NME - The Inevitable Has Happened!!

I knew there was a reason i kept visiting this forum

Just a thought though........are we in danger of turning into Harry Enfield's Old Gits ????? Every one seems to be saying how good is was in the old days and why can't we return to them ?? The only problem is things and times move on and go though a process of evolution and change (which we may not always agree with) but hey......thats life....wouldn't it be boring if everything stayed the same ? (remember if it wasn't for the growth of the internet what would all the ex-nme readers do :) )

Marty, addressing the point about business re-invention, yes there has been fools in charge of Cuntsigna and the Railways .........but a business needs to change and evolve as its customers needs do to service their needs.

Soooo in a nutshell (and back o/t), yes it what bound to as nothing lasts forever (is there a song in here somewhere

We've mentioned some British institutions other than the NME which are in decline for similar reasons so I'll try to sum the problem up. Instead of trying to sell us things that we don't want or trying to persuade us to like things we don't like why don't people just give us what we want? I don't know about you but I'm sick of looking at a small range of unpalatable options and trying to choose the least worst - if someone offered me something I actually wanted I most probably would happily give them what they wanted.

Marty, I'd forgotten about MM's inclusion of useful information about albums such as the length of the album (which was handy because when you went to buy the album you could buy the correct length blank tape on which to tape it at the same time rather than get home and realise you didn't have a spare 60). However, I've got a new idea - it may take some explaining so please bear with me.

Record labels often release tracks as singles in an attempt to promote the album which includes the track in question even though the single itself doesn't usually make money (the cost of pressing, distributing and promoting a single is similar to the cost of pressing, distributing and promoting an album and the price that a customer pays for a single doesn't cover the costs of the record company or the retailer). This costly promotional tactic only works if the single gets press coverage or radio airplay. Given that about 200 singles are released per week and those released by the major record companies or the big indie labels (such as Jive and Mute) get most of the coverage most single releases are a waste of time and money.

The NME has done some things to try to reverse the decline they haven't really worked. However, to be fair to the NME it has continued to cover singles released by small independent record labels. Whilst this coverage (which usually takes the form of a short review or a small advert which the record company has paid for) is better than none the best way to promote music is to play it. Since that small record labels need to get their music heard and the NME needs something that will persuade more people to buy it the two should get together. Here's how it would work:

The NME should approach small independent record labels and make them an offer - if you give us the tracks you would otherwise spend money releasing as singles we will put them on a CD and give them away with the NME. The record labels would get a track into the hands of thousands potential buyers of their albums at little or no cost and would be able to concentrate on trying to sell albums. The NME would become better value for money which could tempt back former readers who stopped buying it because it wasn't good value for money. Indeed, if every issue came with a free 10 or 15 track CD the owners could think about raising the cover price to something like £2 because if someone only likes one or two tracks on the CD they've got their money's worth and if they like five or more they've got an absolute bargain.

Fingers, i think your idea has already been stolen. The Ministry of Sound do that exact same thing (except they cut out the middle man and lauched their own mag )

I would like to nominate this thread for a Forum Oscar for most informed and intersting thread for many a year! It sadly seems that I am the only person sticking up for the NME and whilst I can understand why people are pissed off with it, I feel it may be something to do with the age and vastly experienced musical knowledge of the debaters on this thread. No doubt when the 'glory age' of Britpop was upon us I can bet that the NME would have had a very high popularity level thus reflecting the popularity of alternative music at that time. In my opinion a lot of people think that music nowadays is not what it used to be 'when I was a lad' and thus tar NME with not being as relevant. It may be a case of looking through rose tinted glasses. At the end of the day NME is a business amd if it wants to survive and make money it must cater for a wide range of music tastes. Though I hate a portion of the bands covered i.e nu metal,R 'n' B and 'cool' pop i.e Kylie, Britney it is a necessary evil in order to make money. I do not think that anyone would admit that the alternative music scene is good enough or relevant enough to allow the NME to survive. Could you imagine how mant copies it would sell if it ONLY covered bands such as Belle and Sebastian, Mogwai, New Order etc.
The 'kids' of today will look back in embarrasment for liking Slipknot, Linkin Park et al in 10 years time and surely that is a prime indicator of the quality of current musical tastes. I know when I look back I can hold my head up high when I say that as a teenager I listened to New Order, Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and Oasis (Please no replys slagging off Oasis- I know thay are an easy target!)

Hi Lindsay

I'm afraid I'm in partial agreement with you. NME whislt 90% complete pap, is still bought in this household occassionally (rather than stolen Marty ;))

The complete randomness of NME makes me buy it for wonder of the utter bobbins they'll spout next! Having said that I was intruiged enough by their ravings to buy the Strokes album and although not the saviours of rock and roll NME proclaim, it was a good purchase. I usually buy it when 1. I think there will be something in it about the Order or the Charlies or 2. When I'm hungover. They will be the ones hanging their heads in shame in 10 years when they are reminded that they protested the amazingness of Andrew WK and the like, I won't criticise them for promoting Kylie because arse out Kylie always sells. I buy it mainly to measure my own tastes, if they it's groundbreaking it's usually shite, if they say they heard before when New Order or the Charlies did it I know I've still got taste! :D

Having said that I am concerned about it's genuinity (if that's a word) Holly's demo hell - she can't still look like that surely, I'm sure that's the same pic from when I first bought it about 10 years ago! :(

Originally posted by Fingers, i think your idea has already been stolen. The Ministry of Sound do that exact same thing (except they cut out the middle man and lauched their own mag )

Niel (you may think you're an anonymous Member with Technique but I know your name), I'm not sure that Ministry magazine has done what I suggest the NME should do because most of their cover CDs are mixes by big-name DJs or "old skool" mixes. However, I'm not sure about that because I've only bought Ministry magazine once and that was only because I was about to travel by train along a route through post-industrial Yorkshire that I've travelled along thousands of times (yes, thousands) and Ministry seemed to be the least worst piece of reading material for sale in the small newsagents at the station because it had an interview with Jarvis Cocker in it which included an absolutely priceless anecdote. If you missed it, here is Jarvis telling a story about his raving days:

"My look for raving was these blue shorts which were very wide and made my legs look really thin, like two pieces of cotton. I matched that with a cotton anorak from a jumble sale - I had the look of a Girl Guides leader. At one do, I put my hair in bunches with these see-through teddy-bear bobbles with baubles on. I didn't wear underwear in those days and the button fly on the shorts tended to come undone. I remember once I looked down after dancing for an hour and seeing my cock was out waving around in the air. I might have started wearing pants after that."

Apart from that magazine I don't own anything else with a Ministry of Sound logo on it, something I'm proud to say because I think they're [content censored by Fingers].

I'm glad you're enjoying this discussion Lindsay. I am because the standard of debate on this site is higher than it is on a site set up by a national newspaper that likes to think it's one of the best.

I know I've been knocking the NME and I'd like to think that nostalgia doesn't play a part in that. However, as I tried to argue earlier if the music scene isn't as healthy as it was five to ten years ago the NME must take some of the blame for that for trying to build up and knock down some very good bands such as Nirvana (which they didn't get the chance to knock down), R.E.M. (if anything, the worst R.E.M. album of recent years isn't "Monster" or "New Adventures In Hi-fi" but is actually the rave-reviewed "Reveal" which is instantly forgettable), Pulp, Radiohead and the Manic Street Preachers. Also, as ZZ and others pointed out the NME has over-hyped some bands that were good but not as good as the NME would have us believe (Happy Mondays and Oasis, to name two) and trying to hype bands that weren't any good.

I don't take any pleasure in the decline of the NME and the fall of Select, Vox and Melody Maker (although I would take pleasure if certain music journalists and former music journalists did something else to which they are more suited such as prostitution - and I wouldn't try to buy any pleasure from them if they did, I must add). What has happened to the music press in Britain is a pity. However, the ultimate responsibility must lie with those who have taken control of what were successful or potentially successful publications and run them into the ground.

NME etc can only be as good as the current music scene and unfortunatley at the moment, music is pretty shite. The latest bands that NME currently push like Stereophonics, Strokes (?) sound dated like something from the pre-punk era. Hardly anyone gets excited by these bands apart from fad victims and there hasn't really been anything of substance since Nirvana. When music improves, the quality of the mags will hopefully reflect this. UNCUT is pretty good though sometimes.

Blimey - each time I pop back in for a peek this thread multiplies in size! Everybody here has made some extremely valid criticisms and like one of you (Lindsay?) says, this has got to be one of the more worthwhile threads of late seeing as it's got so many people with things to say contributing in no small measure - I tip my woolly hat to Marty for starting this one :) ....others may wonder what all the fuss is about, but if we can have the odd topic that starts off a good worthwhile discussion on the state of music-related issues, that can only be a good thing. At one piont I got the impression I was the only person who tended to write in such "wordy" prose - that is, until I discovered how much Martin here - and Fingers, with his consistently valid points - tends to articulate his thoughts and feelings about certain issues in a similarly verbose manner.....

My own misgivings about the way the market is saturated by far too many music magazines can be illustrated by just how many of them now duplicate on another when it comes to covering specific genres - for my liking there are FAR too many Dance monthlies about now - matched only by the sudden proliferation of rock titles catering for the wretched Nu-metal audience. When I was a bit younger I always bought a mag called "INDIE-CATOR" which focussed alot on emergent guitar scenes both here and across the pond....it was a largely excellent publication and helped get me into bands like Fugazi, Minor Threat, Leatherface, Husker Du, etc... It's near relative today would appear to be the successful monthly "RockSound" - which started off ok, but has now degenerated into a kind of Smash Hits for grunty, pierced Nu metal hordes and skater kids....so that's the point I'm making: when too many rival titles come on to the market, everything then becomes diluted as the same old bands keep rearing their heads every time .... Rob's point about many papers reflecting only what music is going around at a given moment in time can have some truth in one sense but can equally be looked on as a gross generalisation in another sense... there is ALWAYS new and challenging music about, magazines like WIRE have been long time champions of this, but as it's strictly "leftfield" stuff it tends to get shunted to the sidelines and treated as "beyond the alternative fringes". To sum up, all the popular titles on the shelves - be they the Q's, MoJo's, Uncuts, Rock Sounds, MetalHammers or the weeklies like NME and Kerrang! tend to function very much like your high street chain stores - they may all feature similar bands more or less, but in a slightly different ratio. At no point do they venture beyond that line and try to challenge their own perceptions of what is mainstream with something different, if by doing that meant losing their readers. A cop out, really isn't it?

Originally posted by Lindsay Morris I would like to nominate this thread for a Forum Oscar for most informed and intersting thread for many a year!

Shit! :o :o Awww...it's nothing really! ;)

Thank you for that compliment. I never expected this topic would strike such a chord with so many people chipping in each with their tuppenyworth!

Thanks for your views everyone - much valued!

Only when the workers control the means of production do you see the capitalists overthrown.....oops, got a little carried away.

Anyways, for my money Mojo's the one last bastion of actual music journalism. They feature incisive articles that don't always deal with the fan favorites (though to pay the bills they understandably cater to the boyband set from time to time), and actuallly have informative dialogues with the stars and the has-beens alike. There needs to be more of that kind of mag and less Rolling Stone "What's Britney up to now?" garbage.....

If you can get your hands on tonites Evening Standard there is an article by Pete Clarke on the demise of NME in conjunction with their 50th anniversary list

A couple of random quotes

NME, at its best, was a massively snotty and opinionated piece of work

NME has long lost its monoply on cool: of being the first on the scene

The privilege of being on the front cover has long since lost its cachet

The list, however,tells the story of a paper in decline

heres a link to said article

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/dynamic/hottx/top\_review.html?in\_review\_id=555522&in\_review\_text\_id=521939

I know who Pete Clarke is - he's one of the NME's former (excellent) Caricature Artists who did a lot of freelance work with them in the 80s to the early 90s. His stuff was brilliantly imaginative and satirical.

Sounds like even HE himself sees fit to write the NME's obituary, which must speak volumes.

By the way, I saw the new revamped issue today just out of (sado-masochistic?) curiosity. It ISN'T an A4 glossy at all - rather it is now the true TWIN of the Irish NME: "HOT PRESS" - which it now superficially resembles in dimensions, front glossy-ish cover, bog-standard paper inners, no of pages.... but it pains me to say this (or does it, since when did I stop caring more exactly???) the content is now INFERIOR to that of its Eire relative!!!

Needless to say I didn't bother devoting any valuable minutes of my time checking the inside content properly - seeing Liam on the cover was enough to put me off wanting to do that. All I know is that Joy Division get their inevitable namecheck on the 50 influential artists - at number 19 - but then, so bloody what??

The Martian Has Spoken. Judgement Has Been Passed