NME To Become a Free Publication

NME Set to Become Free in September

Image: crackmagazine.net

Callum Thornhill

NME have announced a “major brand transformation” where the cost of the magazine will be scrapped. In replacement, the magazine will become a free publication and deliver 300,000 copies around universities, stations and retail partners.

No longer will you be able to simply go into your local newsagents and pick up the magazine, instead you’ll have to pray that somewhere local will stock them. It will be a similar, but at a much smaller scale, to picking up the Metro at London Tube stations.

Whenever I’m in the capital and use public transport the carriages are always littered with the newspaper and it is a rare sight if anyone is actually reading it (what I tend to do with the Metro is use it as an umbrella if it is raining). If the NME ends up in similar circumstances the reputation of the music magazine will take a huge plummet.

Why is print publication still important you may ask? Well, seeing your favourite bands on the cover is the first thing. Once you’ve read it you can take clippings from the publication, or even get it framed and signed for extra indie points.

I’ve collected NME on and off over the past five or six years, usually when someone I love is on the cover (personal favourites being Jake Bugg, Catfish and the Bottlemen, Arctic Monkeys – cliché, I know), but what if anywhere in the north east doesn’t stock it?

As a journalism student at Teesside University it would make sense for the publication to be delivered here. I mean, surely if it is going into universities students that are going down that route should get preference?

NME’s website is where the majority of the content will now be published, but will it have the same audience as print? With every Tom, Dick and Harry running a blog now it is certainly a risk for NME to focus mainly on online.

After being launched in 1996, online publication reaches just short of four million people every week and this is the latest example of how digital media is overtaking print in the journalism industry. Earlier this year it was reported that print publication was “below 15,000.”

Since forming in 1952, the NME has changed the design many times, but this is the “boldest ever move” according to editor Mike Williams.

Will the removal of cost lose NME’s credibility as one of the leading music magazines in the UK? Or reinforce the fact that technology is quickly improving and NME are simply getting a head start over their rivals?

There have been varied responses from readers of the magazine. Callum House, of Kent, said: “the decline in NME sales has very little to do with the price” and instead criticised the content. Describing the workmanship as “below par journalism” and claiming that NME will constantly be on a downhill spiral “unless they improve their writing.”

Dylan Whatley, a student (who has featured on this blog before), was “saddened” by the move to make NME more technology based. “It has been the source for many people for over 70 years, but now less people will feel the need to get it.”

Nat, Twitter user @swwimdeep, sees both the positives and negatives in the change. "Circulation will increase, but to generate revenue they will have to also increase advertising. This extended advertising may discourage reader." A very good point, and with the majority of the back half of the NME is already adverts and listing anyway, music will be even more difficult to focus on.

I’m not getting too disheartened because the magazine isn’t disappearing. It is simply a rebranding and 300,000 copies being distributed is far better than 15,000. NME has always been my preferred music magazine, although if it is no longer accessible I may have to turn to Q or Rolling Stone.

It will definitely be interesting to see the impact that this technological rebranding has on readers, as well as aspiring journalists.