The Fall of NME.
NME is to be made free and given a circulation boost of 300,000 after a year-on-year fall on readership.
The title, which was launched in 1952 saw readership highs in the late 70s with 300,000 at a time where the magazine was introducing the likes of The Smiths and Joy Division to the word. However the title has seen weekly sales plummeted in the last decade with a circulation of just over 15,000. In the hope to boost advertising revenue, copies of the magazine will be distributed nationally to train stations, universities and retail partners from 18th September 2015.
The title which stands for New Musical Express has played a big role in both independent and mainstream music in its 6 years of publication and has become a trustworthy opinion to all readers. However in an effort to reach a broader audience, the independent music magazine will introduce new topics such as fashion, film, gaming, technology and politics.
The magazine is also aiming to cash in on the rise of the popularity of NME.com. The company’s social media platforms are one of the largest in the business, with more than 760,000 followers on twitter and more than 555,000 likes on Facebook. The website generates more than 5 million unique users per month and is credited for being a pioneer of sorts in mobile, digital publishing and video. NME is also set to expand its live events and musical franchise, in attempt to further boost social media engagement.
During its first years in the 1960s NME, as a newspaper, regularly featured the new British groups emerging at the time, with the likes of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones frequently shown on the front cover. The newspaper also hosted an NME Poll Winners’ Concert, which was an awards event that featured artists voted as most popular by the paper’s readers. The concert also included a ceremony in which the poll winners could collect their awards. At this time NME was selling around 200,000 issues per week making it one of UK’s biggest sellers of all time.
In the 1980s NME became the most important music paper in the country. The paper continued to introduce up and coming bands to the world such as Aztec Camera and The Buzzcocks as well as responding the Thatcher era by espousing socialism through movements such as Red Wedge- a collective of musicians who attempted to engage young people with politics in general.
However, by the mid-1980’s NME entered the hip-hop wars and sales began to drop. During this time there was a split between those who wanted to write about the rise of hip-hop and those who wanted to stick to rock music. NME hit a rough patch and was in danger of closing down after their attempt to write about hip hop artists, suggesting a lack of direction to readers. As well as this a number of features entirely unrelated to music appeared on the front cover, with articles on subjects such as politics and the presence of American troops in Britain.
As the 1980s came to an end and the Madchester scene began, new bands such as The Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses helped to give the paper a new lease of life. Other memorable moments came from a public dispute NME had with Morrisey due to allegations that he had used racist lyrics and imagery, which led to Morrisey not speaking to the paper for over a decade.
After the death of Nirvana front-man Kurt Cobain in April 1994, the grunge era was over and quickly replaced by Brit-pop. The term was created by NME after Blur released their Album Parklife in the month of Cobain’s death. With the formation of Manchester band Oasis, Britpop continued its rise for the rest of 1994. In 1995 NME covered many of these new bands, and sales increased quickly due to the Brit-pop effect. NME had their own stage at that year’s Glastonbury Festival, in which they featured some of these bands.
However from the start of the 2000’s NME sales began to drop lower and lower, despite the transformation from a newspaper to a tabloid-size magazine with glossy covers. The magazine relaunched in 2012 after new editor Mike Williams, featured an image of David Bowie on the front cover in the hope to reinforce rock ‘n’ roll evolution and attract an older audience. The transformation unfortunately failed and in the second half of 2013 the magazine had an average weekly print sale of just 18,184.
The decision to make NME free comes at a time where the magazine industry as a whole is struggling. Problems with the NME turning into a free magazine could include; having to work hard to move away from becoming a niche interest title. With magazines such as Time Out which have gone free, one of the main reasons they have been a success was because they didn’t have to adapt very much. With broad-reaching free publications such as this one, Stylist and Shortlist already covering subjects in which NME hope to incorporate into their publication, such as fashion, technology and film, there is no guarantee that readers will become more interested in the magazine.
Another issue would be making sure that the teenage target audience still had access to the magazine once it became free. The way in which people consume their music and media has changed so immeasurably over the past 15 years, that the main target audience for NME is 15–20 year olds who are getting into music and use the magazine as a portal to get into that world. They are not the sort of people who will be getting on trains and entering news-agents every day.
Readers and Stars React to the news of NME becoming a free magazine-
This timeline shows the rise and falls of the NME from 1952–2000.
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