So, the inevitable has happened: the NME has called time on its print edition. Whilst sad in many ways, this news, presumably, comes as a surprise to precisely no-one. Making it free didn't halt the decline. Attempts to broaden its raison-d'être, and hence its readership, by being less about music and more about, well, just about everything else, that didn't halt the decline either. In my view, it may even have accelerated it, because if you just want a music publication you don't really want to have to wade through all the other toss too, do you? Time Inc, the NME's owner, might do well to remember that as they seek to further develop its online offering.
Who's next, I wonder? I had two emails in one day yesterday from Uncut magazine, trying to get me to take out a subscription deal that equated to £2.50 per issue... that's for a magazine which, last time I bought one in a shop, cost me £5.25. Feels a little desperate to me.
Anyway, to mark the disappearance on an icon of the music press, here's a classic cover of theirs from 1988, a poster copy of which adorned my bedroom wall for years. Which, given that I'm off to see the cover star this very evening seems entirely appropriate.
Bye, NME.
RIP NME - at least, the version of it that we knew and loved in our formative years! That was quite a cover and certainly one for many walls I would imagine.
ReplyDeleteI had a little 'brush' (no pun intended) with the NME in the '80s, one I remember quite well:
http://sundriedsparrows.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/just-what-i-always-wanted-now-those.html
Have a fantastic time tonight Martin. Please tell us all about it.
That is a great brush! What might have been.
DeleteWill see if the evening lends itself to a blog post...
Good line up int he bottom left corner too- Dub Sex, The Fall, Steinski, Triffids, primitives, Morricone.
ReplyDeleteIt was indeed. 88 wasn't all Stock, Aitken and Waterman, thank goodness.
DeleteAnother institution of my youth bites the dust
ReplyDeleteI still read it, occasionally, being lucky enough to work somewhere it is/was distributed. I suppose that "occasionally" was part of their problem.
DeleteMelody Maker, Sounds, Disc, Record Mirror, NME……as a kid, I spent every penny of my pocket money on weekly music papers and the records that they recommended, but that was all a very long time ago.
ReplyDeleteIt does make you wonder how much longer the monthlies such as Mojo and Uncut can continue to make ends meet.
Enjoy Moz.
But once they're gone, is that the end of music journalism? (I still miss Word magazine.)
DeleteIf only there was a free place, on the internet, say, where passionate music fans could share their obsessions with each other and open each others' ears to new and old sounds from their record collections...
Even Q magazine is much smaller than it used to be, in every dimension. (I miss Word too)
DeleteSo have Blogger and Wordpress helped kill the NME?
And Moz, by the way, was fantastic. A blog post on the gig will follow soon(ish), but suffice to say that was my seventh time seeing him live, and it was right up there in the top three.
I know it's somewhat ironic lamenting the end of the paper copy of NME and any number other related publications on an internet blog,but I do wonder if the kids getting into music now as we did still experience the same thrill as we did buying the magazines and reading them athome/on the school bus etc when instantly finding the same on the Web. Who am I to know but the nostalgic part of thinks,or possibly just wants to,that it can never be the same again.
ReplyDeleteAgreed, mate. I think, in our youth, it took more effort to research a band or stay up to date on them. And that effort made it more special, more ours. It's a cliché, I know, but kids today... don't know they're born. Etc...
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