We’ve covered the decline in music sales pretty extensively here at Tone Deaf. Well, it seems music magazines aren’t doing too much better. In fact, they’re doing so poorly, one of the world’s most iconic music publications, NME, is becoming a free paper.
As the Sydney Morning Herald reports, having faced a decades-long decline in sales, which took the iconic magazine from several hundred thousand at its peak to as few as 15,000 now, the 63-year-old NME will be free starting from September.
More than 300,000 copies will be made available “through stations, universities and retail partners”. Basically, it’s becoming a street press, and it’s not the only publication to go that way. As Fairfax notes, Time Out mag became free publication two years ago.
What’s perhaps most interesting about NME‘s new incarnation is that it will be expanding outside of music to offer greater coverage of film, fashion, television, politics, gaming, and technology. Sounds to us like it’s turning into mX.
The publication has a well-established presence online and it seems it will be investing more into its digital platform, promising an expansion of live events, video franchises “as well as curated content appearing across all platforms, including print”. Note that “print” comes last.
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The UK magazine originally became popular in the 1960s, covering Beatlemania and the British Invasion, before becoming one of the defining voices of punk and new wave during the 1970s and ’80s. It achieved cultural prominence again in the ’90s with the rise of Britpop.
The magazine’s influence was significant, even going into the new millennium, helping push bands like the Sex Pistols, The Smiths, Nick Cave, Nirvana, Blur, Oasis, Foo Fighters, Florence + The Machine, The Libertines, and Arctic Monkeys.
As Fairfax notes, becoming a giveaway could revitalise NME‘s presence and marketability. However, they may want to study the decline of Australia’s own street presses, whose circulation, as Tone Deaf reports, has been steadily falling for years.
