Visual Representation of the Development of form of Music Based Magazines

Usman Sabir 12Y

History of Music Magazines

• Music magazines have been around since 1926 for example Melody Maker providing music news, record deals, photo shoots and interviews with artists.

• The UK had most of the major magazines followed by the U.S e.g NME dominating since 1952

• The five magazines I will be looking at in detail is NME, MTV, Sniffinglue, Loaded and Smash Hits.

NME 1950s to 1970s• Founded in 1952 the NME was extremely popular in the United Kingdom.

It was considered to be a “music newspaper” covering serious musical topics from the 1950s to 1970 for serious listeners of Rock/Indie/Underground & upcoming music of rock etc. It was aimed at young men who had an interest in the music genres listed above.

• However this “Music newspaper” era died when sales went down due to rivals like “Smash Hits” and “Loaded” with the more modern approach gaining excessively more sales than NME. NME then had to change the look of the magazine without losing the old audience while catering to a new audience.

NME Modern Approach (post 1970s – present day)

• The “New Musical Express” has been now abbreviated to “NME” in sharp red for a more colourful approach as shown in the 1980s cover below at the bottom left. Though the front cover had changed it still had the informative feeling within the magazine internals preserving their older demographic yet bringing in more revenue via the new readers with the less formal approach as shown in the previous slide. Also note that the bottom right magazines are even more colourful using a overlapping main central image and sneak peeks into the articles within trying to almost imitate the magazines of Smash Hits with a more colourful and vibrant magazine with a less formal approach

1980s1950s 2000s

Smash Hits• The magazine market trend at the time in the late 1970s to early 80s was a

colourful and vibrant less serious and formal approach to magazines (this caused NME to change), Smash Hits was made in 1979 it had colourful and vibrant or almost childish approach to music via its magazines asking silly questions in interviews to artists for example “What colour socks do you wear?”and having posters and lyrics of songs for young girls to stick on their bedroom walls and to memorise the lyrics of the song (something that NME never did due to its formal and informative approach), its demographic was young teenagers. However in 2006 broadband & the internet grew more popular as sources of information, and teens interest in music dispersed and the demographic grew younger resulting in the shutdown of “Smash Hits”.

Sniffin Glue• Sniffin Glue made in 1976 and was a “do it yourself” magazine or fanzine

created by fans of pop punk, they utilised ripped ear pieces, freehand written fonts, felt tips , swear words and promoted independent bands saying if you know 3 chords, you are a guitarist. It was a rebellious magazine also promoting anti government and anti monarchy music like the Sex Pistols with their song “God Save The Queen” which was censored in the Top Singles during the Queen’s Jubilee. Therefore it gained a infamous identity and was frowned upon by the older generations much like Rock N Roll was in America. The name originates from the song my The Ramones “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue”.

Loaded• Loaded made in 1990 is a lifestyle magazine aimed at young men but is

essentially a porn magazine when stripped down to the barebones and used sexual images of women to promote the magazine and gain more profit using the male gaze. It covered things like super cars, women, and other topics that gained it the reputation of the “original lad’s mag”. The style of the magazine has been duplicated by numerous copycat magazines i.e. Zoo, Nuts and FHM and it was one of the magazines to rival NME along with Smash Hits.

Broadband

• Broadband is now outdating magazines and putting the industry to its knees due to its vast array of free useful information which can be accessed faster than going down to the newsagents and also its information knows no boundaries i.e. Explicit or restricted information in which magazines are prohibited from publishing. However some magazines like NME have still managed to withstand the new age of the internet but its sales are still falling vastly hence why it had to adapt and make a online website which is the most visited music website in Europe.