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Are NME's friends electric?
Although the smaller, paper NME might be enjoying a stretch of gentle decline, there's hope for the title, if not the magazine, in the newly-published audited online circulation figures for NME.com. It's claiming a sizeable 1,693,196 unique visitors for June 2007. Although the offered comparision ("Ten years ago, the site recorded just 51,669 unique users") might be a slightly spurious one, it suggests IPC have hit on a web strategy that's working better than the offline plans. The question must be rumbling through the accountants heads' as to what difference the extinguishing of the magazine and redirection of investment in the virtual edition would make. And if over one and a half million people are happily using the site without buying the magazine, has the NME now become a webservice with an old-media spin-off?
9 comments:
I fink its cuz they 'ave them moving pictures on the website, like at Hogwarts. The paper dunt 'ave that, does it?
the recent push they gave it has really made it quite good. i think their new reporter blogs are a total rip off of this, mind. and i know for a fact that a few of the high and mighty are at least aware of this blog, if not avid readers themselves.
all they need to do now is stop getting idiots to write the news stories and select the pics (i get the impression a lot of the news content is foisted on work experience peeps). they need to get the same level of writing online as they do in the mag. shouldnt be difficult...
an example of something that still lets the site down is here:
http://www.nme.com/news/black-wire/30433
black wire --> wire
oh dear...
they should also get rid of their shit 'new york staff'...i cant take anything they say seriously. or at least get them to cover decent bands. i mean, why the fuck is a pete doherty/my chemical romance/mia fan gonna give a shit about a news story entitled "Van Halen to tour with Roth for first time in 22 years"?!
"Ten years ago, the site recorded just 51,669 unique users"
Classic spin. In 1997 around 80% less of the population had internet access than today.
Though the decline of the paper NME could partially be blamed on their wesbite, most of the blame probably lies with the quality of the journalism, as my namesake mentioned above.
Personally I stopped buying the rag in the late 1990's when I finally got sick of reading album reviews which failed to even mention the music.
An element of self-importance has always existed amongst NME writers, but in the 70's and 80's that attitude was backed up with some quality articles by people who were obviously passionate about the music. In the 90's the situation rapidly became one of the self-importance taking precedence over all else, at the expense of the music. That's when the decline really began.
Couldn't agree more. But the funny, and indeed, arrogant thing is, the writers and editors will argue that that's not the case. No, and A-Levels aren't getting easier either. At least according to those taking them now. Whether or not Charles Shaar Murray beleives the standard of writing on NME has declined in the past 15 years or not, I don't know, but I [i]do[/i] know that if I was a music journalist, having someone like him admire me would be way more important than whether or not The Pigeon Detectives thought I was an alright lad. Or ladette, obviously.
yeah i agree with both of you. ironically i started buying the nme in about 99 (i'm only a - relative - youngun). but i hated it until the strokes came out in 01 and then stopped buying it again in 03 after the libertines had effectivly broken it. the reason i feel it was worth buying again from 01 to 03 was cos those bands - the strokes, libs etc gave the paper great copy. the writers were still pretty average but those two bands knew how to play the game. now, it's just an endless reel of bands - good or bad - who use it more as a conveyor belt to the mainstream than a way to entertain/flirt with your fans.
speaking of music (net) rags, has anyone seen the new playlouder? i've got a log in and the new site is shoddy at best. i just can't see how it'll work. shame, cos that used to be brilliant back in the day, when swells and adam alphabet wrote for it.
Here's a prime example of the 'get the work experience monkeys to handle the website journalism':
http://www.thedoledrum.efinet.eu/viewtopic.php?t=3684
they'd be better off getting all the paper staff to work on the website while the work exp flunkies focus on the paper, seeing as it sells so little
The paper is still sporadically ace and the effort they invest in new bands is impressive. Unfortunately, the new even-smaller re-vamp has finally killed off any long articles and the news section is just fucking awful.
The print NME - not dead, but certainly ill.....
the site stinks! I particularly get annoyed by the 'try and guess what the fifth most important story is before it revolves off the homepage' design and the constant links to a ticket store that doesn't carry the tickets for the story they're linked to from.
And the live blog posts from doherty's latest court appearance..
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