Leadership Change May Signal New Start for Billboard Magazine

Billboard magazine first appeared in 1894 to cover the outdoor advertising market, reporting on “all that is new, bright and interesting on the boards,” as it proclaimed in its first issue. But for almost a century now it has been the indispensable organ of the music industry, dutifully covering every staffing change and label deal, and logging hits and flops on its charts.

Over the last decade, Billboard has tried to adapt to changes in the music industry that have decimated its traditional subscriber base. But it may soon see a colorful reinvention with the arrival of Janice Min, who since 2010 has transformed The Hollywood Reporter from a dry trade paper with limited appeal to an acclaimed and influential glossy. Guggenheim Partners, the private equity firm that owns both Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter, announced late Tuesday that Ms. Min would take control of both publications.

Yet what this change means for the music industry that Billboard covers is unclear.

The landscape of trade journalism is very different in the worlds of Hollywood and music. For the movie business, the traditional realm of the trades has largely been stolen by aggressive blogs like Deadline.com and The Wrap; for The Hollywood Reporter, becoming an outlet for longer features and consumer-friendly coverage was a necessity.

But while the music world has no shortage of newsy blogs, Billboard’s authority in covering the business has largely remained unchallenged. That is partly thanks to the value of its charts, and partly because the magazine continues to serve an essential role in reporting on and explaining arcane legal and technological points that are vital to the business.

A recent 1,060-word analysis by Ed Christman, one of Billboard’s most trusted veteran reporters, looked at the latest byzantine twist in Pandora’s legal battle over royalty rates with music publishers. The minutiae of that case are of major importance to the finances of the industry, but they may be incomprehensible to lay readers. Will a new Billboard continue to cover the business in such gritty and unsexy detail?

The fate of Bill Werde, Billboard’s editorial director and public face for the last five years, is also unclear. Early Wednesday, after The Times published news of Ms. Min’s appointment, Mr. Werde wrote a Tumblr post saying that he might continue to work in some capacity for Guggenheim Partners. But he also made it clear on Twitter that he was leaving Billboard. Mr. Werde declined to comment on Wednesday.

Ms. Min’s revamp of The Hollywood Reporter has captured the attention of the film business. “They came from an also-ran to being a very glossy, fun to read, hip journal,” said Larry Turman, a producer of films like “The Graduate” and “American History X” who is the chairman of the Peter Stark Producing Program at the University of Southern California.

The Hollywood Reporter is not all fashion spreads and light features, of course. Since Ms. Min took over it has published in-depth pieces that have caught the attention of the music industry, like one about the problems of Epic Records under its former management. And its legal column, Hollywood, Esq., is widely read for picking apart important issues like copyright and piracy.

But the softer and more glamorous direction of The Hollywood Reporter’s print magazine, even while it maintains a vigorous news site, may point to what Ms. Min has planned for Billboard.

“It’s the music industry after all,” she said in an interview this week. “We should be able to have some fun with it.”