Rip it up and start again

Rock 'n' roll might never die, but papers that cover it have done. As sales slide, Heather Tomlinson sees how the music mags are re-inventing themselves

Hit bands are the lifeblood of music magazines. If there are no chart-topping megastars to be followed by admiring fans, there will be few people to read the magazines. Or so the old mantra goes.

A glance at the fortunes of the music magazine behemoths appears to bear this out.

Whether it's IPC's NME, Emap's Q or Emap's Smash Hits, all are having trouble holding on to readers, never mind finding new ones.

Editors are resigning at a rate of knots and the magazines are being revamped in an effort to reverse the trend. The fate of Melody Maker and Select, both general music magazines that have called it a day in the past 18 months, hangs over the head of the industry.

But some magazines don't need mass-market superstars. Because quietly, unlike the acts they cover, titles with a more specialist content, such as Emap's Kerrang!, have seen their sales soar. Kerrang!, which follows "nu-metal" bands like Slipknot and Limp Bizkit, has even overtaken the NME in terms of copies sold. But these magazines are "piranhas nibbling at the feet" of general music titles, says Stuart Williams, Emap's head of marketing for Kerrang!, Mojo and Q. "It's down to the fact that there is less and less consensus about what is good and what is bad," he says.

Where once acts like Madonna, REM and U2 ruled the roost, such universal appeal is now proving hard to emulate. "There are fewer and fewer artists that can transcend all genres and all tastes," says Mr Williams.

To stop the rot, the NME has been given a facelift, receiving a glossy cover, a new logo and more pages. It will also have a new editor, Conor McNicholas, after the abrupt departure of Ben Knowles earlier this month. Mr McNicholas is joining from IPC's Muzik.

The NME's publishing director, Neil Robinson, claims the magazine's disappointing showing over the past year is a blip: "In our next set of ABCs [audited circulation figures], we will see significant growth."

Rival magazine Q is likewise being revamped, with an increased marketing budget, a large promotion at the Glastonbury rock festival and a redesign that will be revealed towards the end of the summer.

Meanwhile, the record companies are trying to produce more chart-topping bands that the mainstream magazine publishers hope will increase interest in music.

Alain Levy, the chief executive of British music giant EMI, has made talent-spotting a priority. "The industry has not been generating enough superstars," he said recently. "The talent is there but the industry has lost sight of the time and money required to build stars."

While EMI tries to bring us more hits, the magazines have to keep up to date with music trends. One of the problems for the NME was that it latched on to the Britpop bandwagon and didn't let go, says Mr Williams at Emap. During the 1990s, when bands such as Oasis and Blur were huge, the NME rode the popularity of the groups. But keeping this format in the changing "Noughties" led to decreases in circulation. The magazine now covers a wider range of acts, from Kylie to dance music.

Emap magazine Mixmag enjoyed a huge increase in circulation thanks to the interest in dance music. It covers most genres in dance, from drum 'n' bass to techno, house and hip hop.

Now that sales in dance music are falling, hitting "superclubs" like Liverpool's Cream and London's Ministry of Sound, Mixmag is having to remake itself. "Superclubs are not pulling in as much as five years ago," says Mr Williams. "[So Mixmag is] more bar culture than club culture."

Magazine companies must keep on top of trends and find new ways of bringing in readers, says Tim Schoonmaker, chief executive of Emap Performance, the division that holds the group's music media ventures. "It's up to publishers to re-invent themselves."

His company has been pioneering a multimedia approach to its music magazines, launching TV channels to complement Smash Hits and Kerrang!. This is one factor in the success of Kerrang!, claims its editor, Paul Rees. "TV has had a massive effect because people can view what we write about. Every week, three million people access Kerrang!, through all of the outlets," he says.

TV might be important but the music magazines can still earn their keep. Although the media industry is in the midst of a slowdown, record companies remain keen to advertise in music publications. Mr Schoonmaker at Emap says that advertising revenues in magazines have increased over the past two years, despite a trend towards falling profits and sales at big music groups like EMI.

Universal Music, part of French media multinational Vivendi, says that music magazines are vital to the success of the industry. "Specialist titles often provide a crucial foot in the door for a campaign," says Selina Webb, the company's director of communications. "Once the specialists have given their vote of confidence, you can start thinking about rolling a campaign out, both in the press and across other media."

While it is understood that both Emap and IPC are currently working on new music magazine launches, many record companies are happy with the status quo. "I don't think there should be any more specialist magazines, because they wouldn't get taken seriously," says one record label source.

So although the music magazines have to deal with the dearth of superstars, it could be that specialist titles such as Kerrang! are riding a wave of popularity in their own genre.

Record companies will always need music magazines, both general and specialist. Otherwise, how could they promote the superstars of tomorrow?