Entertainment For Lively Minds
N.M.E. (On Borrowed Time?)
Although I don't buy the N.M.E. every week, I have picked up the odd copy in the past few months and generally thought it had improved. Better live reviews and content and thankfully, it's also lost its glossy, HEAT type look.
It's quite sad to read that it's lost 9.8% of its readership over the past six months, to put its readership at 29,020. Apparently it now has the lowest readership of any music title. I know we've had this conversation before, but it would be sad to see it disappear off the shelves for good, although I guess its name will survive on-line and through its club nights.
I'll buy a copy this afternoon and take it on my holidays next week. If the hotel room is hot and stuffy, I can always use it to waft myself.
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Only themselves to blame in retrospect?
OK, in the 1980s the phenomenon of 40-somethings getting back into music in a major way was probably unheard of and inconceivable. But even so ...
My real love in the music press in the heady early 80s was Sounds (shout out to yorkio by the way!), and whenever I dipped my toe into the more "intellectual" waters of NME I was usually depressed by its sheer infuriating pretentiousness. To this day I cannot take Paul Morley seriously - the guy wrote some truly git-ish reviews.
The result is that, when I got "back into music" in a big way around 20 years later, NME was the last place I'd have looked. I experimented with Word, Q, Uncut and Mojo: the result is a secret between me and the Word subscription department.
Now I have no real time or interest in getting back into another music paper, so NME has blown it.
Probably unfair for the sins of the fathers to be visited on their sons, but that's the economic reality in my case.
The lack of sales
Is properly down to lack of many decent new acts breaking through or any musical trends to latch on to rather than the mags quality.
But it did get pretty damn poor under the last editor who tried to turn it into indie Heat.
Indie Heat
This is true, it was lousy. The magazine has got much better under the current editor's stewardship, and the writers have started to use longer words again. Unfortunately, I am 43. Although I thought it was lousy, the NME sold better under the previous editor because Indie Heat was what the target market wanted (and possibly still wants).
Cut The Crap hitmakers The Clash were on the cover the week before last. That can't be right.
True
Yes that's a good point, which I hadn't actually thought of before. I didn't end up buying it yesterday, maybe today.
Youth
The NME has always been aimed at young people, and people in their teens and early 20s nowadays are used to getting all their news and reviews online.
Has this happened before?
Doesn't its circulation wax and wane with musical fashions?
I can't quite imagine it disappearing forever. But then I suppose nothing lasts forever.
When was the last time I bought it regularly? 1994.
But do any
music publications sell in huge numbers these days?
The magazine and newspaper markets generally seem to have suffered from declining sales for some time now, or so one is led to believe.
All Music mags are struggling
I think they're all losing sales, including Mojo which is the biggest seller I think it sells around 89,000.
"Apparently it now has the lowest readership of any music title"
I'm afraid it outsells The Word. I would imagine NME also outsells The Wire, and a lot of the more specialist music titles.
What NME does have is a very strong, very recognisable brand and all that history, it's the Top of the Pops of music magazines so I suspect it'll survive in some for or other.
It's biggest problem that I can see is that its website is crap. It's a bloody sprawling mess, groaning with ads and tat. NME also seems to keen to have transatlantic appeal and push mainstream US/UK music news, and Film and TV stuff. It's trying to do too much. Given that it's target audience is getting it's music online they really ought to make more of an effort to improve their online thang.
It's also done far too much to fuck up it's own image. NME was supposed to be the epitome of cool. It was supposed to be anti commercial, independent and anti corporate. It was supposed to be about Steve Lamacq, in a pub, eating peanuts and drinking cider with members of Midway Still and finding different ways to say "we just must make the music we like and if anyone else likes it..that's just a bonus" or "there has always been a dubstep/folk/prog/techno element to our music".
It was not supposed to be about what Hanson think of The Kings of Leon
You're right...
... The NMEs website is terrible, especially in comparison to Pitchfork. Even if it can be amazingly po-faced, Pitchfork clearly understands its audience and has the site itself is a joy to use (as is The Onion's AV Club). Meanwhile, the NME site just throws any old tat at the wall and hopes it sticks and it's a pain in the arse to use (The reviews section especially, which is so poor they may as well get rid of it and make me buy the magazine).
Meanwhile, the actual magazine is better than it's been in years, but the target market (which, if the NME is getting it right is teenagers rather than us) probably aren't that bothered.
The oft-used mantra...
"we just must make the music we like and if anyone else likes it..that's just a bonus" is at the heart of everything that is wrong with indie culture as far as I'm concerned. The total negation of the fact that as a band you have to attract an audience and keep the punters happy. And bloody well entertain them.
The other problem with the website
Is that the NME seem to think its the greatest part of their output. Altogether misguidedly. Frequently the news articles in the magazine refer back to the website, which you then can't actually find what they where referring to. Not so helpful.
And the last edition promised a free mixtape. The part that said it was a stream only one on the website was in the small print. For shame.
If NME put the rest of the content back into the paper, making it more newsworthy, it would help it. But yes, as you say Volume, its done too much to mess up its own image. Conor McNicolas saw to that. Thank the Lord he's gone (hopefully buried somewhere) never to hurt the world of music ever again.