History of NME

The Inky Fingers, the NME story this is a summary of what its about.

NME- Which is New Musical Express. NME was created by Theodore  Lloyd- Jones, the first magazine first appeared  in march 1952 and was published on a  weekly basis. it was originally called a "Music Newspaper" but t gradually reformed to become a "Music Magazine". its current owner is IPC Media.

NME in the 1960's was essentially focused on music and getting it delivered in the typical ways such as Interviews and Reviews. This was down to the then editor Andy Gray who under his supervision gave NME its highest revenue sales. from 1952- 1972.

NME was involved in numerous rivalries between other magazines here is a video explaining some of these below -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1yGHy1-hfU

Sales were of a massive high reaching 306,881 from January to jUNE 1964. the editors had to compete with other big music magazines and had to reach further audiences in order to bring in sales. a way of doing this was by including big and well known stars in their issues such as the Rolling Stones or the Beatles (example shown above) the two bands were often used in NME as they sold well. In the late 1960's british music has changed pop was becoming a huge genre in Britain. Tense Rivalry began between other Music Magazines, such as "Melody Maker". Their rivalry did not affect sales as they reached a healthy 200,00 per week.

The 1980's was not the best decade for NME as sales began to drop, the recession was a major factor as huge industries and factories vanished  overnight creating huge job loss and zero wages to be spent on personal luxuries  such as magazines. A response to the thatcher era was by interviewing and doing pieces on bands such as "Red Wedge", NME done as issue featuring Neil Kinnock  he was the labour party leader and he featured on the front of NME for an issue, a what some might call a massive mistake as sales had dropped hugely and some companies employees even quite in disgust. New Bands such as The Stone Roses became more popular and NME relied heavily on them to produce more sales