Magazine Case Study

NME magazine, once labelled as the best-selling British music newspaper, is a 60 year old publication that belongs to the UK. NME, short for ‘New Musical Express’ is the longest published music weekly in the world. Starting out as a music newspaper, NME has come a long way to get to where it is today; a well-loved and respected music magazine, but threats of closing almost every decade have made it difficult for the magazine to get here. 2002 was an important year for NME as this was the year that, after many gradual changes to the format and type of the magazine, it finally changed from newsprint to glossy, and the 1990’s played a significant part in the development of the magazine as these were the years that the magazine accumulated the knowledge of the ‘grunge’ movement, and the interest of American bands and artists. NME soon became its own brand as it now owns radio stations, awards ceremonies, live events and a website. With over 7 million users per month, the website is the biggest standalone music site in the world. Closely related to punk and British Indie music, NME has a large, but fairly genre-specific audience.

(Content) With the average reader’s age being 24, NME’s content needed to be more text-heavy, sophisticated and professional than a magazine like Kerrang! as their audience have outgrown their teenage years. Throughout the decades, trends and movements NME have adapted their content and interests to suit its target audience’s culture. Over the years NME has covered Rock, Psychedelia, Punk, Indie, Grunge, ‘Shoegazer’ and even hip-hop artists / bands but their iconic genre started out as British bands. Entering the media scene as a music newspaper, NME only covered British punk / rock music but after a while was introduced to new American artists that were coming over to the UK and so started including bands such as Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Although the magazine has always supported new British bands, NME appeared to develop alongside the music scene; after being introduced to American bands the magazine’s content was dominated by them. Not only do NME write about music, they also cover news, film and TV. These features are maybe more specific to their website as they have their own individual tabs but, as a brand, these are something that NME try to cover and / or review. Reviews are something that, along with awards, NME prides itself on. Having their own individual awards ceremony shows that they are passionate in finding the best in the music industry, which links well with their skill of reviewing albums, artists, and singles- they credit musicians on their ability to create good music unlike the pop industry that credit artists on their popularity. In addition to their reviews and awards NME also create several lists across their website and magazine. These lists enable them to find the best or worst moments and singles, albums, personalities, artists, bands, etc. in music throughout their coverage of it.

(Publisher) – IPC is the publishing company that support NME magazine. IPC is the leading consumer magazine and digital publisher in the UK. With their websites reaching over 25 million global users per month and their magazines being shared with 26m UK adults; they are a well-respected and an extremely successful company. Having over 60 household-names as their media brands means that IPC are very talented and wise in the way that they publish their products; they know what they are doing and their excessively large audience backs this up. IPC Media are broken up into five divisions: IPC Connect, IPC Inspire, IPC Southbank, IPC Advertising and IPC Marketforce. The divisions cover specific areas and break up their brands into genres and sub categories. The categories they currently have are ones such as Lifestyle, Teen, Sport and Leisure, Women’s Weeklies and Home Interest etc. NME falls under the category of “Young Men & Music” with only 3 other brands, one of which is another music magazine. Uncut is a magazine that features timeless rock music aimed at those who grew up listening to the classic rock of the 60/70’s. Their aim is to introduce these readers to new music that instantly takes them back to the time when they bought records and got excited by the most rebellious craze of their time. As this magazine is aimed at an audience of a higher age-bracket than NME is, IPC can leak some of the features from both magazines into each other; if the readers of Uncut are interested in finding new music that reminds them of their youth, and NME readers are interested in new music in general, some of these musicians / tracks / artists / albums can be mentioned in both. Look, Teen Now, Nuts, Chat, and Soap Life are some other brands that have become quite iconic due to the publishing of IPC.

(Reader Profile) 65% (more than half) of NME readers are in the ABC1 class. This paints a picture of their audience as being full-time workers in a high-end job, earning a reasonable amount of money. Like previously mentioned, their audience have escaped their teenage years and so, although their total readership spend £18m on games, the majority of their audience have more important and mature things to focus on. This is why the magazine is quite text-heavy as 92% of readers say that it is important to be well informed. NME reaches its target audience very well. The average NME reader spends £532 a year on clothing; 71% agree that it is important to look well-dressed – this suggests that fashion and quality goods are valuable to NME readers and the magazine respond to this cleverly. NME has quite an individual and stylish approach to presenting news about music and musicians; the authentic-looking photos, basic yet stylised text and vintage appearance of the front cover obviously appeal and suit the image-based preferences that its audience have. It also suits the fact that NME readers enjoy listening to live music and going to live gigs; this shows that their audience are more interested in the quality of the music as opposed to the popularity of the band and their music videos etc., it harmonises with the appearance of the magazine in the way that they display a genuine touch of authenticity and originality paired with a genuine interested in the creation of individual music. The things that you find being advertised in NME magazine fit in well with the stereotypes surrounding its readers; gadgets are something that are generally associated with men, as are razors and as 69% of NME’s readers are male it is more effective and beneficial to with women). Having their average reader as the age of 24 means that overall their audience are young adults. Festivals, album promotions and gigs are some of the well suited advertisements found in NME magazine regarding the age of its audience. One feature found in NME was the “Market Place”. This advertise these than it is to show advertisements of make-up and wine (generally associated is a set page that contains advertisements of products that other readers are selling. They include things such as CD racks, containers etc. that are cheap and well suited for an apartment, something you would expect young adults to be living in. Overall, the advertisement content of NME and any other magazine is carefully selected to suit the stereotypes, needs and preferences of its target audience.

(Layout trademarks) The title ‘NME’ has become an iconic slogan for the brand of NME. The positioning, style, colour and size have been almost exactly the same since when NME was a newspaper. The colour red and the block capitals are representative of the brand; it’s instantly recognisable and has become a commodity of NME. The front covers of most NME magazines have some features that set it aside from other magazine brands. A lot of music magazines are American or at least focus on American music and because of this have Americanised features such as clothing, photography etc. however, although NME have some content covering American musicians, it sticks to its British culture and this comes across on their front covers; their often simplistic layouts, and neutral colours differentiate it from magazines such as Kerrang! which prides itself on images therefore producing cluttered magazine front-covers. Another traditional feature and trademark in the layout of NME is their photos. They focus more on getting their own images from live events as opposed to using Photoshop and magazine shoots to create popular and fashionable photographs.       Similar to their front covers, NME have a very distinct style when it comes to the contents page. Like most magazines, NME change their style every so often to keep readers interested. Regardless of how many times they change their appearance, their contents pages are always recognisable to their brand; the actual content of these pages is quite limited and has been throughout various different styles. They always have a white background and use the maximum of 4 colours: red, black, white and yellow. Although their design used to be slightly barer than it is nowadays, they still kept aspects of their text and layout similar. The contents page was previously titled ‘INSIDE THIS WEEK’ but has more recently been titled ‘NME THIS WEEK’. Despite changing the wording, the contents page is still recognisable to the magazine whether the brand name is visible or not. This is because of the overall feel their contents pages have; they are quite authentic and timeless and their limited content allows the reader to engage with a world that revolves around a dedication to music.