THE NEW MUSICAL BOX

So, Where Is All This Hot New Music? (Part 1 of 3)

So where does a 21st century budding music enthusiast go to find about out all the new happening sounds? 

With social networks, hundreds of radio stations and inumerable bands, you'd think it would be an easy task. But with easy access and a myriad of choices, it's actually not as simple as you'd think.  

Back in the late 60s and early 70s, it all seemed so very straight forward.

The Melody Maker

In those pre-internet, pre-local radio and pre-digitised times, it was either one of the weekly music papers or your friendly local record store. For those brought up on The Melody Maker, New Musical Express or Record Mirror, the routine was a regular pattern, a pattern which saw a scouring of the reviews and gigs sections followed by a determined hand-wash to remove the cheap printing ink that had somehow transferred across leaving smudged pages in its wake. 

The weeklies came and went - Music Echo, Disc, Sounds - but the MM and NME had been around since the early 50s and although they changed and evolved across the years, there was a degree of continuity about them. Weekly chart-listings, news on the latest releases, gossip on the bands - and in the early days, little more than Press Release puffery it seemed. But, a change came as first the NME and then the MM moved into a more avantgarde style of journalism. First, with serious rock music (as opposed to pop) and then, the lead-in to the punk explosion of the later 70s. NME was the home of those *hip young gun slingers* such as Tony Parsons and Julie Burchill, writers who often became as big as the stories they wrote. Sounds championed rock and metal and the MM started a long decline as it struggled to provide a compelling identity.

New Musical Express

The Melody Maker had always been my preferred read: it covered a good range of musical genres and managed to retain both a jazz and folk column well into the 1970s. It had the best selection of small ads, reviews and news - and at 72 pages and more, felt like a decent paper.
But, trying to be a broad church was a tough call as musical fashions changed and its rivals, rode the genre bandwagons in a more robust and exciting way. The NME even took a more political turn as the dawn of Thatcherism rose from 1979 onwards - and whether this was following a musical trend or creating one, is difficult to say.

The 1980s, just like much of the rest of the country, were tough years for the inkies. The Thatcher revolution changed the landscape - and music changed too, not always for the best.

Q Magazine

Sales were falling away and brighter, brasher and more niche publications appeared. Smash Hits took a simple notion - print the lyrics from the top-selling singles - and noted that this was a runaway success. Founded in 1978 by Nick Logan, it went on to employ writers such as Mark Ellen, Miranda Sawyer and Neil Tennant. And it was Mark Ellen who went on to co-launch the magazine that changed the rules for ever in 1986. This was Q, a glossy, up-market monthly which aimed itself squarely at an older audience, an audience that had moved on from singles and top 10 albums and wanted in-depth reviews and news, long interviews and well-researched articles.

It was a revelation and quickly spawned a range of copy-cat publications such as Select and Record Hunter. What it brought to the world was a more sophisticated niche approach to the consumer base, a way of presenting content more directly to a group of music enthusiasts in a way that the weeklies (with their constant deadlines and need to be relevant) simply couldn't. This was the time too of the rise of the CD, a new format, one that was promoted as providing superior sound-quality and also, one that encouraged record companies to start realising the value of their archives. Q fed this desire, this need to know more about what had been as well as what was new and what was to be. It's tone was more adult, albeit leavened with a sprinkling of student humour and phrases and, before long, it was out-selling the weeklies.

It also attracted a new range of advertisers, businesses who could see that its readership were more likely to buy their wares be they cars or whisky or the latest electronic gadget.

Mojo

EMAP - Q's publishers - saw they were onto a good thing and launched Mojo in 1993. This was even more niche, even more focused on readers in their 40s and older and particularly those more in tune with classic rock and related genres as opposed to the latest ephemeral fad. The NME fought back with its owners IPC creating Uncut as a rival to both these monthlies. Uncut was edited by Allan Jones who had moved on from the Melody Maker and ideally represented the audience they were after. Uncut also pioneered a new move. In the early days of Q magazine, they had occasionally offered CD compilations as cover mounts - Uncut now did this with every issue. By working with the record labels and the bands, CDs showcasing the new releases became a big selling point. This was the ultimate way of introducing readers to good new music.

Meanwhile, the inkies  limped on. Record Mirror changed format to a glossy weekly and soon folded. Melody Maker did likewise. And the NME? It managed to survive, but was no longer the force that it once was. Ironically, it was the birth and growth of the internet that has probably sustained it and allowed it - like the record companies before - to mine its past through a good quality website and accompanying niche radio station. Further redesigns followed and today, it sells barely a fifth of what it did, but it's in there - the only surviving weekly and one that looks stronger and more relevant than  for a long time.

Record Collector

This niche thing, though, seemed to be where the publishers were going. The internet and desk-top design software made magazine production costs cheaper: printing was cheaper thus allowing glossy paper and full colour to be more prevalent - and with stores such as HMV expanding in number, there was a visible presence for the plethora of specialist magazines. Some, such as Record Collector, Rock And Reel, Southern Rag and Classic Rock, already existed in one form or another, but exploited the new climate and have transformed themselves into consistently well-produced magazines that perform a useful service. The economics of publishing now meant that those who had grown up with the punk fanzine culture of earlier years, could do their own thing - and make a living out of it. Just go into a larger W H Smith or HMV to see the range of magazines out there, vying for your attention - Shindig, Prog Rock, Melodic Rock for example.

The Word

But, the world was about to change again - and it was exemplified by the rise and subsequent fall of possibly the best music monthly we've seen. The Word. Published by an independent company set up by Mark Ellen and David Hepworth (Development Hell), it ignored the focus-group approach of the rest of the publishing industry and decided to produce a magazine that was the "sort of thing we'd like to read". It set out its pitch to capture what was quaintly called "The £50 bloke", the sort of consumer who'd happily trawl round the larger record stores (which then also included Virgin, Andy's Records, Borders and Fopp) and spend that £50 on CDs, both new and deluxe remastered ones from his musical past.

It ran on a tight budget - but went for quality. It hired good writers, it had extended articles, pushed a dry sense of humour and covered books, DVDs and other consumables too. Plus, one of the best series of free cover-mount CDs around. It exploited the internet and soon had a lively and interactive website supported by the regular posting of literate, witty and high quality podcasts. In short, If I had wanted to design a magazine - this would have been it.

The internet though proved to be a double-edged sword. Whilst paper-based publishing could take advantage of what the internet could offer, the raison d'etre was still the magazine. Those who used the internet solely for its features were sometimes better placed to take advantage of the next big thing: the birth of social media. This meant a new paradigm, one based on instant content and instant comment. Gradually, advertisers found ways that they could make the internet start to pay. Yes, the payback was very small - but multiply that by the millions of transactions and users out there in the ether and, it was increasingly a more simple and cool way of reaching their potential customers.

This is where The Word struggled.

It needed high-end advertising to pay the bills, but as some of it migrated on-line, the economics of publishing became more strained. A slight reduction in page size and pagination staved off the end, but when it came, it was a bolt from the blue. It was an excellent magazine. Its readers loved it. It had a loyal and talkative website presence. But without the income, the economics of Mr Micawber become all too apparent. It ceased publication in July this year. As a coda, the on-line community took on the website, renamed it theafterword.co.uk and it is still out there providing a forum for what they call "Musings On The Byways Of Popular Culture".

Paste

There'll always be a paper presence as long as consumers feel the need to hold a tangible product, but with iPads, kindles and other such devices seeing their sales figures leap ever higher, there will be a time when things change. Indeed, the signs are already there with such excellent magazines as the US monthly Paste, in some ways a distant cousin of Word, ceasing its print output, going on line and turning itself into a weekly production.

And this takes us to the very items the magazines are all about, the product, the vinyl, the CD - the 45rpm single. In a parallel to the ups and downs of the music press has been the changing fortunes of your friendly local record shop. It's a subject with many twists and turns and right now, is probably dangling on the precipice in a similar manner to the coach at the end of The Italian Job. What is the plan and how will things turn out for our record selling emporia?

Well that's something we'll look at in part 2, next time. 

Join me then.

Alan        

Good News for fans of The Musical Box!

If you love tuning in to my weekly two-hour extravaganza every Thursday night at 10pm, there are two really handy ways you can do this should you be outside our broadcast area.

Use our wonderful Radio Player facility to listen in anywhere around the world:

 http://www.forestfm.co.uk/radioplayer/console/

And....introducing - our brand new "listen again" facility!

Yes - thanks to those nice people at mixcloud, we're now making the show available the day after broadcast for you to listen to whenever and wherever you want. Who says we're not good to you? 

To get you started - here's the latest show, broadcast last Thursday, October 11th:

The Musical Box - Show #302 - 11th October 2012

Happy clicking!