Rip & Burn

Rip & Burn is a new digital music magazine that combines the idea of a gadget magazine with a music magazine. It's fairly genre-free but remains on the cutting edge of dance, indie, rock and pop in terms of what's covered. The issue I bought had features on Snow Patrol, Ian Brown and R. Kelly. There's lots of gadget discussion, music news and a fairly hefty reviews section, so it did have quite a good amount of information.

The only real problem I saw, and what would keep me from buying it again, is that it seems to be sponsored by iPod. There was barely a mention that there are TONS of other (better) MP3 players out there. I'd like to know what gadgets I can get for mine! Frankly, the gadgets they did mention - like the iPod voice recorder - only add features that many other Mp3 players already have (built-in internal & external mics anyone?).

As a result, the magazine seems more geared at a particular lifestyle than at a subsection of people who are into music or gadgets or both - you have to like music, gadgets and be more concerned about branding than quality, apparently.

It's not a bad read, but maybe a bit of a wider focus on MP3 players as a whole would do nicely.

I did like the feature giving you 24 hours worth of tracks to put on your digital music player. I even liked a lot of them - and I'm quite picky about my music.