Rolling Stone music magazine up for sale

Iconic 50-year-old music magazine Rolling Stone is putting itself up for sale amid an increasingly uncertain future.

Jann Wenner, who started the magazine in 1967 as a hippie student in Berkeley, California, and now runs it with his son Gus, told the New York Times that the future looked tough for a family-run publisher.

"There's a level of ambition that we can't achieve alone," Gus Wenner told the newspaper. "So we're being proactive and want to get ahead of the curve."

Kuok or Pecker?

Rolling Stone last year sold a 49-percent stake to a Singaporean music and technology startup, BandLab Technologies headed by Kuok Meng Ru.

It was not immediately known if Kuok would want to take a controlling stake in the magazine.

The Wenner family earlier this year already sold its two other titles, celebrity magazine US Weekly and lifestyle monthly Men's Journal, to American Media.

If American Media were interested in Rolling Stone, it would mark a sharp change in owners' ideologies, analysts warned. The tabloid empire is led by Trump ally David Pecker.

Jann Wenner said he hoped to keep an editorial role at Rolling Stone, but said the decision would be up to the magazine's new owner.

hg/jd (AFP, AP)