Exclaim!

*Exclaim!*
General Manager	Alex Hudson
Features Editor	Kaelen Bell
Online Editor	Allie Gregory
Print Magazine Editor	Calum Singerland
Categories	Music; film; comedy; gaming;
Frequency	Monthly
Circulation	103,000
Publisher	Ian Danzig
Founder	Ian Danzig
Founded	1991
First issue	April 1992; 32 years ago
Company	1059434 Ontario Inc.
Country	Canada
Based in	Toronto, Ontario
Language	English
Website	exclaim.ca
ISSN	1207-6600

Exclaim! is a Canadian music and entertainment publisher based in Toronto, which features in-depth coverage of new music across all genres with a special focus on Canadian and emerging artists. The monthly Exclaim! print magazine publishes seven issues per year, distributing over 103,000 copies to over 2,600 locations across Canada.^[1]^[2]^[3] The magazine has an average of 361,200 monthly readers and their website, exclaim.ca, has an average of 675,000 unique visitors a month.^{[as of?]}

In addition to music, the magazine also covers film and comedy.

History

Exclaim! began as a discussion among campus and community radio programmers at Ryerson's CKLN-FM in 1991. It was started by then-CKLN programmer Ian Danzig,^[4] together with other programmers and Toronto musicians. The goal of the publication was to support great Canadian music that was otherwise going unheralded. The group worked through 1991 to produce their first issue in April 1992, with monthly issues being produced since.^[5]

Ian Danzig has been the publisher of the magazine since its start.^[5] James Keast served as editor in chief until 2020.

The magazine had no official name for its first year of operations, with only the !☆@# logo appearing on the cover, and introduced the name Exclaim! after Danzig realized that its growth and appeal to advertisers were being limited by a reader tendency to refer to it as Fuck.^[5]

The magazine is distributed across Canada as a free publication to campuses, community radio stations, bars, concert halls, record stores, cinemas, libraries, coffee shops, convenience stores and street vending boxes. It is also available with a home mail delivery subscription.

Danzig has attributed the magazine's survival in part to the fact that the internet ushered in an era of "free culture" in the late 1990s, meaning that the magazine never had to change its existing business model or alienate readers by introducing paywalls.^[5]

In 2023, The Ubyssey, the student newspaper of the University of British Columbia, parodied Exclaim! with a year-end spoof issue titled Explain!^[6]

Website

The magazine's website is updated daily with the latest news, reviews, interviews, premieres and features. The site reaches over 675,000 unique users every month.^[7] There are also a number of recurring content series, including the monthly the Eh! List Spotify playlist,^[8] New Faves emerging artists,^[9] the Exclaim! Questionnaire,^[10] Music School,^[11] Canadian Cannabis Heroes coverage^[12] and more.

Exclaim! covers film festivals, such as the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), the Sundance Film Festival, Hot Docs Documentary Film Festival, and the Toronto After Dark Film Festival, and publishing interviews with a number of high-profile directors and movie stars.^[13] Its comedy section, similarly, focuses on profiles and interviews with established and up-and-coming stand-up comedians.^[14] The magazine's website also has contests where readers can enter for a chance to win various music, film and apparel prizes.^[15]

Social media

Exclaim! posts daily on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Updates include news, features, reviews, interviews, giveaways and more.

Their YouTube channel, Exclaim! TV, includes video interviews with musicians, as well as unique live performances. Exclaim! also operates the No Future punk YouTube channel and the Aggressive Tendencies metal channel, which were both spearheaded by Bradley Zorgdrager.

Contributors

Many notable writers have worked for Exclaim! over the years, including Canadian radio personality Matt Galloway, Canadian punk chronicler and new media personality Sam Sutherland, hip-hop scribe and CBC Music producer Del Cowie, published author Andrea Warner, Canadian editor at The FADER Anupa Mistry, filmmaker Bruce LaBruce, and award-winning DJ and author Denise Benson.^[5]

Covers

Some of the artists who have appeared on Exclaim!’s cover include:

D.O.A. (1995)
Ron Sexsmith (1997)
Nardwuar/The Evaporators (1998)
Stereolab (1999)
Neko Case (2000)
Weakerthans (2000)
Massive Attack (2003)
Metric (2003)
Converge (2004)
Arcade Fire (2004)
Caribou (2005)
Wolf Parade (2005)
Broken Social Scene (2006)
Yeah Yeah Yeahs (2006)
Outkast (2006)
The White Stripes (2007)
Tokyo Police Club (2008)
Tegan and Sara (2009)
Odd Future (2011)
The Weeknd (2011)
Grimes (2012)
Tame Impala (2012)
Kendrick Lamar (2012)
Daft Punk (2013)
Mac DeMarco (2014)
St. Vincent (2014)
Drake (2016)
Chance the Rapper (2016)
Daniel Caesar (2017)
Father John Misty (2017)
Feist (2017)
Mitski (2018)
Billie Eilish (2019)
Lizzo (2019)
Carly Rae Jepsen (2019)
Jessie Reyez (2020)

Collaborations

Since 2012, senior editor Stephen Carlick produces a week-in-review segment for !earshot 20, a nationally syndicated campus/community radio program available through the National Campus and Community Radio Association and produced by CFMH-FM in Saint John, New Brunswick. Staff writer Calum Slingerland took over producing the segment in 2017.

References

^ Megan Thow (Spring 2002). "Critical Miss". Ryerson Review of Journalism. Archived from the original on 27 September 2007. Retrieved 15 March 2007.
^ Carly Lewis (12 March 2012). "Twenty years of Exclaim!". The Grid. Archived from the original on 15 March 2012. Retrieved 31 March 2012.
^ "Exclaim! Distribution Numbers" (PDF). exclaim.ca. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-09-20. Retrieved 2017-07-19.
^ "Local heroes: Ian Danzig and James Keast of Exclaim! – NOW Magazine". Archived from the original on 2017-12-13. Retrieved 2017-12-13.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Sadaf Ahsan (13 January 2017). "Freedom of the press: How Exclaim! became the last Canadian music magazine still standing by giving a voice to the underground". National Post. Retrieved 23 February 2017.
^ Alex Hudson, "UBC Has Published a Parody of Exclaim! Magazine Called Explain!". Exclaim!, April 12, 2023.
^ "Exclaim! Music". Archived from the original on 2010-02-09. Retrieved 2018-08-19.
^ "The Eh List on Exclaim!". exclaim.ca. Archived from the original on 2021-01-05. Retrieved 2021-01-04.
^ "New Faves on Exclaim!". exclaim.ca. Archived from the original on 2021-01-02. Retrieved 2021-01-04.
^ "Questionnaire on Exclaim!". exclaim.ca. Archived from the original on 2021-01-07. Retrieved 2021-01-04.
^ "Music School on Exclaim!". exclaim.ca. Archived from the original on 2021-01-08. Retrieved 2021-01-04.
^ "Cannabis Heroes on Exclaim!". exclaim.ca. Archived from the original on 2021-01-05. Retrieved 2021-01-04.
^ "Exclaim! Film". Archived from the original on 2017-07-03. Retrieved 2017-07-19.
^ "Exclaim! Comedy". Archived from the original on 2017-07-18. Retrieved 2017-07-19.
^ "Contests on Exclaim!". exclaim.ca. Archived from the original on 2021-01-02. Retrieved 2021-01-04.