Complete Analysis of a Music Magazine

Complete Analysis of a Music Magazine

(New Musical Express) is a British music journalism magazine which was born in the March of 1952 after the purchase of Accordion Times and Musical Express, which name was changed to NME. It offered a variety of information on music typically in the genre of rock, alternative and indie. It was the first British paper to include a chart for the most popular singles, which it began in November of the same year.

During 1972 and 1976 it was considered a very self-involved reporting paper, before becoming more associated with the punk rock scene through the writers Julie Burchill, Paul Morley and Tony Parsons. NME gradually shifted from a newspaper format to one with a connotation to that of a magazine during the 1980's and the 1990's, eventually scrapping newsprint altogether in 1996.

The target audience of the New Musical Express is generally teenager and young adults with an alternative taste in music, offering a way to keep up with new music that fits to their preferences, outside of the mainstream.

During the 1960's the paper’s circulation peaked under Andy Gray and the Beatles and Rolling Stones were often featured on the front cover. The paper developed close competition with another weekly music magazine ‘Melody Maker’ although sales were still good.

In the 1970's NME's sales began to fall behind that of Melody Maker and they came close to closure by their owners since 1963. Alan Smith was made editor and was given a short amount of time to revive the magazine or it would face closure. He did this by recruiting underground journalists, making NME the first place to hear about all the new underground music, such as glam rock and punk.

In the 1980's the magazine became the most important of its kind in Britain and released tapes of up and coming bands to its readers at low cost. During this decade there were internal arguments about whether the magazine should focus more on the new genre hip-hop or stick to rock like it always had.

The 90's brought grunge music to the NMEs attention and they covered it up until Kurt Cobain’s death, when they started to concentrate on ‘Brit-pop’ a term they coined to classify bands such as blur and oasis, in a time when, because of the blur-oasis feud, their sales were high.

During the 2000's, NME made the same mistake they had earlier made with covering hip-hop, which they quickly drew to a close when their sales began to dwindle; a clear sign of their error.

Now NME is set to become a free magazine due to the huge lack of interest in our current day economy.