Stylus Magazine

Stylus Magazine was an American online music and film magazine, launched in 2002 and co-founded by Todd L. Burns. It featured long-form music journalism, four daily music reviews, movie reviews, podcasts, an MP3 blog, and a text blog.
Additionally, Stylus had daily features like "The Singles Jukebox", which looked at pop singles from around the globe, and "Soulseeking", a column focused on personal responses in listening. Even though they never reached the readership of other music magazines such as PopMatters or Pitchfork, they still had a very consistent and fired-up audience. In 2006, the site was chosen by the Observer Music Monthly as one of the Internet's 25 most essential music websites.
Stylus closed as a business on 31 October 2007. On 4 January 2010, with the blessing of former editor Todd Burns, Stylus senior writer Nick Southall launched The Stylus Decade, a website with a new series of lists and essays reviewing music from the previous ten years. It is now also defunct. The Singles Jukebox relaunched with many of the same writers as a stand-alone website in March 2009 and continues today.

Reception

Stylus received positive attention from critics for its analytical depth and the breadth of its musical coverage. The New York Observer described it as a “respected online music publication” that “built a name for itself among music specialists interested in rigorous, and often personal, criticism of little-known artists.” Retrospective commentary has also noted that the magazine often covered “more obscure and deserving artists with less snark and narcissism” compared to some of its better-known contemporaries. Its inclusion on the Observer Music Monthly list of the Internet’s “25 most essential music websites” in 2006 further highlighted its standing within mid-2000s digital music criticism.