History of NME music magazine

The first UK music magazine I am going to look at is NME.
The paper's first issue was published on 7 March 1952 after the Musical Express and Accordion Weekly was bought by London music promoter Maurice Kinn, which was then relaunched as the New Musical Express. It was initially published in a non-glossy tabloid format on standard newsprint. On 14 November 1952, copying from the U.S. magazine Billboard it created the first UK Singles Chart. The first of these was a top twelve sourced by the magazine itself from sales in regional stores around the UK. The first number one was "Here in my Heart" by Al Martino.




Typical content:

• The latest music news.
• The newest NME videos, music videos, video interviews, live music sessions, music news and bands onstage around the globe.
• Tickets, get tickets for festivals, live music, comedy, gigs and tours. New! Get tickets for sold out tours and concerts.
• New music, releases, new music of the week, new music blogs and reviews.
• Reviews and what NME recommends.
• Photos, daily galleries, featuring the very best rock n' roll photography, photo features and live music.
• Blogs about musicians.
• Film and TV, the latest breaking film and TV news, film reviews, movie trailers, cinema and DVD new releases, and gossip from around the globe
• Artists, the most popular artists on NME.com with links to videos, photos, pictures, biography, YouTube videos, audio, lyrics, related news, reviews, gigs and tour dates.
• Awards, get the latest news, pictures, videos and tickets from the NME Awards 2012.
• Metal, NME Metal and Rock: News, videos, reviews, albums, tickets, merchandise and more...
• Shop
• Lists, pick through NME's 100 Greatest Albums Of The Decade, Best Albums Of The Year and more, right here.

Who is the typical reader?
The average reader of NME is a 24 year old music fan who lives at the edge of media culture and development. 69% of the readers of NME are male, 52% of these working full-time and 29% still studying. The total readership spends £326 million on audio equipment per year. The standard reader spends nearly 19 hours per week on the internet. In addition to this, the reader finds clothes and image quite significant; 71% of readers think it’s important to look well dressed, with 45% spending a large amount of money on clothes.


House style
The masthead on every NME magazine is exactly the same, with their distinctive red and white and bold outline colouring. The NME masthead that is on every one of their magazines acts as a logo, so that people can quickly recognise their magazines. NME’s magazines always look full and cramped packed of information about the latest music. For example the cover shows a band who can hardly fit in the front cover. The layout on most of NME’s magazines is the same, in the way that they all looked jam packed almost as if they cannot fit everything they wanted to into the magazine. 


Producer and Distributor
The producer for NME is IPC Media and the distributor is Time Warner.


Social groups representation in NME
NME is an indie/rock music magazine so the typical target audience would be interested in these sort of things:

• Anti-social and unique themes
• Drugs
• Sex
• These magazines usually have connotations of violence and aggression
• Talks about loud/rock music and laid back indie music
• Rock music seems to talk about political ideas 
• These types of music use swearwords in contrast with pop music which has no use of swearing at all
• The look of musicians in these types of music genres is not as important as looks in pop magazines

NME is less bothered about being successful compared to typical pop magazines. The ideology of NME affects the all over design of the magazine. Rock magazines clash completely with pop ones, they use aggressive features for example, fonts and colours, also the front image is normally an angry band quite often making rude gestures and 'non-smiley' facial expressions.