RIP NME

[SteveDave]

https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/nme-magazine-is-over-as-time-inc-pulls-production-of-weekly-title/

I feel sorry for the young woman with the very high voice who gives these away outside of Camden Town tube every Friday.

[Bronzy]

As the greatest philosopher of our time put it, "Thou shalt not read NME".

[Quote]

Fuck 'em.

[Norton Canes]

Least shocking announcement ever, following its transformation a couple of years ago into a free handout.

[gilbertharding]

The back of the picture sleeve of (We Hate the Fucking)
NME by Thee Headcoats...


who's laughing now?

[Wet Blanket]

Surprised it limped on this long. Reckon they fucked up way back at the turn of the century when it changed into more of a Smash Hits style format of big photos and little articles to make the most of the brief vogue for pretty new wave revival bands, but maybe I just think that because I'm in my 30s and NME was a magazine that was never as good as it used to be for anyone who'd read religiously at 14 and grown out of it.

I can't believe that there isn't a market for a lively but in-depth print magazine covering music and pop culture. Film mags still do the business. The literary ones like the TLS and LRB are booming.

[Vodka Margarine]

Engrossing and witty music weekly... fashion pamphlet with some words...  free handout... death

[Norton Canes]

It does bug me that there are quite a few free broadsheet music mags available from record shops around the country with a pretty good standard of journalism - shame the NME couldn't have scaled down and followed that model.

[gilbertharding]

I agree with the sentiment that moaning about the NME not being as good as it was whenever you were 18-21 is not a good look, but I remember finally deciding there was absolutely nothing for me in there when they started printing a chart for ringtones.

[jobotic]

Pfft. Melody Maker was better anyway, and that wasn't that good. By the time of its demise the NME had already become full of press releases for whatever shit band was fashionable at the time.

[Funcrusher]

I definitely gained a fair bit from reading it in the 80's when Richard Cook and the like were writing for it. It's been utter garbage since forever, best it gets in grave. 'We Hate The NME' is a fucking tune.

[Funcrusher]

Pfft. Melody Maker was better anyway, and that wasn't that good.

Nah.

[FredNurke]

Never read it, and now I suppose I never will.

The thread title is making the Mickey Mouse Club theme play in my head.

[JoeyBananaduck]

Used to leaf through 'vintage' copies at charity shops. Never bothered buying any. Always resented being told what was cool. I knew better.

Bought one copy off the shelves in about 2004 and that was solely because it had a poster of Brody Dalle with it (back when she was still Brody Dalle). The articles were dreck and the following week it had the fucking Darkness on the cover. Never again.

Bye bye.

[Blinder Data]

Could the magazine make money if they brought back a load of old writers? That generation and its audience is well-versed in paying for premium printed content. It's these new types who Snapchat and want everything for free that don't read words on paper.

Saying that, that was the idea behind The Word magazine and that died too

[Norton Canes]

The 'NME Gold' editions are going to continue, I suppose they could drop a few new pieces into them as VAM (if they're not doing that already).

[kngen]

I feel slightly sad about this, as - particularly when I was on the dole - the NME was the highlight of my week, and sitting down to pore over the pages while slurping on a pack of 10p noodles was something approaching bliss in those parlous days.

But that was the late 80s/early 90s and - as was said above - it's not really fogeyish to say that it was a far different publication back then to what followed. Can't remember when I stopped buying it, or what prompted me to stop - I still remember being quite excited by the fact that, living in London in 1995, I could buy it on a Tuesday evening rather than waiting for a Wednesday morning. But I think we parted ways not long after ...

Post-script: My mum bought me a copy for Xmas a couple of years ago (bless her), and the main feature was '100 legendary gigs that you'd have killed to have been at' or something. I'd been to about 12 and had seen another 10 or so of the bands they were talking about on the same tour as said legendary gig. Feeling simultaneously smug and superior yet old and irrelevant is quite a peculiar sensation.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

The last wave of indie rock as a mainstream music movement died out about ten years ago and with it any hope of the NME being an ongoing concern in print.

They could have died better, yeah but it still was going to die.

[ajsmith2]

Even though I was too old for it at the time and didn't buy it by then (I read the 13th Note's copy) I'm nostalgic for it's last 00s gasp of relevance circa 2002-09 as an indie rock fashion pamphlet. Yeah it's remit was already horrifically narrow compared to what it had been but I thought it captured that zeitgeist pretty well, felt happening. In some ways it was a lot more honest about what their readership actually was and wanted than in the days when it aspired to something more meaningful. I also liked how the first page listed all the bands covered inside, that was a good idea the earlier versions missed out on.

When I actually did get it regularly in the late 90s and very early 00s it was in a directionless post Britpop slump. Some would say that was the last period they tried to promote more challanging music, and they'd probably be right, but I have quite conservative taste and find  the likes of GodSpeed you Black Emperor and prime Mogwai not to my liking, and they came across as offputtingly arrogant (at that time) to boot. It was quite masochistic for me to read it week in week out, panning through massive articles on touted new acts whose music I didn't like to find small snide crumbs of them kicking my preferred Britpop acts on the way down. But I thought they were older and wiser than me so they probably knew best and I was just uneducated and naive.

[kngen]

When I actually did get it in the late 90s and very early 00s it was in a directionless post Britpop slump.

Yeah, that's what definitely killed any interest for me - but, thinking back, it was their New Wave of New Wave nonsense that probably kickstarted my scepticism after treating what they said as gospel for so much of my adolescence.

[kidsick5000]

Of the many causes of death: unable to find the pulse of the nation and betting on the wrong horse far too often.
That and death by mixed analogy.

The moment NME fell in love with the Libertines, that's when it all started to crumble for me.
Compared to previous writers, the turn of the century lot seemed too impressed at getting to drink and hangout with (band x) and far too impressed with seemy tales.
Basically they became Father Dougal with Father Liam.

The indie music industry also became a less edgy place. One moment a writer is travelling with Snow Patrol while they visit Thai strip shows - including witnessing one of the band catching a banana iirc  - the next month, it's a 10min round table with other publications.

That, and Arctic Monkeys proved NME no longer figured in the path to success. They did it by themselves, without whatever existed of the music press at the time. And that was 15-16 years ago.

I dare say enough people at NME knew something needed to change, and probably tried to get heard often enough, but change needs buy-in from the owners and higher ups. And when your results are dwindling, getting that buy-in is less likely because they'd prefer a decline to a dive.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I don't think I've even glanced at a copy in about 15 years, but this does still cause me a little pang of sadness. I think the first time I read it was in 2000 around the time of all The Strokes/Hives hype. My friends and I were in the sixth form, just starting to go to gigs and we'd nip off to town during lunchtimes and leaf through that weeks issue in WHSmiths. It was probably already very much in decline then - and we could have found out about all the same bands on Radio 1 in the evenings (or probably even on CDUK) - but, to my teenage mind, it still felt exciting.

One for the Nostalgia thread, I guess.

[kidsick5000]

It was probably already very much in decline then - and we could have found out about all the same bands on Radio 1 in the evenings (or probably even on CDUK) - but, to my teenage mind, it still felt exciting.

You youngsters. By that time you were much more likely/able to hear who was being written about.
8 or 9 years earlier, it was much more of a search. Eeh, when I twer lad...

[ArtParrott]

That, and Arctic Monkeys proved NME no longer figured in the path to success. They did it by themselves, without whatever existed of the music press at the time. And that was 15-16 years ago.

Don't know about this tbh. The NME were massively behind The Arctic Monkeys. I appreciate the band had done a ton of the groundwork themselves but the NME really went all out for them well before I Bet You Look Good... got to no. 1.

They played the small tent at Reading in 2005, I gave up trying to get in as it was absolutely mobbed. Had to laugh when I saw diminutive Editor-in-Chief at the time Conor McNichols trying and failing to squeeze in to see them too.

[Quote]

I trust he still had good hair and shoes though? Which is the main thing for anyone associated with music to have of course.

The fact the The Strokes/Libertines coming along coincided with me no longer caring what was considered fashionable probably didn't help but as other have said that era really was the fucking pits. Talking about talentless fuckwits like the Vines and Jet as if they were Led Zeppelin or something ... it just felt openly insulting. Once that generation who'd been young/foolish enough to buy into the hype created by NME about those bands grew up and discovered the music said bands were contemptuously ripping off and selling as their own ideas, it was over and the paper had sold off it's cred in order to hype those clowns and hang on for another half-decade. The younger generations were already downloading everything they wanted for nothing and discovering bands before the press were able to cover them so they became even more of an irrelevance, even if anyone could trust them after the likes of Kaiser Chiefs and Kasabian...

That Vice 2002 piece posted on here the last time we discussed NME made me even more hateful about Conor McNicholas (sp?) and the Weller Shockwaves-sponsored wankers he forced upon us. For that reason I'm glad it's folded, it's just a shame he's not there to suffer the fallout from it. I didn't experience any of the so-called golden years so my memories of it are different from those who did, coming along at the arse-end of Britpop - from what little I have read here and there it seems like it was once a vital and informative mag that expanded minds and outlooks rather than contracting them.

[I realise it's all irrelevant and foolish to care about]

[ajsmith2]

I liked a lot of that 00s era landfill indie (despite me being a bit too old for it, ie as old as the bands who produced it) and reckon the main reason it's so viciously despised right now (as in the post above) is that it's from the last decade; the old last decade:'shit', 2 decades ago; 'ah, that was actually alright' process that's happened since at least the 70s. Expect a proper re appreciation of this stuff circa 2025.

[imitationleather]

The last issue I bought was from when they were desperately trying to make a scene out of Nu-Rave. So it was full of interviews with Klaxons going on about how great MDMA is and reviews of The Prodigy Experience (at that point only just over a decade old) saying that it's a vital album everyone should own (not that I disagree with this, but I really cannot see anything whatsoever that links TPE and bands like Klaxons, who were just a more upbeat version of the dirgey indie that had been fashionable the previous summer). If I recall correctly, they even got these Nu-Rave bands to do extremely self-aware cover versions of raaaave classics to really hammer the point home. It was clear the entire thing was dead, and I sent the Co-Op Funeral Services the bill.

I speak as someone who willing went to see Hadouken! live a couple of times. But while fun, the crowd all throwing around glowsticks like it was Moondance was just stupid.

[Head Gardener]

"I use the NME, I use Anarchy"



but not anymore

[Dr Rock]

The last wave of indie rock as a mainstream music movement died out about ten years ago and with it any hope of the NME being an ongoing concern in print.

Yeah.

Also I was an MM man, but would read both. Stopped reading them around the turn of the century. It's a shame that there used to be a good thing and it stopped being a good thing and then stopped altogether.

[The Culture Bunker]

A few years ago, I found - and bought for a quid - the NME that came out on the day I was born. Cover star Marvin Gaye featured in a completely gonzo, probably coke-fuelled, interview in which he predicted imminent Armageddon, while Paul Morley provided a typically impenetrable piece on Clock DVA. In the review section, Nick Kent slagged off Gang of Four's second album.

But back in my teens, I never bought the thing because it always seemed to have sodding Oasis or Blur on the cover, neither of whom I could stand. At least Melody Maker would put, I dunno, 3 Colours Red on the front. They were crap too, but at least it was a change.