Meet the Publishers: L.A. Record

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Meet L.A. Record

L.A. Record is Los Angeles’s biggest music magazine, which is deeply rooted in one of the largest music-loving communities around. DIY to the core, Chris, Kristina and their friends distribute their printed publications around the city by hand, and rely on their community and surroundings to make their magazine great. With some exceptions, L.A. Record’s content is all 100% L.A. — from its people to its photo shoot locations — and is truly a for-the-people-by-the-people publication.

How did you get started?

Chris: LA Record started in 2005 because I saw too much music around me that wasn’t getting acknowledged, and I felt that people deserved to be acknowledged and documented in some way. In 2005, a photographer friend took a really cool photo and I was inspired by it. I wanted to do a poster and then have a band interview on the back.

Kristina: And none of the creators’ names were on this first piece they did.

C: We handed out this poster and people were super into it and were hitting me up when they found out I had been the one to make it. We started L.A. Record shortly after to keep doing things like that.

K: The magazine was monthly for a couple of years before changing to bimonthly in 2010.

How does L.A. inspire what you do?

C: It’s called L.A. Record because it’s supposed to be documenting L.A., and it’s supposed to be for the people in this city. We have art and other stuff, but it’s really more like a street-level documentary of music in L.A. that tries to represent the city. The audience is local, but the content is really for anyone because these musicians are universally cool.

K: We actually also just realized that there’s a bigger audience of our magazine outside of the U.S., too.

What goes into making each publication?

C: We try to keep it really diverse in age, race, type of music and so on because we want everyone to feel like they can be in it. We just want a balance, and we mostly react to what people [artists] are doing. For example, we’ll see who is putting out records, who is coming to town, and we want to promote people with full-length albums coming out. We also try to get 1-2 touring people per issue. People send in demos and stuff all the time that we try to give attention to too, and there’s a lot of people contributing.

K: Yeah, you could call it a “first in and last out” system. There’s all these people helping, but we still do all the editing, layout, proofing, and we handle giving out assignments, putting all the pieces together and stuff like that. L.A. Record is still basically a volunteer publication so we let our people do the cool things. And we’re constantly working! As soon as one issue is done, I have to start invoicing, make apology tours for misspelled names and all of that stuff.

C: Yeah, we want our magazine to be balanced and really reflect LA. If readers pick an issue up for one artist, they can discover all of these other artists they might not have heard of before. We do try really hard to not repeat artists, but we’ll make special exceptions.

Any advice for your readers?

K: For a long time I resisted doing things I wanted to do because it didn’t seem practical, but now I’m involved in the music industry which was what I was trying to avoid the whole time. The whole time I was resisting doing what I actually wanted, but the reality is you never know.

C: There’s nothing safe anymore so you might as well do what you want and have fun.

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