deconstruction of nme magazine

NMEA british weekly music journalism publication.

NME is a weekly music journalism magazine that started publication in March 1952. Its original form was a weekly music newspaper but has gradually progressed and developed into the magazine it is today.

NME

NME was the first magazine to publish the singles chart, in the 14th November 1952 edition.

Its History

For many years, the magazine has been associated with Punk and Rock music however has branched out to other genres of music, to appeal to a larger market. It started as an alternative music magazine and in some ways is still an alternative magazine, but features more mainstream music more frequently.

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Over the years many very famous bands have featured on the cover of the magazine or featured in an article within the magazine, including; The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Sex Pistols and more recently; The White Stripes, Arctic Monkeys, and the Kaiser Chiefs.

Bands Featured

The magazine offers many freebies in their issues, to increase interest. In May 2008 the magazine underwent a redesign to re-aim the magazine at an older readership, with a less ‘poppy’ tone. In this edition, the magazine featured a free seven-inch Coldplay vinyl single.

Freebies In The Magazine

Further more the magazine has free A3 posters, in the center pages of the magazine. This attracts further audiences, as fans of the features bands on the posters, would often buy the magazine, purely to get the poster.

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The Company also hosts an award ceremony, in some ways very different to conventional award ceremonies. Awards such as ‘Worst Record’ and ‘Villain of the Year’ awards. For many of the nominees, receiving awards for such categories is all a laugh and part of the fun of being famous. They all receive an award the is design to resemble and middle finger gesture.

NME Awards

There are positive awards given too; in 2006 The Arctic Monkeys won the ‘Best New Band’. Oasis has won over 9 NME awards, with a mix of positive, and bad awards.

As part of advertising the Awards, NME have created an Awards Tour, which tours the world with nominated bands headlining the tour, including Crystal Castles, The Vaccines and The Arctic Monkeys.

The NME Award Tours

Although people attend the tour to listen to the music and enjoy it, it is an effective form of advertising, as audiences at the tour become interested to see which of the bands they saw win awards. And the word of mouth generated following the tours is an effective form of below the line advertising and a key example of two step flow.

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The genre of music displayed and used for NME although originally very heavily directed to one or two genres; rock and punk, the range of music used has changed and broadened.

Genre

This is 20 April 2013, featuring David Bowie, prior to his breakthrough back into music. As you can imagine an edition all about a classic, ground breaking artist like David Bowie attracted generally an older audience that used to listen to Bowie in their younger years. This edition was extra special as it was a 100 page edition, all about David Bowie and nothing else.

Audiences/Genre

As well as classic artists, NME also features new, up and coming, pop bands such as Lana Del Rey in this January 2012 edition. Using an artist such as Lana Del Rey, attracts the younger audiences, more interested in pop, mainstream music.

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In between these two genres of music, NME also covers the mixes or hybrid genres of music nowadays and feature bands such as Fall Out Boy and Foo Fighters. This wide range of bands features allows the magazine to cater their magazine to every type of audience, and music taste.

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Conventions of Magazines

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The whole idea of this magazine and the whole company, relies on borrowed interest and intertextuality. All the articles, and freebies and posters from particular bands are how the magazine is sold and becomes successful. The audiences will have a particular band or genre they like, and as previously referenced the magazine caters to many music genres. Further more, the magazine references the movies and new albums, and videos.

Intertextuality and borrowed interest

NME is widely available in most shops, including many smaller corner shops for a reasonable price of only £2.40. The tickets for the tours are available across many online ticketing websites such as Live Nation or Ticketmaster. In terms for the awards they are broadcasted on ITV every year.

Distribution