[Genteel Death]

Originally Posted by Keeping It Simple

I could say the same about your lame dig at the NME about losing interest in it as soon as you started getting laid. It would help your cause if you based your dig on fact and not wishful thinking.

Go to bed.

[Glice]

Originally Posted by Toilet & Bowels

interesting connection, i stopped reading the NME at around the same time i first starting getting regular sex.

Just out of interest, did The Evening Session win best radio show?

I think Mark Goodier got the lifetime achievement for his work on the Evening Session. And Andy Kershaw got best radio newcomer.

[jon boy]

never was a fan of the nme, even when i was younger and i havnt picked it up in years as i just dont care about it. that list is no suprise at all.

interesting Glastonbury fact: in 1998 they put the jesus and mary chain in the 'new acts' tent. shows they have their finger on the pulse does that.

[demonrail666]

I'm just surprised anyone reads the nme now, virgins or otherwise. it's nolonger even an alternative to a wank, never mind actual minge.

[ni'k]

Originally Posted by Keeping It Simple

I could say the same about your lame dig at the NME about losing interest in it as soon as you started getting laid. It would help your cause if you based your dig on fact and not wishful thinking.

the fact that you read this magazine and care enough to make threads about it and have discussions about what it has decided means you have utterly failed at music.

[the ikara cult]

The last time i read the NME was about 7 years ago when i was about to go on a 3 hour train journey and i had nothing to read. That was a long 2 hours and 59 minutes.

Im fairly sure all the categories would contain pretty much the same bands except for the BEST BAND EVER category which changes by the fortnight.

[Keeping It Simple]

Why aren't I surprised the Pitchfork and Wire reading pseuds of the board, with their heads stuck up their backsides as per usual, don't like the NME? Maybe it has something to do with the fact after 58 years, it's still as popular as ever. And pseuds baulk at popular.

[Genteel Death]

Originally Posted by Keeping It Simple

Why aren't I surprised the Pitchfork and Wire reading pseuds of the board, with their heads stuck up their backsides as per usual, don't like the NME? Maybe it may have something to do with the fact after 58 years, it's still as popular as ever. And pseuds baulk at popular.

That's not even true.

[Glice]

Pitchfork.com gets lots more traffic than NME.com does; and the paper has been near-death since the great weekly collapse that claimed Melody Maker. Just last year it was down 25% or so (if memory serves), let alone on its peak in the 50s and 60s.

[Genteel Death]

Also, Plan B or Drowned in Sound attract the sort of crowd that would stubbornly build bridges between the Arcade Fire vomitorium and more underground stuff for young people without much money but broadband connections. KIS' theories are the fruit of some 80s reject.

[Glice]

That's kind of the interesting thing about the continued existence of the NME - it's stuck to its core market (no problem with that, and nothing that the Wire, Rolling Stone, Guitar Player or Q haven't done) at a time when that core market primarily would get information from broader sources - like you say, Drowned in Sound, Plan B, Pitchfork or the litany of high-profile blogs. It doesn't really bother me that people read the NME - I'm always just a little surprised at the need to.

I think for those of us of a certain age, the NME used to be an indispensable source of information in a time when there wasn't really much print information out there that was easily accessible. I know it was the first place I read about a lot of music I was into when I was a teenager. But I get the impression that it's really lost that central position for a younger generation who simply don't need it when there's so many other places out there. I'm not really bothered by Pitchfork, but they do seem to dig a bit deeper than the landfill indie the NME belligerently holds on to.

The Wire, although I've stopped reading it, does do a great service for its sort of music, I think. Possibly because so much of it genuinely is quite obscure. Like every mag, it has its preferences, and the writing is painfully wanky at times, but I think they have a bit more affection for their niche than a lot of print-based things.

[ni'k]

i don't know what blog it was, but i read recently about some guy at some convention or something, who was listening to a talk by the nme editor, or someone high up. anyway the blogger remarked how absurd it would be for some angry muso to interrupt with cries of "sellout! you abandoned music!" or something of the sort. the nme guy was under no pretenses that he was operating a business, that's all it was. noone who works there could give two fifths of a fuck about music, none of them would even pretend to be playing the "doing it for the love of the music, trying to get something half decent in the mainstream, trying to fight against the constraints of the bottom line" game. it's fucking PR is all it is. there is no actual journalism involved and to say otherwise would be an insult to the word journalism. i did pick up a copy this summer when i was in hospital without the net or anything else to do. shite of course. nothing there that NEEDS to be printed.

i think ultimately that is the main point -there is nothing in the shitrag that anyone NEEDS to pay to see, or can't get online for free, or couldn't do themselves on their computer.

and there are certainly no writers you would actually be interested in reading the work of writing for it hahaha, the idea is laughable. while from what the older people i read constantly tell me back in the day, 70's 80's early 90's it was indispensable. i have no doubt that was true. for a brief while when i was young you were still stuck having to rely on printed stuff because the internet was in its infancy. whereas on the blogs now there are writers who am i checking almost daily to see if they have posted anything new.

see i think for people even younger than me - who grew up a few years later - to them there is no need for something like the nme if its not online. and it's just a name, a brand, and the fact that it is on paper is just one side of that brand. whereas to people my age and even older - the internet is an extension of everything we already had.

genteel makes a good point about plan b.

[Keeping It Simple]

Originally Posted by Glice

Pitchfork.com gets lots more traffic than NME.com does; and the paper has been near-death since the great weekly collapse that claimed Melody Maker. Just last year it was down 25% or so (if memory serves), let alone on its peak in the 50s and 60s.

41,000 copies of the NME are sold every week, something the editors of MM and the other rival weeklies that bit the dust could only dream of.

Head Up Butt.com does not get lots more traffic than NME.COM.

[Keeping It Simple]

Originally Posted by Genteel Death

Also, Plan B or Drowned in Sound attract the sort of crowd that would stubbornly build bridges between the Arcade Fire vomitorium and more underground stuff for young people without much money but broadband connections. KIS' theories are the fruit of some 80s reject.

You don't get out much, do you, as Plan B folded last year.

[Glice]

Some wikipedia quotes for you doll-face

"By the time Smith handed the editor's chair to Nick Logan in mid-1973, the paper was selling nearly 300,000 copies per week and was outstripping its other weekly rivals, Melody Maker, Disc, Record Mirror and Sounds."

"In May 2008 the magazine received a re-design, with the magazine being aimed at an older readership with a less poppy, more authoritative tone. The first issue of the re-design featured a free seven-inch Coldplay vinyl single. Circulation of the magazine has fallen continuously since 2003. In the first half of 2009, the magazine's circulation was 40,948, 44% down on a 2003 figure of 72,442."

I realise it's a bit disingenuous comparing 1973 with modern times, but to drop to nearly half of its readership in a little over 5 years is pretty catastrophic. The market has changed, certainly, but I'd hardly say that the drop in sales from 03-08 is in any way a sign of the magazine's popularity.

[Glice]

The stats I looked at suggested that pitchfork gets in the region of hundreds of thousands of hits more than NME.com. Different, larger market, certainly, but it's in a different league of popularity.

[Keeping It Simple]

Originally Posted by Glice

Some wikipedia quotes for you doll-face

"By the time Smith handed the editor's chair to Nick Logan in mid-1973, the paper was selling nearly 300,000 copies per week and was outstripping its other weekly rivals, Melody Maker, Disc, Record Mirror and Sounds."

"In May 2008 the magazine received a re-design, with the magazine being aimed at an older readership with a less poppy, more authoritative tone. The first issue of the re-design featured a free seven-inch Coldplay vinyl single. Circulation of the magazine has fallen continuously since 2003. In the first half of 2009, the magazine's circulation was 40,948, 44% down on a 2003 figure of 72,442."

I realise it's a bit disingenuous comparing 1973 with modern times, but to drop to nearly half of its readership in a little over 5 years is pretty catastrophic. The market has changed, certainly, but I'd hardly say that the drop in sales from 03-08 is in any way a sign of the magazine's popularity.

What excuse have you got over the demise of Melody Maker and Plan B?

[Keeping It Simple]

Originally Posted by Glice

The stats I looked at suggested that pitchfork gets in the region of hundreds of thousands of hits more than NME.com. Different, larger market, certainly, but it's in a different league of popularity.

Hundreds of thousands of hits by the same group of people, yeah. Not different people, like you're trying to suggest.

[Glice]

I'm not trying to suggest anything - I have no investment in either. You were saying that pitchfork (which is shit) was less important than the NME (which is also shit) based on its popularity. Pitchfork is empirically the more popular. And just as it probably gets multiple hits from the same people, do you not think that's the same with NME's demographic?

Melody Maker went under because it ceased to be popular, or rather, it ceased to be economically viable. In fact, MM didn't 'go under' per se but was consolidated by IPC into the NME. At the time, weekly music papers were taking a massive hit, and rather than have both flounder, IPC elected to move its operations under one roof.

I have no idea why Plan B went under - probably because it ceased to be popular.

The NME is no-where near as popular as it once was. Just as recently as the late 90s, the NME was one of very few places to go for information on music. Now, it's just another vastly diminished organ which is performing incredibly badly.

If you are trying to make a point other than your assumed superiority on the basis of your preference for a no-longer-essential music mag (to which, I should note, I had a subscription for 5 years), could you make it a little clearer? Or fuck off. Either's good.

[Keeping It Simple]

It's clear the people who pathologically hate the NME were Melody Maker, Disc, Record Mirror and Sounds readers.