Music Magazine Market
The youth music magazine market is a volatile one which has experienced many changes over the past decade. The music industry in the UK today is itself very diverse, and this is reflected in the number of titles which currently adorn the market.
At the beginning of the eighties, four major players dominated the music magazine market – New Musical Express, Sounds, Melody Maker and Record Mirror. Each was a weekly tabloid with a predominantly male readership.
The only other major magazine at this time was the fortnightly Smash Hits, which targeted a slightly younger age group. Smash Hits launched in 1978 as a monthly, changing frequency to a fortnightly a year later.
Towards the end of the eighties and into the begining of the nineties, several new breeds of music title have emerged. One of these breeds is the glossy monthly, to which Emap’s titles Q and Select and IPC’s Vox belong.
The glossy monthlies target 18-35 year olds,covering a wide variety of musical tastes. They also include film, book and video reviews and in some cases fashion pages. The growth of this new genre has mirrored the decline of the weekly tabloid. Vox is the youngest of this group. It was launched by IPC last September and targetted a slightly older market than IPC’s tabloid NME. There was a fairly lengthy build up to the launch, during which time the magazine was known as Max.
Vox had an initial print run of 150,000 and sales appear to have settled at around 90,000. It is fairing better than Select, launched by United Consumer Magazines in July’90, which has recorded its first ABC figure of 72,555 for the period Jul-Dec’90.
There has also been a move towards specialisation, with monthlies that concentrate on one specific area of music. For example, in the last two weeks two new heavy rock titles have launched, Rock Power and Hot Metal. Another title is due to launch in June called Riff Raff.
There are several well established rock magazines in the market, and new titles will have to work hard to compete with these. Kerrang, the market leader,began life as a one-off pull-out section in Sounds, it grew into a monthly, then a fortnightly and is now a weekly.
One of the new launches,Rock Power, has taken a slightly different approach. It is a pan-European title distributed across nine different countries in as many languages and has a print run of 750,000. The UK edition consists of a mix of music news, interviews, features and posters, as well as fashion and boo k reviews.
Another style of music title which has grown signifiantly over the last decade is the teenage pop glossy. The now flagging Smash Hits was the first of these. The pop glossy targets the 11-20 age group and consists of a mix of chart music, fashion, films, videos, pull-out posters and problem pages.
Smash Hits is currently experiencing a significant fall in circulation, down by 33% year-on-year for July-December 1990. It is facing fierce competition from other titles such as the fort- nightly, Big, the relaunched weekly Number One and the comparitive new- comer,Rage. These titles are soon to be joined by a new weekly magazine, Revvolution, which launches in June.
The magazine market has not been without its casualties, notably two of the original weekly tabloids have been affected. When the glossy monthlies began to claw their way into the market, the tabloids reacted in various ways. NME developed a more intellectual approach while Melody Maker directed itself at a younger audience focussing on pop rather than rock.
United Consumer Magazines’ Sounds was always seen as the most vulnerable of the tabloids. Its decline culminated in its closure last month, a result of UCM’s closure of its entire consumer music division. UCM’s other tabloid, Record Mirror, was merged into the business title Music Week.
Other casualties include Zig Zag, the monthly title from Emap which lasted only one month, and MCM’s PopShop which closed last August. Aside from launches and closures, several of the titles have changed hands in recent months. BBC Magazines bought Number One from IPC in March’90 and successfully relaunched it last September. UCM sold off its two remaining music titles, Kerrang and Select, to Emap in April.
In keeping with the general magazine market, the music magazines have been experiencing a loss in circulation. The most recent ABC figures for Jul-Dec’90 show a decline for Smash Hits, Metal Hammer, Q and Kerrang.
However, they also give an indication that the two remaining tabloids have weathered the storm. Melody Maker increased its circulation by 11% and NME by 10%.
What of the music magazine market in the nineties ? It is likely to remain volatile with a variety of launches, closures and mergers. The consumer is fickle and music magazines will have to keep one step ahead of them to survive. Those who do not will follow the same path as Sounds and PopShop.
It is interesting to note that the expansion of the music magazine market coincides with an aging population in the UK. The very sector of the population that music magazines target is decreasing in numbers. The demographic predictions seem not to have deterred publishers. There are now more music magazines on the market than ever.