You know, if you were to say walk into a room
right now in 2026 with a business idea and that
idea was, let's start a print magazine about
niche music. Oh, you would be laughed out. Yeah.
Immediately. Right. The venture capitalists wouldn't
even let you finish the sentence. No way. The
narrative is just so set in stone. It's been
absolute for 20 years. Print is dead. Magazines
are fossils. And music journalism. I mean, that's
supposed to be a complete graveyard. Well, yeah,
you just look at the big names. Rolling Stone
is a shadow of what it was. Spin went digital.
Pitchfork just got folded into something else.
The whole economic model just, it collapsed.
The second the internet showed up, yeah. That's
the prevailing wisdom. Advertisers all fled to
Google and Facebook. Subscriptions completely
tanked. And, you know, paper got expensive. It's
a pretty simple equation. Except there is this
glitch in the data. There's... A massive, really
stubborn exception to that rule. And it's operating
out of Canada. Exclaim. It's so wildly improbable.
It's a Toronto -based publisher, music and entertainment,
that's been around for over 30 years. And we're
not just talking about some zombie brand that
only exists on Twitter. No, actual ink. On actual
paper. Yeah. It's been called the last Canadian
music magazine still standing. And frankly, it's
outlasted peers that had, you know, way deeper
pockets and bigger corporate backing. Which is
exactly why we need to dig into it. Because on
the surface, OK, it's a free paper you might
grab at a record store. But if you look at the
mechanics of it, Exclaim actually predicted the
modern attention economy way, way before Silicon
Valley did. They built a business model that
was almost accidentally internet proof. And they
did all that while starting with what is, I think,
quite possibly the worst branding strategy in
the history of publishing. We are definitely
going to get to the unpronounceable name. But
I want to start at the origin because it really
sets the stakes. We have to go back to 1991.
Right. The pre -Internet Dark Ages. The setting
is Ryerson University in Toronto. It's TMU now,
of course. Right. And specifically, the campus
radio station, CKLN -FM. I just love that mental
image. 90s campus radio. It's got to be stacks
of jewel case CDs everywhere. Dusty soundboards.
Well, for sure. And people having these like
super intense arguments about bands that only
12 other people have ever heard of. That is exactly
the vibe. And in the middle of all that, you've
got Ian Dantig. He's the founder. And clearly
he's still the publisher today. That's so rare.
It is. So he and this group of radio programmers
and musicians, they're looking at the media landscape
and they just realize something is missing. The
big papers weren't touching the stuff they were
actually playing on the radio. Not at all. I
mean, Canada's always had this massive music
scene. But back in 91, if you weren't, you know,
Brian Adams or Celine Dion, you just weren't
getting any ink of the national papers. So there
was this huge disconnect between the culture
happening on the street and the culture you could
buy at the newsstand. Exactly. So they decided
to fill that gap. They spent about a year prepping.
And then in April 1992, they dropped the first
issue. And this is where that, like, punk rock
ethos really comes through. They didn't hire
a marketing firm. They just put symbols on the
cover. It was a very bold artistic choice that
turned into a commercial nightmare. For the entire
first year, the magazine technically did not
have a name. The logo was just a string of symbols.
You had an exclamation mark, a star, an at symbol,
and a pound sign. Goralex, right. Like the comic
book shorthand for profanity. Which... You know,
it looks cool on a t -shirt, maybe. But if you're
trying to tell your friend to go pick up a copy,
what do you even say? Hey, did you see the new
issue of? Right, there's a blank. And humans
need words. So because the brain is wired for
pattern recognition, the readers looked at those
symbols, that hashtag, and they just filled in
the blank with the most obvious four -letter
word that fits that context. They started calling
it the fuck magazine. Which is... I mean, it's
hilarious if you're 20 years old and working
at a campus radio station. Oh, for sure. It is
significantly less hilarious if you are Ian Danzig
trying to walk into a local business or a bank
and sell ad space. Hi, I'm the publisher of The
Fuck Magazine. Would you like to advertise your
coffee shop with us? It just creates an immediate
ceiling. You can't scale a profanity. So Danzig
realized pretty quickly that this nickname was
going to kill them before they even really got
started. They needed a word that captured the
energy of that exclamation point, but one that
was actually printable. So they pivoted. They
officially adopted the name Exclaim. And it saved
the brand. It did. But what's interesting is
that chaotic. kind of DIY energy, it didn't disappear.
It just moved from the cover into their distribution
strategy. And that, I think, is the real secret
to why they are still here today. Okay, let's
look at that. Because usually when we talk about
print magazines in the 90s, the story ends the
exact same way. The internet arrives, information
becomes free, and the magazine dies because nobody
wants to pay for a subscription anymore. Correct.
The death of print is almost always a story about
the death of the subscription model. I mean,
Rolling Stone or Spin, they relied on you sending
them a check for 20 bucks a year. When you could
get all that music news online for free, that
whole value proposition just, it evaporated.
But here's the thing. Exclaim never relied on
subscriptions. No, they were free from day one.
Which seems like such a small detail, but it's
actually the whole ballgame. It is. Think about
the psychology of it. When the internet came
along and it trained all of us to expect free
content, most publishers panicked. Yeah, they
had to figure out paywalls or freemium models
or start begging for donations. Right, exclaim.
Didn't have to change a single thing. Their price
point was already zero. You cannot undercut free.
So they were effectively an Internet business
just operating in the physical world. They weren't
selling a product to readers. No, they were selling
an audience to advertisers. They were monetizing
attention, not paper. Exactly. Yeah. And they
secured that attention through this, like, really
aggressive physical distribution. They are everywhere.
I mean, the numbers are just wild for what is,
you know, a niche publication. 103 ,000 copies
per issue. Seven times a year. And look where
they are. They're not just hoping you walk into
a big bookstore. No, they're in 2 ,600 spots.
They're in record stores, bars, concert venues,
street boxes, on campuses. They put the magazine
in the physical spaces where their demographic
was already spending time and money. It's a totally
friction -free transaction. You're at a bar waiting
for a friend. You see the magazine on a table.
You just pick it up. There's no paywall, no login,
no credit card, nothing. And now, in 2026, that
physical presence is actually a competitive advantage
again, isn't it? I think so. We're so inundated
with digital ads that our brains just subconsciously
block them out. But a physical magazine sitting
on a table, that commands a totally different
kind of attention. It's tactile. So while every
other magazine was desperately trying to get
readers to pay for content, Exclaim just kept
flooding the streets with more free stuff. Yeah,
Ian Danzig has this great theory that they were
internet proof before the internet even took
over. Because they never trained their readers
to see the magazine as a financial transaction.
It was always a community resource. Always. And
they managed to bridge that gap to digital without
eating their own print product. Because the website
just serves a different function, right? A completely
different function. The site, which gets something
like 675 ,000 unique visitors a month, that's
for the daily news cycle. Breaking stories. And
the print issue is for the deeper reads. The
long interviews, the things you actually want
to sit with. Exactly. It's interesting how the
scope of that coverage has shifted, too. I remember
grabbing it, you know, strictly for album reviews.
But looking at it now, it's basically a full
entertainment hub. They had to evolve. A music
-only publication might have been a little too
narrow to sustain that level of ad revenue over
time. So they expanded. Right. Into film, comedy,
even gaming. But they kept that sort of discovery
ethos, like they'll cover the Toronto International
Film Festival and Sundance, but they're not just
rewriting press releases for the latest Marvel
movie. No, they treat film and comedy with that
same critical lens they use for music. They're
always looking for the up and comers. Speaking
of which, they have some very specific niches.
I noticed a recurring series called Canadian
Cannabis Heroes. Yes. Look, they know their audience.
I guess so. If you are distributing in campus
pubs and record stores across Canada, there's
probably a certain demographic overlap there.
It's just smart business. But they also have
things like the A -list. That's their Spotify
playlist. And new faves. And those recurring
columns are so important. They give the reader
a sense of structure and familiarity. New faves
is the direct descendant of that original 1991
mission. It's basically here is the band you
haven't heard of yet, but you absolutely need
to know. That's it. OK, so I want to shift to
the people who are actually writing these articles
because there's a real argument to be made that
exclaim. isn't just a music magazine. It's a
training ground for the entire Canadian media
landscape. That is not an exaggeration at all.
If you look at their masthead over the past 30
years, it really does function as a talent incubator.
It's like the farm system for cultural critics.
Precisely. And what strikes me is the sheer range
of the people who came out of there. So on one
hand, you have Matt Galloway. The voice of morning
radio in Canada. Very polished, very journalistic,
very CBC. Exactly. He cut his teeth writing for
Exclaim. But then, on the complete opposite end
of that spectrum, you've got Bruce LaBruce. The
filmmaker, the guy making like radical, subversive
queer cinema. Very same. And that's what Exclaim
offered. It was a space where you could be a
rigorous journalist like Galloway or a total
counterculture provocateur like LaBruce. Or a
punk historian like Sam Sutherland. Right. Or
a hip hop authority like Del Cowie. It didn't
enforce a single house style that would crush
a writer's individual voice. It let Anupa Mystery
develop the voice that eventually took her to
the fader. It let Denise Benson document the
entire DJ scene. It basically taught a generation
of writers how to think critically about art.
And how to interview, how to meet a deadline.
All those fundamental skills. And those skills
transfer to national broadcasters, international
magazines, book publishing. If, exclaim, had
folded in, say, 2000, the current landscape of
Canadian media would look significantly different.
There'd be a huge void in the critical discourse.
A massive void. It's just so rare to find an
institution that's that influential but still
feels... I don't know, scrappy. Scrappy is the
perfect word. It never felt corporate. Which
is probably why it's still culturally relevant
enough to be made fun of. You know you've really
made it when the college kids are mocking you.
This was my favorite detail in all the research.
In 2023, the student paper at the University
of British Columbia, the UBC, they dropped a
parody issue. And they called it Explain. It's
perfect. Explain. It really is. But just think
about what that signals. You've got Gen Z students,
right? Born in the mid -2000s, long after Exclaim
was founded. And yet the brand is so recognizable
to them that a spoof actually works. Yeah, if
nobody read it, the joke would just fall completely
flat. Exactly. It proves the magazine still holds
real estate in the cultural consciousness of
young people. And that is incredibly hard for
a 30 -year -old legacy media brand to do. Most
brands that old are just invisible to anyone
under 25. Totally invisible. So to recap, we
have a magazine that somehow survived the death
of print, the rise of the Internet, the pivot
to video, the collapse of ad markets. All by
doing the one thing everyone else said was a
terrible idea. giving the product away for free
and betting everything on physical distribution.
It really challenges that core assumption that
everything has to be digital to survive. It does.
It suggests that there is still so much value
in that old town square model of media. How so?
Well, just putting something in a box on a street
corner where anyone can grab it is a democratic
act. It lowers the barrier to entry for culture.
You don't need a credit card. You don't need
a subscription. You just need to be curious.
And that accessibility is so vital. I mean, in
an era where so much high quality journalism
is locked behind a paywall, having a free high
quality arts publication is kind of a public
service. It connects the local scene to a national
conversation in a way that, say, a streaming
algorithm just can't. Right. Algorithms give
you more of what you already like. A magazine
in a street box gives you something you didn't
even know existed. That's the difference. So
here is the takeaway for you listening. The next
time you're walking past a record store or a
cinema or just walking down the street in a Canadian
city. Look for the box. Pick one up. Actually
feel the paper. Yeah, see who the new faves are
this month. Read a review of a band you've never,
ever heard of. It's a piece of history that is
still very much alive. Just maybe don't call
it by its 1992 nickname. No, probably stick with
Exclaim. It's safer for everyone. Probably for
the best. Thanks for listening to this deep dive.
See you next time.