History Of

Magazines

•The New Musical Express (NME) is a British music magazine, created by Theodore Smythson, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998.

•It was the first British paper to include a singles chart, in the 14 November 1952 edition. In the 1970s it became the best-selling British music newspaper.

•An online version of NME was launched in 1996. It is now the world's biggest standalone music site.

•Loaded, first published in 1994, is a British magazine for men that is considered to be the "original lads' mag".

•People discovered a gap in the market as Loaded was the first lifestyle magazine aimed at men. Their saw their ‘unique’ selling point as naked women.

•At its peak in the late 1990s it sold over 450,000 copies each month, but by 2012 had collapsed to below 35,000.

•As this covered a range of topics including music, a lot of music magazines lost a lot of their audience.

•Smash Hits was a pop music magazine, aimed at teenagers and young adults and originally published in the United Kingdom by EMAP.

•It ran from 1978 to 2006 and was issued fortnightly for most of that time. However, it did bring out a special edition after Michael Jackson’s death.

•The name still exists as a brand for a related spin-off digital television channel, digital radio station, and website.

•Smash Hits magazine alongside MTV made the music industry much more colourful and visual. The magazine was fun and did not take itself too seriously.

•Sniffin' Glue is the name of a monthly fanzine started by Mark Perry in July 1976 which was released for about a year.

•Others that wrote for the magazine later became well known journalists, this includes Danny Baker.

•Although initial issues only sold 50 copies, circulation soon increased to 15,000. The innovative appeal of Sniffin' Glue was its immediacy.

•This fanzine had a typical punk rock attitude behind it; “do it yourself”. It encouraged its readers to write their own songs, make their own bands or even make their own clothes.

1980 19951990

The NME front covers frequently change and adapt in order to compete with other music magazines. When NME first came about their newspaper was often politically influenced. They took themselves very seriously, and aimed their magazine at such people.

However, Smash Hits changed this. As Smash Hits made music very fun and colourful for its readers, NME tried to do the same. They adapted in order to make their magazine more appealing, to a wider audience. We can see this through NME’s wider use of colours.

19951990 1998

The format of the NME stayed the same for a very long time, as this worked for its readers, it was more of a newspaper rather than a magazine. Loaded was then published in 1994, it used highly sexualised images of women in order to attract their audience.

Loaded was a massive success, and because of this people no longer bought NME as they saw it as too old fashioned. NME had to develop and change in order to compete with Loaded. They did this by making the front page glossy, however, they kept the normal paper on the inside in order to still keep their brand identity.

Sniffin’ Glue was the first example of a fansize. It was not owned and controlled by a big company which worked to their advantage as this meant they could be more flexible and creative. They used the literal meaning of “cut and paste” in their fanzine and this meant they often used ransom notes styled lettering. This was also an iconic symbol of punk rock.

Sniffin’ Glue had a stylistic influence on the NME, as this is now what is also frequently used in their magazine. Alongside of other things associated with punk rock and Sniffin’ Glue such as the rugged look of the magazine.