Case Study: NME

Basic Facts

·      First Published 14 November 1952

·      Published the first UK singles chart

·      Aimed at a much youthful audience than other magazines of that period.

·      Always seemed to be aimed at Indie/ Rock ‘n’ Roll type genres.

·      Published weekly giving the latest news and newest bands every single week.

·      Stands for New Musical Express.

History:

Started on 14^th November 1952 taking on the idea of the US Billboard magazine and published the singles chart for the UK based on 52 stores. It started as a newspaper format in the size and the paper it was made from and was not until the 1980’s it changed to the glossy style we know today. In the 1960’s NME magazine followed up and coming artists such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.  Between 1963 and 1972 artists like these appeared in NME Poll Winners Concerts where the bands or artists who were most popular with the readers would perform and collect prizes or rewards. These were filmed by the BBC. During this time another music magazine appeared on the scene, Melody Maker. But it didn’t really affect the sales of NME which still reached 200,000 sales a week.

In the early 70’s NME found itself loosing readers to Melody Maker and nearly got shut down by it’s owner IPC Media. They changed the editors and sold 300,000 copies a week in 1973.

            In 1981 released the C81 cassette tape, which was available to buy through the magazine. It featured up and coming bands and was very influential in the selling of the magazine. The second cassette tape was released 5 years later in 1986.  The writers now seemed to write about artists unrelated to music as well as war and politics and the magazine was the verge of closure again.  Three high-end members of staff were fired and a new editor was brought in to keep the magazine going.

            1993 was the year that saw the magazine sponsor the ‘NME Stage’ at Glastonbury Festival. In 1994 the magazines sales increased because of the popularity of Brit Pop which was included in the magazines at that time. The NME website was launched in 1996. The website very regularly offered free music downloads and made the first live webcast in 1999. From 1998 the magazine started to print on tabloid size not the size of newspapers.

            In the year 2000 NME’s main rival Melody Maker closed down but instead of falling completely out of the picture instead they joined with NME to create the magazine we have today.  In the next 5 years the magazine tried out different types of genres for articles dipping into hip-hop, R&B and electronic music but these were found to be unpopular and were dropped.  In October 2006 NME Ireland was launched but proved very unpopular and was dropped in November of that year. That same year club NME was opened in Dublin which also proved unpopular. The first Club NME was opened in 2004 in London and there are now seven open across Europe.

            In 2008 the magazine wend through a redesign and targeted an older audience with a less poppy feel which has since decreased sales. In 2010 the figure was 33,875, which is 53% down on 2003 when the figure was 72,442.