NME Institution research.

IN lesson today we watched the history of NME of why and how it became successful. This is a summary of what i have learned today -   

The paper's first issue was published on 7 March 1952 after the “Accordion Times and Musical Express”  was bought by Maurice Kinn, for £1,000. It was relaunched as the New Musical Express (NME). NME created the first UK singles chart.

During the 1960s the paper was the best for new British groups emerging at the time. The NME circulation was peaking under Andy Grey (Editor 1957-1972). The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were featured on the front cover frequently. During the 1960's some sections of pop music began to be designated as Rock. The paper became engaged in a sometimes tense rivalry with its fellow weekly music paper Melody Maker; the paper was selling as many as 200,000 issues per week, making it one of the UK's biggest sellers at the time.

In the 1970s it became the best-selling British music newspaper. It then became closely associated with punk rock through the writing of Tony Parsons and Julie Burchill.By the early 1970s, NME had began to lose sales to Melody Maker, as its coverage of music had failed to keep up to date with the development of rock music, particularly during the early years of psychedelia and progressive rock.

the mid-1980s NME had hit a bad patch in their history and was in danger of closing. During this, they were split between those who wanted to write about hip hop, a genre that was relatively new to the UK, and those who wanted to stick to rock music. Sales were apparently lower when photos of hip hop artists appeared on the front and this led to the paper suffering as the lack of direction became even more apparent to readers.

By the end of the 1990's,

 NME had started to report on new bands coming from the US. These bands would form a new movement called Grunge and by far the most popular bands were Nirvana and Pearl Jam.

In 2002 Conor McNicholas was appointed editor and a high turnover of young writers were brought in. It focused on new British bands such as The Libertines, Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party and the Kaiser Chiefs who emerged as "indie music" continued to grow in commercial success. Later, Arctic Monkeys became the standard-bearers of the post-Libertines crop of indie bands. in the

2000s the NME also attempted somewhat to broaden its coverage again, running cover stories on hip-hop acts such as Jay-Z and Missy Elliott.