[4] When Foster ended OP after only twenty-six issues, he held a conference, offering the magazine's resources to parties interested in carrying on;[5] attendant journalist David Ciaffardini went on to start Sound Choice, while Scott Becker, alongside Richie Unterberger, founded Option.

[6] Whereas Sound Choice was described as a low-budget and "chaotic" publication in spirit, Option was characterized as a "profit making operation" right at the start, meant to compete with the newly founded Spin.

[1] One given issue's musicians profiled included "New Orleans's proto-jazz outfit the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and bluesman Walter "Wolfman" Washington; Indian pop-traditionalist Najma Akhtar; vanguard composer and pianist Cecil Taylor; Yugoslavia's ideological rockers, Laibach; Texas R&B veteran Doug Sahm; Brit dance funkateers Wolfgang Press".

The logo typeface was changed to Frutiger, interior text was limited to Garamond and Triplex from the more eclectic mixture used previously, and the subtitle became instead Music Culture.

The web-only publication soft-launched in December with a Kemp-penned review of the Girl Talk album All Day and his report from Morocco's Fez Festival of World Sacred Music.

The new Option used earlier name writers such as Neil Strauss, Stanley Booth and Karen Schomer as well as younger newcomers, and included interactive sections inviting users to participate in the musical and cultural dialog.

After three homepage "cover" stories – Yo La Tengo, Girl Talk and Steve Earle – it, too, went on hiatus when Kemp returned as editor in chief of Creative Loafing Charlotte in September 2011.

Artists who have appeared multiple times on the cover of Option include Brian Eno, on #E2 (E-Squared) (November/December 1985) and #37 (March/April 1991); Sonic Youth, on #G2 (G-Squared) (March/April 1986) and #79 (March/April 1998); and Meat Puppets, on #R2 (R-Squared) (January/February 1988) and #64 (September/October 1995).

Becker finally pulled the plug on Option in 1998 as the alternative publishing and indy music markets both began to falter drastically, no longer being the truly independent scenes they were when he first started the magazine in the 1980s.

It was in July 1989 that the Washington Post writer Richard Harrington called the magazine "well-designed" when reviewing issue 27 alongside other music publications.

She now serves as consultant to SFDM, INC., a high-performance super-computing company, specializing in rich media, 3D modeling, HDTV and 3D film rendering, as well as "petaflop scale" scientific R&D and HPC.

[21] The magazine targeted ages ranging from teens to 20s, focusing on concerns such as affordability; early issues were distributed at Urban Outfitters outlets.