Video magazines are a series of online videos that follow the print magazine format in which the reader/viewer consumes an issue on a periodic basis. Video magazines differ from traditional online magazine or ezine because they are delivered in a video format and are consumed through viewing online rather than reading online material.[citation needed]
The concept of the video magazine began in the 1980s with low-budget titles such as Flipside Video Fanzine, an adjoining video supplement to the punk fanzine Flipside.[1] By the beginning of the 1990s, the concept had fully cohered and a number of titles were produced by major media organizations in both the United States and Britain. Notable productions were Slammin' Rap Video Magazine published by BMG in 1990,[2] and the video game-orientated Click Video Magazine, produced and released in 1991.[3]
However, none of these more professional efforts lasted beyond a few issues, and by the end of the decade the general idea of video magazines had fallen out of favor. It would not be until the mid-late 2010s that new video magazines would be produced, such as GUAP, a general youth / arts publication.[4]
A number of print magazines have mirrored their content on digital video platforms in recent years, and have produced online-only video content in addition to this. One example is WIRED's Autocomplete Interviews.
These magazines exist purely in video format and only online, without a print counterpart to support it.
The first magazine to launch in this format was "The I Love Comedy Video Magazine", which is currently published through YouTube, launching in July 2016. [5]. This was followed with the launch of music lifestyle magazine EWE Zine, in March 2017.[6][7]
Augmented reality video magazines have a print counterpart to support it. Using apps such as layar and that blends the offline with the online.[citation needed] The first example of this was GUAP magazine which started life a crowd funding project. The magazines uses an app called Layar to make their content interactive, linking to video content elsewhere.[citation needed]
The Exposed is similar to GUAP but instead of using a third party app to link to its video content, The Exposed has its own native app under the same name.[8] This app blends the offline with the online.[9]