There’s been talk about this for weeks, but you know…it’s not the same as when it happens. Hip hop culture magazine VIBE shut down today. According to Media Decoder at The New York Times:

Vibe, one of the nation’s leading popular music magazines, is closing immediately, a spokeswoman said Tuesday.

Word was broken early this afternoon by the Web site dailyfinance.com and spread to other music and media news sites. The spokeswoman, Tracy Nguyen, said the Vibe staff would be formally notified in a meeting at 2 p.m. She said she did not know how many people would be laid off as a result of the closure.

Vibe’s closure leaves just one large-circulation magazine, The Source, focusing on hip-hop and R&B. The Source has had its own troubles, going through a bankruptcy and emerging under new ownership last year. A rock-focused magazine, Blender, folded last year.

In a memo to the staff announcing the closure, Steve Aaron, CEO of Vibe Media Group, wrote that for months, the company tried in vain to either find new investors or “to restructure the huge debt on our small company.”

“The print advertising collapse hit Vibe hard, especially as key ad categories like automotive and fashion, which represented the bulk of our top 10 advertisers, have stopped advertising or gone out of business,” he wrote.

The musician Quincy Jones and the company then called Time Warner created Vibe in 1992. The Wicks Group, a private equity firm, bought it in 2006. Vibe reported circulation of 818,000 in the second half of last year, a healthy figure, but like most magazines it suffered from falling advertising. It announced in February that in July, it would cut its rate base – the circulation promised to advertisers – from 800,000 to 600,000.

Vibe’s been a client from 2002, when we worked with them to produce a CD compilation with Honda and Sony Music. Mobile Soul’s first episode, which was mixed by DJ OhSoKool in New York, was actually originally done FOR Vibe magazine. We may have to play that one again soon. We’re really proud of the work we did with them, and we’re proud of the work everyone, past and present, have done there. Vibe really did change the game.

We’re really interested to see what becomes of Most, and we hope that the folks who left today land well someplace else.