How Would You Make NME a Better Magazine?

allan- its a serious q but ppl here have read it and prob don't need it anymore.

Could we answer a question like "How would you make NME betetr at what it does?" or "How would you make NME a better music teething magazine?" or "How would you make NME a better populist mag?"

Perhaps they're best sticking to their perceived audience though, they seem to be failing even them at the moment.

Close it already. Or at least keep it in the UK.

'Longer pieces and a wider scope' is of course a good idea - especially a wider scope, which lord knows it needs - but is that actually possible given constraints of space? It's all very well to say, but I'd have to see it in practice before I put any faith in it.

I can't just say 'kill it' - what purpose is that supposed to serve? There's got to be a place for it: it has a function, I can remember being twelve and not having a fucking clue about anything to do with music, just knowing that there were bands I liked and, oh yeah, there was this paper that could tell me stuff about records I might want to buy and records I wouldn't and I could find critics whose opinions I could trust and critics I knew to ignore and some fantastic writing, too. But, for crying out loud, I virtually am the NME's target market and I've started giving up on it - and there's still stuff I want to know, there are still bands I want to hear about even within its current limited remit, but the NME's not helping anymore.

But I don't know how to make it 'better', and I only wish I did, and even if I had some clue there's no way I could do anything about it (I'm still pretty useless at writing about music, for one): so all I cn do is lose my subscription, and wait for the new version, and hope.

-- Dom Passantino

Really, I'm going to start keeping a prepared speech on my desk top for this sort of shit. But this evening I am tired and hungry and I feel like I've done the same rant too many times and I really cannot be bothered and want to go and make some food instead.

NME needs to increase word rates so writers have a chance to bat ideas around, develop their own stylistic ideas, to learn how to talk outside of soundbites. By the looks of it, NME currently takes on a mix of school-leavers and ex-students. This is the way it should be... but within its own slim boundaries, it doesn't currently allow new writers a lot of chance to further refine their writing. Instead, it sends them on press trips with The Thrills. No-one ever learnt anything from a press trip with The Thrills.

NME need to expand the list of genres covered, even if it seems to make no real commercial sense. In the last six months, the dance singles appear to have been excised entirely from the paper, chiefly because the singles editor is an unreconstructed indie-rocker. In fact, now NME is all rock'n'roll. This, I reckon, just makes the paper feel flat, and it pretty much guarantees that it'll totally miss the next wave of anything that's just around the corner. Unless, of course, it's a genre NME has invented itself.

Just address Marcello's repsonse, though: with all due respect, Marcello, you don't need NME anymore. If the modern NME contained the sort of writing that challenged you, it would probably be near-enough incomprehensible to a sixteen-year old picking it up for the first time because Avril's n the cover. It's crucial that NME is accessible. It needs to be able to act (in the least didactic way) as an teacher, as a kind of stepping stone - whether it be to Careless Talk Costs Lives, The Wire, ILM, or The Church Of Me. Because otherwise it's a dead end. And no-one ever sold any papers by offering a dead end.

Like, wtf? Do they have no idea of their target audience, or anything? Or is this the token effort to get old people to read it?

Or is it because the classified ads make all the money and by getting more people to pay more attention to them, more adverts get placed and Marc Beaumont gets more $$$ to pile up in the corner?

NME is suffering because the middle ground it used to occupy isn't really required any more. You want a glossy rock mag with pix and laffs - you have Kerrang! You want a bigger rock mag with more "in depth" writing (even if the "depth" is entirely superficial) - you have Uncut and Mojo. You want profundamenta philosophia (even if it's as "profound" as the categorising system in Smallfish) - there's the Wire. You want good ole lengthy think pieces Like There Used To Be In NME/MM - there are blogs aplenty (though CoM is only a "stepping stone" for me to get from an old life to a new one, and hopefully immortalising/recording the life of someone who never got the chance to do it herself. I think CoM would have happened anyway, but if Laura were still here it would have been a joint blog, and obv the polar opposite of what it actually is now). So the NME doesn't really have any options open except to try to redefine that "middle ground" which is going to mean the ditching of an awful lot of assumptions and the nerve to go out and find a new audience rather than forlornly trying to hang on to a dwindling old one.

Question answered, I think.

Aaargh, this wasn't what I meant AT ALL, although I was afraid it could be read that way. On the contrary, I think NME had traditionally been picked up by pretty bright kids, and I don't think this has changed. *This* is precisely why the paper is failing them: because it doesn't treat them with the respect they deserve. When I first picked up NME or Melody Maker in '93 because Nirvana (or whatever) were on the cover, I'd barely listened to any music before, and I found the paper a largely strange and confusing thing - because of the breadth of music that it covered, and the style of writing that it contained. But it's just a learning curve. Ask a random 16 year old to pick up a copy of The Wire today and they'll probably get nothing from it. NOT because they're stupid. Because they have no frame of reference to the music it contains. It all comes back to the whole question of entry points, and this is all old and familiar ground.

"So the NME doesn't really have any options open except to try to redefine that "middle ground" which is going to mean the ditching of an awful lot of assumptions and the nerve to go out and find a new audience rather than forlornly trying to hang on to a dwindling old one."

Marcello, here I totally, wholeheartedly agree. That's why I believe the paper should employ young journalists rather than old hacks. However, it should also give them the free reign to exist outside NME's rather didactic on-message style. Time for a new Burchill/Parsons, perhaps? (Although I shiver at the thought)

Incidentally, Ben Dot, you've pretty much just described Careless Talk Costs Lives (apart from the bit about Mark Beaumont on a bonfire). They even had Mr Agreeable on board for a bit. Why not go buy that?

If I had just taken up the job, I would have try and convince the IPC budget holder that this is a dead end - the internet has unlimited space and a million monkeys typing at a million typewriters, and If what you are after is simply news, release dates, cursory q&as then you are going to find it a much better source of information. If you really wanted to strengthen the NME brand you have to make it stand for something more than this - which means playing to the strengths of a printed magazine: you have a proper budget so you can afford to hire more skilful and imaginative writers, and you have readers who are prepared to read at length, so you can run more interesting types of story. A lot of people think that the problem with the NME is that it frivolously invents scenes - I think this is its strength!, or at least its unique selling point, and it should do more of this - not less So this means hiring the sort of people who are imaginative enough to do this, and giving them the proper space in which to fantasize."

Mind you, a Spizzazz mass takeover of NME (like Monitor took over MM in the mid-'80s) would be an awesome thing indeed.

I think it has definitely changed (though to be honest I don't think it was ever the case anyway, but let's run with this). NME is now picked up by student clichés and wannabe student clichés, i.e. a spectacularly sheeplike demographic. They have to be - most people with a lick of sense can see through the NME's weekly BEST BAND EVAH orgasms over, er, Kings Of sodding Leon and their ilk.

I think a new Julie Burchill is exactly what it needs. The old Julie B is still a better music writer than the entire staff of the NME put together, and with better taste to boot.

So today the market dictates that the NME has to stand for 'something' that's clearly defined and distinct from the rest. Large areas of territory are already claimed in demographically and musically. Other areas are probably deemed not commercially viable -I mean I would love thinkpieces that opened up new ways of listening to and thinking about music. It's about time the tired old canon/received history of popular music was ripped asunder. Sadly it would sell bugger all copies. So the 'entry-point' for 16-18 yr olds is probably a good target to shoot for. I think the new editor might have a chance to pull it off, but they need to rethink all assumptions about the title. First does 'The NME' mean anything to its target audience? Do they really want to have yet more bands foisted on them as 'the next big thing descended from the VU/Television' (yawn). And so on. I'll stop now.

it always seems a chicken/egg situation. how do they know which bands are the most popular thus who they should put on the cover? why is it 'who's on the cover' seemed less of a big deal 10 and 20 years ago? obviously politics has got in the way re The Darkness (were they on it for last year's Glasto review issue?). have Keane not been on the cover either? that's funny - they're no more 'dull' than COldplay or Snow Patrol after all.

side-question: who/which act has been the oddest choice of NME cover star in recent times and why?

The time of odd/incongruous covers seems to have long gone. Under Ian Pye's editorship in the 80s I remember covers about youth suicide, computer hacking, politics (including a themed series on SEX, DRUGS and VIOLENCE) when he seemed to be trying to mould the paper into a lifestyle mag. These days it seems like an endless cycle of White Stripes/Libertines/Hives/Strokes/Streets/Morrissey.

But then I'm far too old to read the bloody thing anyway.

(Sylvia Patterson on Westlife doesn't count. Uh, for some reason or other.)

Stevem - you're not crazy...

-- DJ Mencap (lackofinteres...), July 28th, 2004.

... yeah, that's why i said between $1 and $3 per word. in any event, IPC can afford a bit more than a measly 12p per word. whatever, though. i guess this isn't exactly the topic at hand, though, perhaps the writing would improve if the writers were paid better?

Intelligent people will tend to go elsewhere. Like these boards.

The changes sound like good ideas - more feature-length pieces, longer reviews, wider music coverage - but there's still no room in my life for the NME, and I don't trust Conor McM to produce a good paper given his form on the title so far.

-- Tom (freakytrigge...), September 15th, 2003.

Could they have made the reviews any shorter? And as for wider music coverage....

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/article/020605/the_moment_you

"One of the guys said: ‘There's certain music that doesn't have a place in the NME, but if Pete Doherty sneezed, I'd buy it.' And that's why it goes in the magazine every time. All the fans just want to hang out with the bands and go to shitloads of gigs, but they don't have the time, the money, the freedom, so we do that for them."

Everything wrong with NME is perhaps in there?

Jesus H Corbett why the fuck would you want to pander to these nitwits? Oh yeah, the money thing.

Why? Is this how IPC do market research?

Did they wear hoodies?

also: anyone notice that since MOJO introduced star ratings it's started going a bit downhill on the credibility front - promoting bands rather than promoting the music.

lego covers

http://www.nme.com/photos/26-album-sleeves-recreated-in-lego/203791/1/1#1

I'd start by handing this frog eyed wunderkind his jotters

http://www.nme.com/blog/index.php?blog=146&title=why_i_don_t_care_about_record_store_day&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

- A more generalist approach
- Don't stop supporting an act once that act is established - help establish long term names that last for decades and decades instead.

(Also, become more like Q)

god no, dont become anything like Q

"Just ask Day V Lately".

Cover a lot of R&B and hip-hop and constantly give it really, really bad reviews, stressing that "Yes, we review all kinds of music. Including crap".

in the britpop day nme covered the same shite as Q and thats why nme went downhill. Forget about covering pre fame mainstream bands just so you can say you covered them first ,cover good bands that the likes of Q etc don't cover , bands that need coverage because they're good, not because they might sell a million albums.

The good bands are the ones that Q cover, not the ones who never hit the pages of Q. Q cover the best bands, the ones that have the best and catchiest melodies and the most anthemic singalong choruses. Just like good bands should be.

A song that doesn't work as a football chant is not worthy of coverage.

^ new ilm board deescrip please

NME should be constantly on the lookout for the next Coldplay, and then once they have made them big, continue supporting them and give top reviews to all of their albums to ensure they become legends and completely dominate all music.

even if their albums are shite?

They aren't. :)