NME Awards 2014: The shortlist

This years NME awards are a bit of an oddity. Not so much the shortlisted bands - although the magazine's love for Lily Allen's Hard Out Here video is surprising - but the sponsorship:

Arctic Monkeys lead the nominations for the NME Awards 2014 with Austin, Texas, with a total of eight nominations split between the band and singer Alex Turner, including Best Album, Best Live Band and Best British Band.

The NME Awards 2014 with Austin, Texas. The awards are sponsored by a town in Texas.

Okay, it's a step forward from Lynx and weak lager and the other typical sponsors, and it's Austin rather than, oooh, Wichita Falls or Lubbock. But... is it just me, or is the phrase "the NME Awards with Austin Texas" really bizarre?

How bad are these nominations? Paul McCartney is on the list for best solo artist. Paul McCartney. Who made an album last year which - even with uncharacteristic generosity from the NME - was only worth 7/10 when the magazine reviewed it.

Chvrches only get on nomination; Savages get three but one of those is for 'best blog or twitter'.

Here's the shortlist in full:

Best British Band
Arctic Monkeys
Biffy Clyro
Disclosure
Foals
Palma Violets
Two Door Cinema Club

Best International Band supported by Austin, Texas
Arcade Fire
Haim
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Phoenix
Vampire Weekend
Queens Of The Stone Age

Best Solo Artist
David Bowie
Jake Bugg
Kanye West
Lorde
Lily Allen
Paul McCartney

Best New Band supported by Mossimo
Chvrches
Courtney Barnett
Drenge
Jagwar Ma
Swim Deep
Wolf Alice

Best Live Band
Arctic Monkeys
Biffy Clyro
Haim
Palma Violets
Queens Of The Stone Age
Savages

Best Album
Arctic Monkeys – 'AM'
Drenge – 'Drenge'
Kanye West – 'Yeezus'
Peace – 'In Love'
QOTSA – '…Like Clockwork'
Savages – 'Silence Yourself'

Best Track supported by Blackstar Amplification
Arcade Fire – 'Reflektor'
Arctic Monkeys – 'Do I Wanna Know?'
Daft Punk – 'Get Lucky'
Disclosure – 'White Noise'
Lily Allen – 'Hard Out Here'
Primal Scream – '2013'

Best Music Video
Arcade Fire – 'Reflektor'
Arctic Monkeys – 'Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High?'
Eagulls – 'Nerve Endings'
Haim – 'Falling'
Lily Allen – 'Hard Out Here'
Pharell – 'Happy'

Best Festival
Bestival
Glastonbury
Latitude
Reading & Leeds
T In The Park
V

Best TV Show
Breaking Bad
Doctor Who
Fresh Meat
Game Of Thrones
Misfits
Sherlock

Best Music Film
Good Vibrations
Made Of Stone
Muscle Shoals
Muse - Live At Rome Olympic Stadium
The National: Mistaken For Strangers
Sound City

Best Reissue
The Beta Band, 'The Regal Years: 1997–2004'
The Breeders, 'LSXX (Last Splash 20th Anniversary Edition)'
Bob Dylan, 'Bootleg Series, Vol. 10: Another Self Portrait (1969-1971)'
The Clash, 'Sound System'
Nirvana, 'In Utero: 20th Anniversary Edition'
The Velvet Underground, ‘White Light/White Heat 45th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition’

Best Band Blog Or Twitter
Alana Haim, Haim
Albert Hammond Jr
Grimes
James Blunt
Jehnny Beth – Savages
Theo Hutchcraft, Hurts

Best Book
Alan McGee – 'Creation Stories'
Beck – 'Song Reader'
Bob Stanley – 'Yeah Yeah Yeah'
Mark Lewisohn – 'The Beatles – All These Years: Volume One: Tune In'
Morrissey – 'Autobiography'
Richard Hell – 'I Dreamed I Was A Very Clean Tramp'

Best Small Festival
Green Man
Festival Number 6
Kendall Calling
Rockness
Swn
Y Not

Best Fan Community
Arctic Monkeys
Hurts
Haim
Morrissey
Muse
Peace

Music Moment Of The Year
Arctic Monkeys headline Glastonbury
Kanye West brings Jesus on stage
Morrissey's autobiography is released
Noel and Damon come together for Teenage Cancer Trust
Pussy Riot are freed
Rolling Stones headline Glastonbury

Worst Band
30 Seconds To Mars
The 1975
Imagine Dragons
Muse
One Direction
The Wanted

Hero Of The Year
Alex Turner
David Bowie
Este Haim
Lou Reed
Pussy Riot
Russell Brand

Villain Of The Year
David Cameron
Harry Styles
Miley Cyrus
Robin Thicke
Russell Brand
Vladimir Putin

NME experiments with micropayments, possibly

So we know from the ABC figures that take-up of NME's digital edition is a little slow, which appears to have spurred the magazine to try a different way to monetise its digital content:

NME is to trial charging for online access to articles for the first time, asking readers to pay a modest 69p for this week's cover story on the indie four-piece Haim.

The magazine is dipping its toe in the world of online payments with the one-off experiment, but insiders insisted there are no plans to erect a full paywall around NME.com.

From Wednesday, it will cost NME readers 69p to read an "enhanced digital" version of the cover feature on Haim – 30p cheaper than one of the San Fransisco band's singles on iTunes. The rest of the website will remain free.

This makes a degree of sense - keeping the feature articles off the site to protect magazine sales has been understandable, although hasn't worked, so a different approach makes sense.

And the magazine still has some great writers and access to interesting people, so trying to leverage some money online off the back of that makes sense.

On the other hand - sixty nine pence for a single article? MediaGuardian might describe it as "modest" but it looks more like the sort of price only a fan would pay. If you could take or leave Haim, or were merely Haimcurious, you'd head off to discover their other, free interviews, surely?

And if the idea is that people who like Haim very much will happily fork over 69p to read their words, there's a bit of a threat there to the NME that I'm not sure it's thought through. Because if I managed Haim, and knew the NME was going to be making money from selling unique digital content that Haim have helped create, I might consider that my group should get a share of the profits.

It's not like the magazine, where Haim are getting exposure to the wider NME audience, and can think of it as a marketing jaunt. This is a sale which takes place, inarguably, because of the presence of Haim in the product.

It might just be a dead question though - as there's nowhere obvious on the NME website where you can buy the thing. There's no mention on the homepage; no mention on the digital download page; not a word on the Haim page or on the 'inside the NME this week' page.

Perhaps the experiment has already been abandoned; because if it's still going on, I think we can predict there's only going to be limited take-up.

BBC, NME hail Haim

Today, the BBC Sound Of 2013 poll names Haim the Sound of 2013, the annual list compiled by asking "tastemakers" which bandwagon it's best to jump upon.

The NME is patting itself on the back, too:

Well done to this weeks's coverstars Haim for getting the BBC Sound Of 2013 @haimtheband @babyhaim

— NME Radar (@NME_Radar) January 4, 2013

Yes, Haim are on the front of the NME. What a pity the magazine didn't have the confidence to just give them the cover on their own, but felt they needed to be boosted by the presence of the Palma Violets.

It'd also be more impressive if the NME had given Haim their cover before all the - ahem - tastemakers of the land had tipped them. Or, indeed, not waited until weeks after the Guardian had stuck the band on the front of the Guide.

If only NME could have claimed to have put them on the front back in 2012, eh?

What the pop papers say: Heaton rifled

So, welcome, then, new NME editor Mike Williams. He officially put on the eyeshade on Monday 25th, so this week's edition is his first one.

It marks a complete change from Krissi Murison's reign. Her last issue was dedicated to The Stone Roses reunion, while the first edition of the Williams era, erm, was dedicated to The Stone Roses reunion.

There was a period when The Stone Roses were, arguably, the most interesting band in such parts of the world as NME had on its radar. Even then, they never got two NME covers back-to-back.

Perhaps the incoming and outgoing editor didn't talk through their plans?

Maybe the picture on the cover was just so amazing as to have blown away any other possible choice of front page.

Not really. By any measure, that's a lousy cover. Admittedly, Heaton park was a hostile place for photographers, but was this really the best photo from the night?

Obviously, it's nice to see Reni's one-man tribute to BD from Doonesbury, but... really? There wasn't one where you could say for sure it was John Squire and not a stunt double?

I'm sure it was a moment, but a cover? Really?

And the cover lines themselves, how do they stack up?

Eight pages isn't "massive" for a poster section, although given the magazine runs to just 68 pages these days, many of which are adverts for Bruce Springsteen ebooks and Uncut, it's quite a high percentage.

Liam sings the classics isn't really Oasis reborn, is it? And given that the audience consists mainly of people who haven't bought a record since the Golden Jubilee, what else was he going to do but some songs they might have heard before?

Amazing stories and pics? I suppose "amazing" in the sense that a paid-for publication has filled two pages with a cross-section of bad Instagram snaps and random tweets, but is

"great gig last night"

really an "amazing" story?

How about

"bunch of dicks, haha"

There's a slightly odd photo of some random people outside Salford Lad's Club, but mainly the feature just seems to be designed to reassure people who didn't go that staying at home was the best option. It looks like the writing team did their best to find a "character":

"I came down from Liverpool with a couple of mates; one of them is a proper drug addict. I couldn't be arsed wearing me top today. [...] I'm not arsed, really. I just wanna get fucked up! Have you got any drugs?"

Still, nice to hear Bobby Gillespie enjoying himself, eh?

Actually, that was "Crazy Dave" from Liverpool. There's a Crazy Dave at every gathering of any size. You just don't need to put him in the newspaper.

And the claim that The Stone Roses made history? It wasn't the biggest gig ever; it wasn't their comeback; it wasn't the first gig in Heaton Park. It wasn't the first comeback of a band from that era. It was a success in financial terms, and the crowd who turned up expecting to enjoy themselves went away happy. But does that stack up the NME's claim that

[A]fter all the hype, the excitement, the years of waiting, it's finally happened. And it felt a lot like history.

You'd have hoped for a little more perspective.

The swamping of the issue with Roses makes it hard to get a sense of what the Williams NME will be like - and next week, it's another treading-water issue with the T in the Park review, so we'll still be waiting.

There's still the odd hint of the sort of direction that Krissi tried to take the magazine towards like a generous feature on Haim, which doesn't even get mentioned on the cover.

And there's a considered piece about Gove's attempts to bring back CSEs and O-Levels. The political pieces the Murison returned to the magazine were the highlights of her era, but always felt a bit tacked on to the rest of the content rather than part of a radical thread running through the editorial; never more so in a magazine aimed solidly at solid, middle-aged men carrying a 'won't someone think of the 14 year-olds' bit on exams in the middle.

This, you might think, is as good a summation of the choice Williams faces in the weeks to come - slapping commercially-friendly unchallenging nod-a-long stuff on, issue after issue, or finding a stance and a battle and a voice.

Murison seemed to start with the latter approach, but by the end was reaching for the Gallagher-then-a-list-issue forumula way too often.

That could be the problem, though: in order to sell enough issues to keep going, the NME might have to lose what remains of its heart. The chase for the newsagent casual pick-up could be at the cost of the audience.

Good luck, Mike Williams. Lets hope you can make history.