― the pinefox, Thursday, 26 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
x0x0
― norman fay, Thursday, 26 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
― Marcello Carlin, Friday, 8 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
― DG, Friday, 8 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
― Nicole, Friday, 8 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
― DG, Saturday, 9 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
― David Raposa, Saturday, 9 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
― gareth, Saturday, 9 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
― the pinefox, Saturday, 9 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
In what way are Travis the biggest band in Britain? Hear'say? Westlife? Destiny's Child? Atomic Kitten? How many number ones have Travis had? Their definition of "band" seems to still be confined to a) Not manufactured (Whatever that means) b) Play guitars (and only guitars - none of this electronic nonsense) c) Male. It's the equivalent of Fruit and Veg Magazine putting Greengrocer Of The Year on the cover and describing them as "THE GREATEST PERSON WHO EVER LIVED", provided by "person" they mean "greengrocer".
― Graham, Thursday, 21 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
― Nick, Friday, 22 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
But to get back to the subject...I think NME has changed for the better this year, but basically there just isn't enough to read in it that's interesting.
Maybe it's trying to be all things to all people, when it will always be synonymous with indie/leftfield music. Personally I don't mind reading about Destiny's Child or Outkast as long as it's interesting. But people are going to read Mix Mag, Hip Hop Connection whatever, if they are really into the dance, hip-hop or R'n'B scenes.
What was it that Matt from Sarah Records once said..."if you're a fan of jangley guitars then you're narrow minded. If you're a hip-hop fan then you are a specialist." or something like that.
― GD, Friday, 22 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
to be heavily into hip-hop, understand the push/pull it enacts, you can't be fascistic about it, which is why the holier than thou attitude taken on by much of the uk hip-hop underground (trying to put pop in a cage where it can be looked at but not touched) - and, i suppose, that of our transatlantic counterparts as well - irks so much.
― Izzie, Friday, 22 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
― Patrick, Friday, 22 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
― DG, Monday, 25 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
― Tom, Tuesday, 26 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
NME freelancers are being told to sign these horrible new agreements. Say, for example, someone gets to do a feature with Destiny's Child. The writer turns in a pretty good interview but has some material left over. The LA Weekly or someone asks for that writer to file a piece on same. Under the terms of the NME's new agreement, they wouldn't be able to because the NME would own, forever, the TAPE of the interview and any other out-takes.
Any freelance who doesn't sign does not get any more work from the paper/website. They are paid something like 15p a word for work they do, which is a lot less than you can get for selling interviews to the American market or a British newspaper, and they have none of the benefits of being on staff, usually no retainer even. It's patently unfair to ask those without job security to agree to such terms, and 20 writers are looking into a potential case against IPC for restraint of trade/intellectual property rights etc. If you want to know more, Tom, ask Angus Batey to fill you in. I think he was the one who went to the Guardian in the first place.
The best part of the story DG's quoting? 'Mr Sutherland was unavailable for comment.' Now there's a great big fuckin' first!
― suzy, Tuesday, 26 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
― Robin Carmody, Tuesday, 26 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
― DG, Tuesday, 26 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
Source Media Guardian Feb 2001
I would think that if the NME dropped below 50,000 a week then questions would be asked about its future.
Sounds closed at around around 39,000 sales in 1991, Melody Maker closed at 32,500 sales in Dec 2000.
However much I dislike NME's music direction in 2001 To lose 20,000 sales from Feb 2001 to the end of the year, is unlikely.
― DJ Martian, Tuesday, 26 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
― Andrew L, Tuesday, 26 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
When the Guardian went online it sent around a fait accompli letter to anyone submitting freelance work that said The Guardian owned the reprint rights on each piece submitted; notification of this fact equalled an expectation of compliance. A lot of people stopped dealing with them afterward because the freelance rate did not rise one jot. What's going on at the NME is about a million times worse, and might be one reason the thing appears to be written by monkeys and Muppets these days - good writers often have annoying characteristics like principles and the tendency to disagree with the logic of their 'superiors' at work.
I don't think the NME will go down the pan because the site gets a gazillion hits every week. Brand manager is the perfect job for an Oxbridge, sexist skinhead Muppet like Sutherland, the job can do itself.
Do the freelancers laugh at the Travis, Stereophonics, The Strokes and Linkin Park front covers ..like the rest of us?
Who decides on the NME front covers Sutherland or Knowles or 16 year old work experience kids on a focus market research panel? I want to identify blame.
Also I noticed that Mojo are seeking a new editor at the mo Advert
― masonic boom, Tuesday, 26 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
But did you see the piece Keith Cameron wrote on Travis for the Guardian Weekend? I found it frighteningly ambivalent, as though he was just *describing* the situation where they have got so big, and he just didn't seem motivated to speak out against it. Maybe age has hit him where it hurts, but his pro-Oasis rhetoric wasn't what I wanted to read from the NME *at all* in 1995.
Mark Sutherland - a pompey fan - well that is suprising.
Definitely the editor, after feedback in editorial meetings, with pressure from upstairs. Yes, the freelancers do often laugh themselves sick at the choices made by the above. I actually don't think they're focus groupies at the NME (and anyway, no focus group I've ever been privy to asks for specifics about content, more general areas or should the spine be book-bound rather than stapled, yada yada). That's Emap's department: a pal of mine who once edited one of their music mags was rung on Boxing Day by the big cheese to be told if his cover choice didn't pan out, heads would roll.
Also, access is controlled by PR's who grant exclusives based on the promise of A Cover ('my client will not get out of bed for less than 5000 words') and how arsey the paper's tone has been to the other artists they represent. NME will generally be in the same queue for coverage as Mixmag, The Face, Q, Mojo. Dazed and Confused. i-D and Sleazenation choose who to cover based on sneakier means; getting early access to photographs because one of their people, say Wolfgang Tillmans or Juergen Teller or Corinne Day, has done a shoot (photographers have much, much better phone books than most editors). If style mags have the photos, then they have a powerful bargaining tool with the PRs who represent the artiste. No PR company would get angry at a 'cool' photographer for this kind of scoop, as they lend the artiste cred and in many cases get commissions from the record company direct.
Hate to be all insider/media ho' about this, but I think it's my duty, after 10 years' experience of these matters, to put that to use demystifying the media's methods.
That was the eye-opening thing inside books like _Powder_ - not the "Oh my god, rock stars are perverted, and singer/songwriters are ego-ridden gits" bit of it, but the insider (manager) information on how things like "cover articles" get handed out.
Then again, I suppose knowing too much can really leave a distaste in the mouth. If someone chose to do a Popstars style expose on how even the "indie"s are completely mechanised, I think I would move to Alaska with ProTools and never leave the house again.
BTW my first job in London was, you guessed it, NME freelancer. I ran away to join the Riot Grrrls, as any sensible female would.
Anjali
― gareth, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
I would be interested in hearing your experiences of Riot Grrl, and whether you think it and its daughters have accomplished anything, but that's probably another thread.
Funny thing about "The Press" is... most musicians are unable to separate "The Press" (a faceless, corporate entity controlled by Brand Directors in IPC Towers) from the individual, badly paid, often cynical freelancers that are sent to review and/or interview them. Remember that musicians have been as badly burned by the Suits Upstairs as the freelancers have been, they just don't know it. (And vice versa)
― masonic boom, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
― mark s, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
― Tom, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
ht tp://news.independent.co.uk/uk/media/story.jsp?story=80594
Upmarket? Rolling Stone? What the blinkin' 'eck?
― masonic boom, Thursday, 28 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
― suzy, Thursday, 28 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
It's all games.
Anyone got anything on David Lister? Name = familiar. Every time I read that Zappa quote (always quoted by eeevil sold-out pea- brains like Simon Hoggart) I find I despise FZ more.
― mark s, Thursday, 28 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
http://www.mediaguardian.co.uk/presspublishing/story/ 0,7495,513257,00.html
Circulation is dropping, but the website is increasing... so why the heck don't they take advantage of the nature of the internet to increase it even further beyond just a print version of the reviews, and a live news feed? Oh, I'm going to start ranting again, see remarks on the "what do you want from the press" thread.
― DJ Martian, Friday, 13 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
NME's editor Ben Knowles will be online to answer your questions from 4pm next Thursday. Should be interesting. So if you want to know why Elbow haven't been on the cover yet or why he persists with a bobbed hairdo log on and all will be revealed!
thats Thursday 19h July @ 4pm - if you want to grill Ben Knowles.
― DJ Martian, Saturday, 14 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
― DG, Sunday, 15 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
― Marcello Carlin, Thursday, 17 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
One still gets the feeling that this is the usual stage in the NME cycle when nothing much is happening in whiteboy guitar land and black music and non-music issues get reasonably good cover until the next Roses/Mondays/Oasis comes along. -- Marcello Carlin, Wednesday, 4 April 2001 00:00 (6 years ago) Bookmark Link
This dude knows what's popping
― Dom Passantino, Wednesday, 12 December 2007 11:45 (sixteen years ago) link
I'm still wondering why he persisted with a bobbed hair log on!
― Mark G, Wednesday, 12 December 2007 11:47 (sixteen years ago) link
also we have to open your head
― mark s, Friday, 9 March 2018 13:42 (six years ago) link
i can't remember this morning's commute but i can remember something an nme hack yelled at the singer from shed seven three decades ago
― War, Famine, Pestilence, Death, Umami (bizarro gazzara), Friday, 9 March 2018 13:47 (six years ago) link
i feel like my head is already open tbh
― War, Famine, Pestilence, Death, Umami (bizarro gazzara), Friday, 9 March 2018 13:48 (six years ago) link
irl lolled at rock's back pages revelation
― just noticed tears shaped like florida. (sic), Friday, 9 March 2018 16:37 (six years ago) link
A classic from the the Steve Sutherland era
Oof. Here's the original NME review of Baduizm. Yikes. pic.twitter.com/RXCXw6LSwY— Caspar Salmon (@CasparSalmon) July 5, 2018
― Alba, Friday, 6 July 2018 07:01 (six years ago) link
Music magazine NME's switch to all digital format led to a 72% collapse in reader engagement:https://www.mediaite.com/print/heres-what-magazines-lose-when-they-go-digital-only/
Online readers of NME only spend an average of about three minutes a month with the publication, per the study, while print readers spent an average of about a half-hour a week with the magazine.[...]NME was founded in 1952. The publication was acquired earlier this year by the Singapore-based company BandLab Technologies and was previously owned by Time Inc., which made the decision to end the print product.
[...]
NME was founded in 1952. The publication was acquired earlier this year by the Singapore-based company BandLab Technologies and was previously owned by Time Inc., which made the decision to end the print product.
― insecurity bear (sic), Tuesday, 19 November 2019 01:09 (four years ago) link
Well, there it isn't.
― Mark G, Tuesday, 19 November 2019 07:34 (four years ago) link
Longtime NME media editor and features writer Gavin Martin has died at the age of 60.
― birdistheword, Friday, 11 March 2022 16:01 (two years ago) link