NME Magazine
The Cover
The title of the magazine is NME because it stands for the New Musical Express, which is obviously not as easy to remember or say so they have abbreviated it. There is no strapline underneath the title, however running down the right hand side of the page in very small writing there is a short sample from lyrics to a recent song by Jay Z: “There’s nothing you can’t do/Now you’re in New York”, which is so small it is barely noticeable however many avid readers of NME will be aware that these lyrics are always there and they are probably used to interest the readers in a new song.
The main image on the cover is a middle shot of the band Arctic Monkeys coming out of the shadows. They all have moody expressions on their faces, which fits with the main article on the cover that is: “Life after ‘humbug’ Arctic Monkeys. We can’t worry about what other people think.” All members of the band are looking directly at the camera, so it looks as if they are staring intensely and eerily at the reader, which attracts the reader and makes them want to read more about them. The main singer, who is at the forefront of the photo, is standing with his shoulders back and head up and tilted, which gives the impression that he is very confident, relaxed and assured of himself. This makes them very mysterious to us, as we will now want to know how and why they are so confident. They are all dressed casually in shirts, t-shirts and jeans, which also helps to promote the idea that they are very relaxed and confident within themselves.
Having this band on the front cover of this magazine will reach out to the magazine’s target audience because they are very popular with indie music fans and are also very popular and well known in mainstream music culture, which may help the magazine to sell more copies to people who do not usually read the magazine but will but it because they want to read about the Arctic Monkeys. No other images or photos appear on the front cover.
The cover lines on the front cover promote articles such as interviews with the Arctic Monkeys and Amorphous Androgynous, information about 15 new bands to get excited about, single reviews and gig listings/reviews.
The cover only uses 2 different typefaces. One font is used for the main article and the headers for the other articles advertised, and the other is used for the short bit of information underneath the article name and a small article at the bottom of the cover about ‘649 UK gigs listed’. The fact that the magazine only uses mainly 1 typeface means that the front cover is not cluttered up with various different fonts therefore it is much easier to read and stops the cover from looking very untidy and messy. The text for the heading for the main article about the Arctic Monkeys uses drop shadowing. This creates an effect which means that it is more noticeable and obvious than the other cover lines, and it also parallels with the photo of the Arctic Monkeys because they too are coming out if the shadows. The colours that feature most prominently on the front cover are black, orange, white and red. The black is just used as a background colour, and it makes all of the other colours jump out of the page as they are so starkly more bright and obvious. These colours are probably used because they are the colours that the whole brand of NME uses in not only their magazine, but also in their website and award shows. The colours are also associated with the genre of music that NME magazine caters for.
The cover ‘talks’ to its readers by having the band on the cover staring directly out at them, and by using lots of punctuation it creates an exciting effect e.g. using a lot of exclamation marks makes a normal sentence sound exciting, such as saying ‘exclusive!’ instead of just ‘exclusive’. They also use the word excited in one article as well: ’15 New Bands To Get Excited About’.
Looking at other music magazines, I can see similar layout styles. For example every front cover photo shot is a middle shot, never a long, close-up or extreme close-up. I have also noticed that the number of typefaces used on the covers has been around 2 or 3, never more than that. Colours used in other music magazines such as Kerrang! have been the same sort of colours as NME, using black and red most often. Black is the colour mainly used for the background. NME is printed in A4 as are the other music magazines I have seen, such as Kerrang! and Spin. I think that NME’s unique selling point has to be that the photo on the cover is quite eerie and mysterious, making people want to read it.
NME readership and circulation figures:
NME is a music magazine that originally stared out as being sold for punk rock music fans, but more recently it is focusing on indie music, so currently it is a hybrid of indie/pop and rock. It costs £2.30, and it is published weekly. It is published by IPC Media.
The National Readership Survey shows that although the circulation figures for NME magazine have remained fairly steady at around 65,000, only peaking slightly in January to December in 2005 at 70,000, whilst readership went up steeply from 325,000 in 2001 to 532,000 in 2003. By December 2008, circulation was at 48,000 (the lowest it has been since 2001, and readership was at 379,000 (another low). Circulation of the magazine has fallen continuously since 2003. In the first half of 2009, the magazine's circulation was 40,948, 44% down on a 2003 figure of 72,442.
The online version of the magazine is nowhere near as big as the actual magazine, and only contains the front cover picture in a blog format, where readers can post comments about the magazine. Link for online magazine
