Complete
analysis of a music magazine;
My
choice of a music magazine is NME, The magazine started in March 7, 1952.
During
the 1960’s of newly founded NME magazine, the paper featured mainly new British
bands emerging at the time. The
Following the history of NME into the early 1970’s NME’s competition
with Melody Maker grew weak as its coverage of music paced off in the
development in rock music. Especially in the starting years of new genres such
as Psychedelia and progressive rock, in 1972 NME nearly collapsed
due to its owner IPC which bought the paper from Kinn in 1963.
Sales dropped at a
fast rate to 60,000 and a review of guitar instrumentalist Duane Eddy had
been printed which began with the
immortal words 'On this, his 35th album, we find Duane in as good as voice as
ever, NME were told they and to quickly rethink what they’re publishing or die
out.
Ironically for the 1960’s NME reader poll, Duane Eddy was
voted number one for music personality award and beat Elvis Presley. Alan Smith
was then addressed to be the editor and to turn around NME in a little space of
time by IPC or the magazine would end. For NME to continue on, NME recruited
writers from the underground press such as Charles Shaar Murray and Nick Kent. NME
then opened up to a more rebellious aspect of music introducing Glam rock and
Punk into its magazine, keeping up to date with a cultural revolution that was
rallying the youth of music listeners. T. Rex, Sex Pistols, X-Ray Spex and Generation X became regular cover stars by then
NME was beating their rivals by miles with nearly 300,000 copies per weak sold.
During the mid-70’s all the other competitors, Melody Maker, Disc, Record
Mirror and Sounds knew NME was the leading British music
magazine. Due to the best overall layout, writers, photographers and the sense
of style coming through.
From 1980 onwards NME was the more important Music
paper in the country. NME was publishing influential C81 in 1981, in
collaboration with Rough Trade Records, making the availability of it being
mailed or at a convenient low price. The tape showcased a number of the
up-and-coming bands, the list of; Aztec Camera, Orange Juice, Linxand Scritti Politti. As well as more known artists such as Robert Wyatt, Pere Ubu, the Buzzcocks and Ian Dury. As of the popularity of the collaboration a second
tape was realised in 1986. NME put their out their view of on the Margret
Thatcher era by supporting socialism through a movement called the Red Wedge in
the week of the 1987 election, the paper pacifically made a main feature for
the leader of the labour party, Niel Kinnock, who was the appearance on the
magazine cover. His presence is the magazine has also been on another occasion
two years prior in 1985 so the labour party would gain votes instead of the
conservatives.
NME
hit a low point in sales by the mid-80’s and was yet again in danger of closing
under the editorship of Ian Pye. Between the writers there was a split of
groups who wanted to write about hip-hop what was a fairly new genre to the UK
and the other half wanted to stick to what was originally being written of the
rock music genre. Sales reportedly were dropping when images of Hip Hop artists
being on the front covers. Which therefore led a lack of direction in which to
magazine was going became clear to readers. Many features had been completely
irrelevant to music appeared on the front cover in the time being. Further
examples such as William leith’s computer crime article, Stuart Cosgrove on a
subject related to politics of sports and the appearance of American troops In Britain
including Elvis Presley appearing on the cover not for the musical reasons but
as a political symbol. Shew NME had no strong direction in what was getting
covered.
NME
still hadn’t found its main steer at this time, staff going in opposite
directions constantly in what came to know as the “hip-hop wars”. NME surplus of
popularity was shifting towards Nick Logan’s creations of two music magazines
called The Face and Smash Hits, they were in favour instead of NME.
NME
started 1990 strongly on the Madchester scene, covering the new British indie
bands and shoegazers. By the end of 1990, the Madchester scene was gradually at
the end slowly dying off, and NME had started to report on new bands from
across the pond, mainly in the Seattle area. These bands were of a new movement
called grunge. Already widely known Nirvana and Pearl Jam played this genre. NME
was not interested into writing about grunge bands until Nevermind became
popular, Sounds music magazine was the first music paper to introduce grunge.
An ex-writer for NME was the first person to interview Nirvana for Melody
Maker. Although NME supported new British bands still, it was controlled by
American bands as was the music scene in general.
From
1991 to 1993 was dominated by popular American bands like Nirvana but, British
bands were not ignored at all. NME still covered the indie scene, Manic Street
Preachers at the time were criticising NME for what they saw as an elitist view
of bands they would champion.
Following
into 1992, the Madchester scene finally died out and with the Manics and new
British bands were appearing such as Suede who were straight away hailed by the
paper as an alternative to the heavy grunge sound becoming the start of the new
British music scene. Although the genre Grunge was still leading in favour but
the rise of new British bands would follow throughout the NME music magazine.
In
the middle of 1992 NME had a public dispute with Morrissey the frontman of The
Smiths, allegations about him using racist lyrics and imagery. The next edition
of NME, Morrissey’s relationship with the magazine grew hatred towards NME and
as a result he did not speak to them for over a decade.
April
1994, Nirvana’s Lead singer Kurt Cobain was found dead, a story that affected
everyone but would create a massive change in the British music scene. Grunge
was being replaced by Britpop a new form of music influenced by British music
from the 1960s and British culture. Blur released their album Parklife in the
month of Cobain’s death, Britpop filled the musical and cultural void. With
Blur’s massive success led to the rise of a new group from Manchester called
Oasis and Britpop would rise till the rest of 1994. By the end of the year Blur
and Oasis were the two biggest bands in the UK with sales rapidly increasing
for NME thanks to Britpop.
From
1998 the 21st of March the paper was no longer printed as a
newsprint, and became a tabloid size with glossy covers. The weekly music
magazine market was shrinking due to Melody Maker merge into NME and the Select
music magazine closed down a week afterwards. NME tried to broaden their genre
range again of hip-hop acts like Jay-Z getting featured, electronic music
pioneer Aphex Twin and R&B Groups such as Destiny’s Child but proved
unpopular just like in the 1980’s NME publications. So instead in 2001 NME
renewed its interests in helping introducing bands like the Strokes.
In
2002 Conor McNicholas was made editor with new young photographers. It focused
at new British Bands such as the Libertines, Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party and the Kaiser Chiefs which had emerged as indie music and later on Artic Monkeys were
introduced.
NME became a free title from the start of the 18th
of September 2015.
