NME and the death of the music press

nme_logoCirculation figures for what remains of the music listening press are looking very grim indeed. Monthly magazine Q is down to 50,000 copies a month compared to its monthly figures of 200,000 in the Nineties, while Uncut and Mojo are in circulation freefall, too. However, it is the collapse of the iconic New Musical Express (NME) to around 20,000 copies a week that demonstrates the death of pop music in the UK.

NME has followed newspapers in producing a tablet version for the digital age, but shockingly this has only yielded 1,200 subscribers. True, NME‘s website does well enough as a source of pop news, but young people’s unwillingness to invest in magazines featuring music features and reviews (which are not initially on the website) indicates how pop music no longer inspires much devotion in young people today.

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