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More print sale slips in latest music mag ABCs

By | Published on Friday 13 February 2015

Audit Bureau Of Circulation

So, another batch of music mag circulation figures came out yesterday, and what do you know, everyone is down (pretty much). In fact, you could just re-read our report on the last set of ABCs and you’d get the gist of these latest stats.

Most ABC chatter yesterday focused on NME’s circulation dropping to 15,384, even when digital edition subs are taken into account, the print mag selling just 13,995 copies a week. The overall figure is 21.1% down year-on-year.

Of course, NME publisher Time Inc UK (née IPC) rarely discusses the brand’s reach in terms of just its weekly magazine these days, and yesterday pushed out an lovely infographic stressing the title’s online audience. Which, to be fair, isn’t an unjustified stance, at large NME reaches way more people today than it ever did in the print mag’s heyday. Though it’s interesting that so much effort is still seemingly put into the print output, it now being the least read part of the operation.

Although the NME magazine saw the biggest decline in the latest ABCs, most of its rivals also saw sales slip compared to this time last year. Bauer Media’s Kerrang! was down 13.7% to 30,300, Team Rock’s Metal Hammer fell 11.3% to 24,552, while Q was down 5% year-on-year (though up slightly on the last set of ABC stats) to 50,161. NME sister title Uncut was down 5.2% to 53,282, Mojo saw things slip 4.7% year-on-year to 70,693 and Classic Rock fell 6.2% to 53,935.

The only title going up year-on-year was Rock Sound, up 2.2% to 13,139. So much so, its publisher wins the ‘quote at the end of the ABC story’ prize.

Says Patrick Napier: “Rock Sound is aimed at the millennial age group that aren’t supposed to buy magazines anymore. It’s certainly not easy but this second annual ABC increase shows that with a strong editorial package combined with an active online presence it’s possible to succeed. We’ve picked up increased supermarket listings on the back of our recent performance so we’re optimistic that next year we’ll be announcing yet another increase”.



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