted products seemed to be more the result of a PR effort than a real attempt at great content. Not that any music production magazine is published in a void, but suffice it to say that I ended up unsubscribing.

Fast forward a few years and Electronic Musician seems to be improving. I got a good rate and ended up resubscribing a few months ago. It’s better now, but isn’t as good as I think it could be. While many articles and tidbits were informative, I found myself skipping most of each issue’s contents. And like all print publications these days, the mag also seems to be losing a lot of weight.

That void was finally filled by Sound on Sound, which I picked up at a discount for a fraction of the full cost. The only real bad thing about Sound on Sound is that there’s so much great content in each issue that it’ll take you more than a few sessions to finish it all. I consider it the best music creation mag out today (even if I do get the alternate U.S. version).

In addition to Electronic Musician and Sound on Sound, I picked up Tape Op a few months ago and couldn’t be happier. If Sound on Sound is what Rolling Stone is to music review mags, Tape Op is Maximumrockandroll for the DIY recording musician. Great content minus the fluff. And the best part about Tape Op is that U.S. subscriptions are free! Yes, you read that right. They’ll send you free copies of their magazine if they can share your information with others. I know what you’re thinking, but they promise that you’ll only get offers for related products and services. If that’s not good enough for you, subscriptions can be had for a reasonable price.

So that’s it. Three music recording magazines that I subscribe to. Between those and the websites I check out regularly, it’s enough to keep me busy not making music.