Looking at the Music Industry

I looked more into the industry and the background of magazines similar to mine. I looked at sales and circulation figures as well as finding out more about the magazine.





· NME ( New Musical Express)
· Published weekly since March 1952
· First British magazine to include singles chart
· In the 1960’s it was selling as many as 200,000 copies per week
· Its commercial height was in 1970’s when it became the best selling British music magazine
· They later failed to keep up to date with the pace of the music industry however due to the rise of interest in music, its sales still grew to 300,000 copies per week.
· In the 1980’s they released the first influential C18 cassette tape which was available to readers at a low price by mail order.
· In the 1990’s they began to cover new indie music bands
· In 1999 they saw a dip in sales and this continued into the millennium
· In the 2000’s the magazine changed to full colour and in May 2008 the magazine had a re-design
· Circulation of the magazine has fallen since 2003 and in the first half of 2009 they sold 40,940 copies compared to 72,442 in the first half of 2003. This was a fall of 44%.

· Q has been published weekly since 1986
· Used to subtitled “the modern guide to music and more”
· It was originally called “cue” but it was changed so as not to be mistaken as a snooker magazine
· In late 2008 its image was revamped with less text and increased focus on issues other than music
· Every issue has an individual message on the spine
· Their sales figures are also falling as they sold less issues in 2008 than in 2007

http://classic.mediatel.co.uk/abcroundup/2008/08/article08.cfm