RESEARCH The History of Music Press

The History of Music Press

1950's-1960's

• To start, music magazines were largely uncritical of musicians' output - everything was always good!
• Their content was mainly charts and singles, gig listings. These two were often referred to as ‘inkies’.
• Both New Musical Express and Melody Maker played a huge part in developing a tabloid newspaper format for music news. They offered weekly information on all upcoming record releases, with articles on artists and their music.
• During the 1960s and 1970s, these magazines dominated UK newsstands, as they were the only up-to-the-minute access to the music scene at the time. This is important because music was a huge part of youth identity.
• Changes in society in the 1960s with the arrival of bands like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, plus the rising drug culture, changed the nature of music and music writing.
• The music fanzine is considered to have emerged in the 1960s – these magazines included Crawdaddy (which is still available today online), Mojo Navigator and Who Put The Bomp!. The creation of such amateur publications highlighted a desire to document a ‘scene’ of music. Fanzines are very much alive on the internet, even today. 1960s continued.
•  Rolling Stone was created by Jann Wenner in the 1967. It was a fortnightly publication which contained a mixture of current affairs, celebrity interviews and coverage of the music industry. Its appeal lay in the way the journalists addressed the youth audience. Rolling Stone was less about factual information and more about music culture.

1970's

• Mid 1970s In the mid-1970s writers began to move away from simply writing about music and started writing about “serious” issues such as politics, philosophy, etc. The “Music Press” became divided between Musicians’ papers such as Melody Maker (techniques, “proper music”) and Political papers such as NME (the meaning behind the bands and their songs).
• Late 1970s – Early 80s However, readers started to abandon NME because it no longer wrote about “normal” bands and was too obsessed with itself and its politics. In fact, 1978 saw the start of a new type of music magazine…
• The NME changed its style in this period to meet the changes, especially the introduction of Punk, head on. New writers were recruited from the magazine’s own readership, with ads like ‘wanted: hip young gun slingers’. Julie Burchill became a top NME reporter overnight.
• 1978 Smash Hits launched a new glossy mag catering for a younger audience in a smaller magazine format. Its focus was on “trivia” – favourite colours, food, pop-musicians’ lifestyles, etc. It included polls, letters, surveys, fan club information, all in an attempt to keep in touch with their readership – People wanted lyrics, posters, free gifts on the covers...so they got them! The emphasis of these magazines was pop, which paved the way for contemporary celebrity magazine obsessions.
• Late 1970s – Early 80s Style in pop music became more important than content: make-up, clothes, the video, fashion and hair.