Latest music news as we know it today developed out of the early magazines that caught onto the growth of the popular music industry early on in the 20th Century. Melody Maker was one of the first, introducing itself in 1920s around the same time that the first electric guitars and amplifiers began to emerge and targeting musicians. However, as music became more and more popular the music magazines of the day began to target the general public and the introduction of new, rival magazines hit the shelves.
Formerly people today are additional interested in jazz, Melody Maker was a late convert to the advent of rock and roll, but as the sixties swung in favour of bands like the Beatles as well as the Rolling Stones, the earth was set for major readership figures for both publications.
The 1960s also saw the arrival of additional politicised voices to the publication of music news with the launch of the Berkley Barb in 1965 and Rolling Stone in 1967. Criticism of the Vietnamese war, the publication of Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas along with the counterculture emerging trend of the 1960s sat next to The Beatles, Jimmy Hendrix and Jim Morrison cover stories.
This politics fringe to music publication didn’t reach the British music news until the late 1970s with all the dawning of the age of punk. Nonetheless, the early 70s saw the introduction of a new rival, Sounds, which swiftly became one of the 3 music weekly magazines to generate great levels of readership. It’s edge came from its capacity to see the credibility of new musical movements like Punk early on.
The 1980s would see a mixed bag of journalism in the music industry, with the hip-hop wars affecting the NME as well as a far more populist standpoint reigning at Melody Maker until its intellectual renaissance in 1986. Nevertheless, it could be the 90s that will begin to see the story of modern British music journalism come to a head. The rise of Britpop plus the introduction & success of monthly magazines Q and Mojo left Melody Maker without a clear target audience or direction, and so in 2000 is gave up on publication, merging with its long time rival NME, while Sounds bit the dust nearly a decade earlier in 1991.
The 2000s were left to NME and despite its ropey start to the decade, it would eventually find its footing again with bands like White Stripes, The Strokes plus the Libertines.
Along with the entrance of a brand new decade, it’s hard to say that any of the remaining latest music news magazines are doing anything particularly trailblazing, nonetheless then neither is the music business overall.
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