Music Magazine History

Brief history of first few magazines:

Billboard

The first ever music magazine was Billboard magazine, which is still going today. 

·      It started in 1894 but only really became famous in 1936.

·      It was and still is aimed at music professionals but still available to the general public

Melody Maker

·      Began in 1926

·      Jazz genre, which was popular then.

New Musical Express (NME)

·      14 November 1952

·      Published the first UK singles chart

·      Aimed at a much youthful audience than the other two.

Music Magazine general aspects

·      The genres of the music magazines have changed throughout the years.

·      They always tended to go with the most common genre of music of that time period.

·      An example of this is in the 90’s the ‘club scene’ brought out magazines like Mixmag, Ministry and Muzik but when the ‘scene’ seemed to fall in popularity in 2003 it took out two of these magazines.

·      Nowadays there are a variety of different genres of music magazines ranging from pop (Top of the Pops) to heavy metal (Blistering), jazz (Downbeat) and hip-hop (VIBE).

·      Generally consist of articles about musical professionals, new singles, tours and sometimes even their private lives if something particularly interesting happens.