The document traces the history of music magazines from the late 19th century to the present day. It discusses how publications like Billboard, Melody Maker, and NME documented the music industry and created charts. In the 1950s-70s, magazines assumed a youth focus and covered new genres. In the digital age, magazines struggled as music became freely available online but some publications have maintained brands through websites and focusing on niche audiences.

2. • Billboard Magazine was one of
the first publications devoted
to the music industry.
• The first issue was printed in
1894 but it was in 1936 that it
published the ‘music hit
parade’ (the charts).
• The Billboard charts have provided the
foundation for chart countdown slots on radio
programmes like ‘The American Top 40’
• The magazine is mainly aimed at music
professionals.
• It still exists and now contains charts and
information on DVDs and internet music
download charts.

3. • During the early 1920s, music press documented
factual information on the music industry and
record sales information.
• Melody Maker began in 1926 and at the
beginning was famous for its coverage of all
aspects of the jazz scene.
• The Accordian Times and Musical Express began
publishing in 1946
• In 1952, it was rebranded as the New Musical
Express (or, as it came to be known, the NME.)
• Within months, the NME had invented the first
UK singles chart, which evolved into the UK Top
40 still used today.

4. • With the arrival of
the NME, the
Melody Maker
was forced to
cover more
rock’n’roll music
to keep up with
the success of the
new magazine.

5. • In the mid 50s, music newspapers assumed a
more youth-orientated format. They still had the
tabloid newspaper format and monochrome
‘newspaper print’ but they now featured weekly
information on record releases and articles on
artists and their music. During the 60s and 70s
NME, Melody Maker and Sounds were the only
updated weekly source of information on the
music scene, so they were very popular.
• They were known as ‘inkies’ because they had
a broadsheet newspaper format and
monochrome ‘newspaper print’ and the ink
would rub off on the readers’ hands!

7. • By the arrival of The Beatles in the Sixties, NME
was targeting a teenage audience, with Melody
Maker aiming at adult music fans.
• Throughout the Seventies, both papers were in
fierce competition for readers, attracting large
readerships.
• By the mid-70s, NME was selling around 300,000
copies a week.
• It took a more edgy and risky stance on the music
of the times, giving favourable coverage to punk,
for example, and the politics and culture that
surrounded the movement, at a time when its
rival, Sounds, largely catered for a heavy metal
loving readership.

9. • The music fanzine emerged in the 1960s – an
amateur publication.
• Early examples were Crawdaddy in the USA
devised by Paul Williams and Mojo Navigator
in the 1970s. Their creators later became
successful music press journalists.
• These fanzines highlighted the relationship
between the music and the fans and a ‘scene’
that was often too new for the established
music press to comment on. They are
valuable historical accounts.

10. • Fanzines are often
the first to
document a new
movement.
• Sniffin’ Glue was the
first British
publication to
document the punk
movement in the
1970s and is
coverage had a
direct influence on
NME’s coverage of
the contemporary
music scene.

11. • Rolling Stone magazine began in 1967 in San
Francisco.
• It documented music as an essential part of
youth culture.
• It included articles on music and social change,
and music’s power to articulate political
concerns.
• Rolling Stone was less about facts and more
about music culture.

12. In recent years, Rolling Stone has been criticised for being
celebrity obsessed and losing that values that it originally had –
however, this seems to have been a deliberate move to target a
young readership.

13. • In 1978 a pop magazine
launched, called Smash Hits,
which was light-hearted and
printed the lyrics to big chart
hits.
• It was the first genre-specific
magazine. With its pop
emphasis, it was the first
publication specifically
targeting teenagers, with its
backstage gossip and
‘personality’ interviews.
• An important contributor to
the development of the music
press, it was a glossy
fortnightly magazine, the first
specifically for teens.

14. • It had a pop emphasis,
and paved the way for our
contemporary celebrity
magazine obsessions.
• It included backstage
gossip and ‘personality’
interviews.
• Kerrang! originally
evolved from the
template created by
Smash Hits but with the
emphasis on heavy rock.
• Music magazines became
less popular and were in
competition from
numerous fan and official
internet sites.
• By 2006, Smash Hits was
struggling to sell enough
copies and it closed.

15. • In the mid-Eighties, the CD was
becoming the main format for
buying music and lots of old
music was being reissued. In
1986, Q magazine was
developed to cover not just new
music, but records from the last
twenty to thirty years.
• Unlike other music magazines,
it was monthly rather than
weekly and printed on glossier
paper with more colour. It was
an instant success.
• The NME became an
increasingly sarcastic and
critical magazine towards the
end of the decade.
• In the Nineties, guitar music
became hugely popular again
and the Britpop era of Blur,
Oasis and Pulp provided NME
and Melody Maker with
improved sales.

16. • In the 80s and 90s magazines with a similar
template as Smash Hits, but more music
orientated emerged. Genre-specific magazines
such a Kerrang!, with a rock focus; Mixmag,
covering dance and club music; The Source,
exploring hip-hop and rap; and Classic Rock,
focusing on older rock bands.

17. • 1980: Record Collector
catering for the music
enthusiast
• British monthly magazine
providing information for
the music fan who was a
collector.
• Its pages were crammed
with adverts and sources of
buying and selling music.
• Relaunched as an A4
magazine in 2003 and there
is now a magzine version on
ebay that creates a link
between fans and music
sellers.
• It has great reader
interaction as it discusses
fans’ collections and
fanzines etc.

18. • In 1980, The Face began a
new type of music
publication which was a
full-colour and glossy.
• It was a monthly magazine,
aimed at a post youth
market, embracing music
as well as fashion and
lifestyle and it was largely
London-centric.
• The layout was full of
images and had many
adverts. There was more
style than substance.
• It went out of print in 1994.

19. • In 1993, Mojo was first
published, covering
bands like The Beatles,
The Rolling Stones and
Bob Dylan for largely
male older music fans.
Uncut, with a similar
target audience,
followed.
• As the Nineties came to
an end, the internet
was slowly growing in
popularity and by the
year 2000, it was
becoming easy to
download music
illegally and for free.

20. • Melody Maker was closed in 2000, leaving only
the NME to cover mainstream and alternative
music. By this time NME had been revamped in
an attempt to compete with the monthly music
magazines with higher production values.
• As the new millennium dawned, the internet
allowed people to discover, share and read about
music for free and music magazines lost readers
sharply. By 2006, a pop music magazine was
struggling to sell enough copies and Smash Hits
closed.
• All music magazines find themselves struggling
to survive, with very few having been launched
in recent years.

21. • In 2003, The Word
magazine appeared, In
attempt to be different and
increase its audience base,
it covered music, films and
books and in 2004 music
and fashion magazine Clash
was launched.
• In 2009, the NME got its
first female editor – Krissi
Murison.
• As of 2012, the NME is
selling approximately only
30,000 copies a week and in
July of that year, The Word
shut down having become
financially unviable, though
it still retains its website.

22. • Music magazines now maintain websites. Not
only is this a way of appealing to an audience
keen on new technology and in keeping with
other printed media such as newspapers, it
allows the reader to interact with the
magazines and access news as it happens
instead of every month or every week . Use of
flash technology, moving images, sound and
interactive features allow them to
complement print versions, but they are also
clearly a threat to the their survival.

23. • Magazines like Q,
Mojo and Mixmag
work hard to
establish a brand
name beyond
printed media in
the hope that their
audience will buy
into the whole
brand and continue
to see the print
versions as
essential
purchases.

24. • Although the printed music press is facing an
uncertain future, this isn’t the whole story, there
are still countless music magazines aimed at niche
audiences, highlighting specific musical genres.