NME Stands for ‘New Music
Express’, and ensures that today’s youth culture can keep up to date with the
latest music, bands, singers and downloads. It’s a British magazine music
journalism magazine, and is published weekly.
NME
is published by Time Inc. UK (formerly IPC Media), who have three publishing
divisions aimed at different audiences; Connect, targeting the mass market for
women, Southbank, targeting upmarket women, and Inspire, targeting the market
for men. NME is part of Inspire, while
Connect features a number of TV magazines and Southbank features home and style
magazines.
From
a poll carried out in 2011, we know that 73% of NME’s readership is male, while
27% are female; we also know that the average age of a NME reader is 25. The
target market for NME is men aged 17-30 years, which tells us that the magazine
is successful in reaching out to their target audience. Also from the poll, we
know that 80% of NME’s readers felt music was an important part of their lives,
49% preferred to listen to live bands, 52% were interested in taking a
music-related course, 59% like to keep up to date with technology, 34% are
working full time, 18% working part-time, 26% were students, almost half of all
readers had been reading NME for at least 3 years, and 84% said that the
magazine gives them what they want. From these figures we can connote that the
readership for NME magazine is men aged about 25, probably single as they’re
too young and busy to be married, and possibly C2 to B in regards to social
status, as I feel the magazine is aimed more towards those who work or are
still in education (as shown by the statistics, which tell us that 52% of the
readers work, and 26% are students). In terms of psychographic profiles, I feel
that the main readership of NME are possibly mainstreamers or individuals, as a
lot of the readers are still young and developing their own psychographic
profile. From the price of the magazine (£2.20), the publishing schedule
(weekly), and the average age of the readers (25), we can connote that the
lifestyle subset of the majority of the readers is yuppies, as they have a
disposable income that can be spent on weekly magazines.
NME
started publishing in March 1952, and was created by Theodore Ingham to be a
British weekly music magazine. In the November 1952 edition, it became the
first British paper to include a singles chart. In the 60s, NME started to
mimic the psychedelia trend; the popular culture music at the time, with a
range of genres. Popular bands of the 60s such as The Beatles and The Rolling
Stones owe some of their success to NME, as they were frequently featured on
the cover, exposing them to NME’s young influenced audience. NME only became a
magazine during the 1980s and 90s, changing from newspaper format in 1988. In
the 1980s, sales of NME were dropping due to tension between journalists who
wanted to write about hip-hop, and those who wanted to write about rock music.
Due to the low sales and uninteresting topics, dedicated readers began switching
to other magazines like The Face, and Smash Hits. However, Alan Lewis, a new
editor, and new writers were brought in to save the failing magazine, and NME
took a new direction and gained a strong identity.
As
NME is such an old magazine, it already has its own identity, but to set itself
apart from other music magazines, NME have a band index on every contents page
of every issue and are the only magazine to do this, making it something
original to NME.
In
1996, NME set up their website NME.com, which has grown to become Europe’s
biggest music website with an average 4 million users across the world. The
website allows NME’s readers to become involved and state their opinions of the
changing of music style. NME also have facebook, twitter, YouTube, Myspace and
many more accounts, allowing them to interact with readers. NME also have NMETV
(replaced Minx in November 2007), NME Radio (first aired in 2008), the brand’s
live events and also The NME Awards (first show held in 1953).
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