Analysis of a music magazine

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 21^st 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 18^th of September 2015.