Has The NME Got Good?

Gotta get down (London) on Friday

"A great man once said to me he loves all music from A to Z... Abba to Zappa" clearly the best bit of that sheet of nitwit flypaper above

hearty lols @ nitwit flypaper

well, I will get one tomorrow thanks to being in LDN tomoz, will wait until I see what is INSIDE!

But it does sound like what happened when Zigzag became a free mag back in the nineties, two issues?

I doubt the advertisers will be pleased that large parts of the UK wont be able to get it.

XFM is dead? :-O

(A: even worse)

tbf XFM already died once in 1998

Love the guy going "I remember when it was all Suede, Pulp, Mansun on the cover", who has presumably blocked out the Spice Girls and Robbie Williams covers from the same era.

I guess, for being the first of this new method, the 1st front cover acts as a mission statement.

There was someone on there complaining about the rihanna cover but also about the amount of morrissey/arctic monkeys/libertines/oasis covers. Maybe the NME isnt for them?

― Cosmic Slop, Thursday, September 17, 2015 4:30 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Cornelius Cardew or gtfo imo

Nah, they just want the circulation to be as high as possible from the off.

Effectively it has gone (inner) London only, if that map is exhaustive, as that's about the only place with the density of distribution distribution to get a pick-up rate attactive to advertisers.

A bit like the conservative party, it makes a gesture towards including the rest of the country, but is only really interested in one square mile in London, ho ho

I used their map to see based on my workplace postcode.

It looked like I was in the highlands/islands.

I make Aberystwth and Fort William the two places on mainland uk furthest away from an nme distribution point.

It's a pretty fun map tbf to nme

was looking for a map of university student distribution to compare it to, but no joy

Aberystwyth is a uni town. Presumably an algorithm crunched the numbers and determined that the size of student population did not make it worth the transport costs of distribution to the west coast of Wales.

If you're really desperate for a copy every week I'm sure you can subscribe for the cost of postage. Why you would want to when all the articles will be online and will presumably be getting flimsier and flimsier anyway is a different question.

Yes.

you can pay for postage & packaging to have it delivered if you don't live near a distribution point

£36 per year / works out at under 70p week

NME Magazine Subscription
https://www3.magazinesdirect.com/az-magazines/n/6756/nme.thtml

what year did the nme cost 70p? some time in the late 80s / early 90s?

It seems it went from 65p to 75p round about 1992-3

http://thumbs4.ebaystatic.com/d/l800/pict/141418119298_1.jpg

Brian?

http://cdn.discogs.com/VZvDbKR201YEAmOzTIAVCbBW2oU=/fit-in/599x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(96)/discogs-images/R-5833821-1403981334-7414.jpeg.jpg

Number of album reviews in this week's issue: three, plus five 30-word capsules. And of those three, the shortest is suffixed with "read the full review on NME.com".

Number of gig reviews: zero. But there are five whole pages of gig previews, covering a whopping 10 well-known acts.

Elsewhere, the axe has fallen on virtually all coverage of lesser-known/emerging acts, with the Radar section reduced to a single page, covering a single artist.

There's only one long-form feature: Peter Robinson's uncharacteristically characterless and PR-y interview with Rihanna. ("As well as being fashion's most exciting muse, Rihanna is now the ultimate muse for the planet's greatest songwriters and producers.") Chvrches get a double page spread, but only one page with text. And that's it for your music features.

Total number of news stories: three at a pinch, or one (new Libertines tour) if you take a stricter definition of "news story".

Full page picture stories include "10 best costumes from Bestival", "what's on your headphones" (which doubles as "what are you wearing", "things we like; this week's objects of desire" (headphones, bag, shoes, razor, coat etc - full page ad on facing page for the razor listed in the feature).

Worst issue ever.

Right, I shall stroll out and get one.

LivStStation? Or elsewhere..

lol, it's raining man, don't do that to yourself.

Someone thrust a copy into my hand earlier today and it's pretty much exactly as you would expect. DFS ad in there as well, you didn't get that in the Britpop era.

xpost Man, isn't it just?

will kick back for a bit.

I see from Sky News, there's a ton of them outside Westminster tube station.

They just had Ringo on, 'yeah, on your phone now, back then biggest newspaper in the world, yeah, peace love'

Someone left the papers out in the rain
I don't think that I can take one
cause they're all gone soggy

so far, not seen one in any of my local music emporiums : hmv, fopp, head, rise.

as per my school reports from a bygone era : must try harder.

how about top man?

as you'd expect, I have no idea where that is in this glorious town of wonder (an honest description for our new recruit to these parts, dog latin !)

https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xap1/t31.0-8/12038707_10154241979429167_1204071788281887017_o.jpg
http://www.nme.com/news/various-artists/88552

"ex-vampire"

umm ..

It really is fitting that they no longer have the words 'New', 'Musical' and 'Express' on their cover, isn't it?

has that happened before?

Been like that for a while, certainly since the last christmas 'double issue'

.. The last two I bought were the christmas one and the 'farewell to yr money' one

'express' would be fitting if you're picking it up to read on the train

mark e - my colleague brought one in from temple meads stn.

how does it compare to any of the other free music papers? just looking at the cover makes me think there's not a lot of content in there

actually makes me nostalgic for stool pigeon r.i.p.

dl : ah. fair enough.

thats a fair old trek from my workplace to do there and back in an hour, and its not like i need a copy.

xp : i loved stool pigeon.

Meant to be able to get it on campus. Can't see where. Oh well. No great loss.

Much less content than The Skinny. Although at least NME pay their writers.

I would imagine that, if other free mags are anything to go by, the amount of content and possibly distribution will increase once advertising and pagination go up? I'm guessing they're running this on as low an overhead as possible right now.

Doesn't mean it'll be any good, mind.

saw this on Ned's facebook.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CPvdoduWgAAjWFp.jpg