Rolling Stone to archive every issue on DVD

Rolling Stone magazine will release its entire printed history on DVD in the fall, coinciding with the celebration of its 40th anniversary.

Archive software firm Bondi Digital Publishing is scanning over 115,000 pages from more than 1,000 issues, using a proprietary platform previously used for the New Yorker and currently being deployed for Playboy. Bondi will publish the DVD under an exclusive licensing arrangement with Wenner Media, the closely held parent of Rolling Stone.

The DVD, "Rolling Stone Cover-to-Cover: The First 40 Years," will cost $119.99. It will allow users to search for every article, photograph and review that appeared in print, even the infamous five-star love letter that editor Jann Wenner gave his friend Mick Jagger's last solo record in 2001.

"It may have been a little over the top," Wenner said of his contrarian review.

Rolling Stone, which Wenner founded in San Francisco in 1967, launched the careers of such writers as Hunter S. Thompson, Lester Bangs, Greil Marcus, and Cameron Crowe, as well as photographers including Annie Leibovitz and Mark Seliger.

Fresh from celebrating its 1,000th issue last year, Rolling Stone will publish three 40th anniversary issues, beginning Friday with a double issue featuring interviews with key artists and newsmakers from the baby-boom generation, such as Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Martin Scorsese and Jagger.