Customer Reviews:
 Finest indie arts and culture magazine November 8, 2004
Manny Hernandez (Palo Alto, CA)
23 out of 25 found this review helpful
I ran into Paste by accident. I was looking for something else in the racks of a nearb B&N and the cover caught my attention. Plus, I couldn't help but notice that besides the appealing articles that covered a wide range of artists and their work, they offered a sampler CD with 20-some songs. Most of the tracks were from artists I had no clue about, yet ended up loving. So... my advice is: subscribe to this magazine to expand your exposure to pop culture and get a deeper feel for what's brewing in the indie scene.
Know What You're Getting April 29, 2004
Kevin L. Nenstiel (Kearney, Nebraska)
18 out of 19 found this review helpful
When you read many music magazines, from Hit Parader to Rolling Stone to No Depression, you read articles and reviews about the hot new hitmakers, and they hope you'll take what they have to say into consideration when you decide where your music money is going to go. But you have to take a lot on faith, because you don't know what the music really sounds like. That's where Paste is different from most: they bundle in a sampler CD stuffed to the gills with highlights from the current issue. You make your decision with all the information you could need or want right there on your stereo.Paste doesn't appear to favor a particular form of music. For lack of a better handle, you could say they favor music to which a geezer like me can understand the words. Americana, folk, blues, rock, roots, and even some unclassifiable material fill up the pages and the disk. Though the emphasis is mostly on music too esoteric to get radio airplay, the editors aren't naive. They know that putting Norah Jones or Sarah McLachlan on the cover is a good way to move copy. This magazine covers a lot of music you won't hear on the radio, but it's not so far out that you'll run into somebody who thinks beating on a piano with a hammer is music. It'll be something eminently listenable, even for a stick-in-the-mud like me. By allowing readers to get a good listen to current trends in up-and-coming music, Paste is also good for working musicians and music business professionals. It puts you one step ahead of the curve without having to spend rafts of dough on CDs or trawling through the lousy online music for the one MP3 that stands out. Paste's masthead promises "Signs of Life in Music and Culture." This is no lie. Though the main emphasis of this magazine is recorded music, there are lengthy sections dedicated to cinema, books, and other cultural trends. The thrust of these sections is primarily in terms of winnowing good cultural content from bad, rather than being hip and with-it, so it's ideal for people who are more interested in what's good than in what's good. This title costs more than most music magazines, because of the sampler CD, but it's worth it. If you care about music for its quality more than for its faddish factors, this is the title that will let you keep abreast of where the good stuff is to be had.
Finally!!! A Music Magazine Worth Subscribing To July 26, 2006
Andre R. (Nashville, TN USA)
18 out of 18 found this review helpful
When it comes to music, culture, and overall coverage of meaningful entertainment, Paste is where it's at. Fairly a new publication (starting in July of 2002), the magazine has soared in popularity and holds its own in a marketplace saturated with bland and repetitive articles.
If you're sick of reading magazines that only focus on mainstream trends, surface culture, and the next teenage sensation, then this is your magazine. The publication focuses on a wide array of music, but emphasizes the folk, indie-rock, and alternative genres. In its pages you'll find very useful album reviews, articles on an array of films (especially indie ones, which are hard to come by these days), as well as book suggestions. But by far the best part of the magazine is that every issue includes a Sampler CD, which can include anything from short films, new music, and/or documentaries.
Paste prides itself on catering to its consumer and is the perfect reading material for anyone who still enjoys stumbling onto new music, learning and growing in their song crafting, and keeping up with good quality... not quantity. The magazine blatantly states that it looks for "signs of life in music, film, & culture..." and if you find yourself looking for the same, then you'll definitely find satisfaction with Paste magazine. Never a bland issue. Never gets old. Always interesting.
 Never Received November 5, 2006
J. Canniff (New Paltz, NY)
12 out of 16 found this review helpful
Liked this magazine enough to order it but it gets one star for wasting my money. Thought it'd be simple enough to order it from amazon like i do everything else. But instead i've paid and never received it. I haven't been able to log a compaint with amazon cause every time i do it links me somewhere else, so this is the first chance i've had to even say i've been ripped off. They may eventually send it but it's not likely at this point, it's been a couple months now.
Great mag PLUS a sampler CD!!!! March 28, 2004
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
Chock full of well written and informative writing on the wealth of music that commercial radio ignores. The range is singer/songwriter pop folk alt. country roots rock. Guaranteed that you will hear an artist/song that you will add to your collection EVERY month. I'd like to see this format for music genres not covered by Paste (dance, trance, ambient).
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