Magazine History Research

NME

The beginning -
The magazine was first published on 7th March 1952 with a rock and roll genre. In November 1952 it was the first British paper to include a singles chart.

The 60's -
In the 60's the magazine featured many new and up coming bands such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Towards the end of the 60's some areas of pop

music began to be designated as rock at this time the paper had a tense rivalry with fellow music paper melody maker. However NME had very good sales selling as many as 200,000 issues per week making it the best selling British music magazine.

The 70's -
During the early 70's the paper found itself on the verge of closure by its owner IPC as the coverage of the paper had failed to keep peace with the development of rock music. Alan Smith was made editor and given a short time to turn things around. Through this the papers coverage had a dramatic change from an uncritical, showbiz orientated paper to something more smarter, hipper, more cynical and funnier than the paper had previously been. Smith hired and assisant Nick Logan and later handed his editors chair to Logan in 73 by this time the paper was selling 300,000 copies per week. 78 Logan moved on and Neil Spencer was made editor. During Spencers time as editor the paper saw the emergance of post punk acts such as Joy Division. The paper also became more openly political during the time of punk, it included many youth orientated issues rather then just musical acts.