Music Magazine Research- NME

 The New Musical Express (better known as the NME) is a popular music magazine in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It was the first British paper to include a singles chart, in the 14 November 1952 edition. In the 1970s it became the best-selling British music magazine

Facts:

• Krissi Murison was named the magazine's eleventh editor on 29 July 2009. She took over as the magazine's first female editor in September 2009.
• NME Awards is an awards show held every year to celebrate the best new music of the past year. The nominations and eventual winners are voted for by the readers of the magazine.
• NME sponsors a tour of the United Kingdom by up-and-coming bands each year.
• According to the latest traffic figures, NME.COM now has 5.3 million monthly unique users, making it the largest magazine website in the UK.
• In 2010 NME.COM launched NME Breakthrough, a new music community for artists, bands and fans.

What kind of elements does NME contain weekly?

NME is available for sale from Tuesday every week (UK) and contains similar sorts of articles to keep a fluid ‘house style’ throughout the magazine. For example if you are really interested in new releases, you can flick every week straight to same page to find what you’re looking for. NME often contains; reviews, of album, singles and live shows they send their journalists too (including photographs) a ‘new music’ double page which usually showcases and introduces us to a brand new band, this includes a picture ‘who they sound like’ and possibly an interview and/ or review. The magazine usually begins with the weeks news, a simply arranged page which discusses the latest ‘hot’ singles, merchandise, shows etc. NME has a comments page where readers can voice their views on last weeks news and are replied to by an NME writer. A weekly music crossword is available where readers can win a new prize every week, this is great for audience participation and could make it more appealing to an older audience (I think this would be interesting to consider for our own music magazine)

My overview of NME magazine…

NME magazine is a hugely well established magazine, having been in production for almost 60 years and achieving approximately 15,000 readers a week.

But, NME is not just a magazine… NME has constantly stayed on the forefront of new technology by releasing by- products such as: NME TV, NME Radio, NME.com, NME Radio App for iPhone and copies of NME available to download from iPad.

NME’s target audience is men aged 17-30 with the median age of reader 24. To further our development of our own music magazine we should consider elements of NME magazine as this is the same target audience we are concentrating on, features such as colour, font and font:image ratio should be researched and demonstrated in our own music magazine.

I also like the idea of having initials for a title, ‘NME’ is short, snappy and timeless. It tells you what you need to know about the magazine it showcases ‘New’ music and the use of the term ‘Express’ suggests it is instant and quick to reach it’s audience, making it appealing for the reader to feel at the helm of the music industry, finding out information as it happens (this is even more important for NME.com)