DISCOGS FOR FANZINES
  
 
The imaginary website that could enlighten
    your life of fanzine reader?


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Welcome to... the great idea of the month!

If you are a regular metal fanzine reader, don't you find it hard to find new fanzines?
Ok, you are able to order the new issues of a couple of fanzines you're in touch with or that are available in the couple of metal webshops you regularly check out... But what about new fanzines, and perhaps also old fanzines? It's harder, you have to search, and use Google with special keywords and criterias to have interesting results that appear...

The problem is here: Many new fanzines don't advertise more than on a couple of forums, and don't do physical flyers anymore...

Since some time, I have the idea in mind that a website like DISCOGS, but strictly focused on paper fanzines (Metal or not, I don't know) could be a wonderfully GREAT idea!
You could search fanzines according to various criterias such as: Styles of music, country, language, date of release... The infinity of paper fanzines would be available just before your eyes! (And so... The internet would help paper fanzines for real, hu!)
There would be a page for each fanzine, and their "discography" would be the list of every issues they released (If you compare to Discogs) ... Then each issue would have a page with every needed infos: List of interviews, year of release, amount of pages, language, kind of layout (Cut and paste? Computer generated? Margins with drawings?), etc... And a picture of the cover.
This would be user-generated content, and so the website wouldn't be limited to the good-will and courage of only a few couple of peoples (Which often means nowadays: The project won't last so long, unfortunately)
There would be a marketplace, and it would be possible to sell new and second-hand zines, with a notation of the overall quality/ condition. I really think the market place would be a great plus to motivate contributors... We are in 2016, and everyone is lazy and everyone is in need of money... The more sales, the more contributions, and the more fanzines to appear in the database!
Well, the idea is quite simple: This would be basically: DISCOGS FOR FANZINES.

 

Now I imagine this wouldn't be as easy as it might seem... I see a couple of negative points that could make it harder.
To develop and maintain this kind of site would take quite some time (You do not only have to install a basic wiki website, and let it sleep... It needs regular developments during a couple of months to correct some dysfunctionalities). The fact of having a marketplace, could bring a couple of minor legal issues, even if as well as Discogs the website is not (In theory?) responsible for the loss of packages and unserious sellers/ customers (This would be paypal's affair, we could imagine).
I also believe this kind of big website, with a lot of contributors, and sellers, would need to have a certain amount of clear RULES and HOW-TO's... Which would also take some time to be fully written (In a clear and precise English, please), these rules sometimes being a pain-in-the-ass on Discogs, I don't know how this would look for FANzines...
I believe this kind of website could only be maintained, developed and taken care off by one (Or a couple) of full time working peoples... Now would the selling of fanzines create enough income for a couple of peoples to make a living from it? I don't know...
Perhaps if this website wasn't limited to metal zines only... Perhaps if this website wasn't limited to music zines only (There are also comics fanzines, drawings fanzines, mail art fanzines, egozines, movie fanzines...) it would be big enough so that it would meet the financial needs? Ok, this would be DISCOGS FOR ALL FANZINES!! Every independent zine makers, come and contribute your fanzine issues and sell your fanzines!!
(Or perhaps it would be Discogs for all kinds of magazines... Even the professional ones? But this idea sounds less interesting in my "independent/ underground" back of the mind...).

At least, this is a great website idea I have in mind for some time,
so I decided to share it... And perhaps someone will have the resources to make this project reality :)