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Business News Media
ABC round up
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 13 February 2009
So, it was ABC day yesterday, which means we get a round up of how well the music magazines were selling in the latter half of 2008. And I don’t want to be a doom and gloom merchant or anything, but there were a lot more minus figures in the ‘year on year’ column than positives.
Let’s get those out of the way first shall we?
Bauer’s music division saw all three of its titles lose readers. Q was down 9% from the previous set of ABCs last summer, and down 21.5% from this time last year, with an average circulation of 103,017. Mojo’s fall was more modest, 5.3% on this time last year at 100,507. Kerrang!, though, topped the poll in terms of music mag sales declines, down 13.3% on last summer and a massive 32% on this time last year, to 52,272.
If it’s any consolation, rivals IPC didn’t fair much better. Well, OK, they faired a bit better, but both NME and Uncut were down year on year. NME’s sales were down 13.9% on last summer and 24.3% year on year, while Uncut was down 4.3% year on year, though was up by a fraction of a percent compared to last August.
Elsewhere free title The Fly was up 2.1% to 105,212, and fellow freebie RWD was up a massive 145.9% to 77,050. Another indie title, Word mag, was also up, with its circulation rising 3.2% year on year to 34,280. Not all indies were up though, Word’s sister title Mixmag was down 11.5% compared to last summer, while Rocksound fell 11.2% over six months, and 13% year on year.
Both IPC and Bauer will tell you that, while the sales of their print music mags are down, their music brands are now multi-dimensional and enjoying new successes off the news-stand, and therefore there is reason to be happy despite the disappointing ABCs.
They’re probably right. But it was Future Publishing who had the right to be happiest yesterday, with both their music mags, Metal Hammer and Classic Rock, seeing their ABCs rise. Metal Hammer was up 3.6% from last summer and 9.7% from last February, while Classic Rock was up 5.3% from last August, or 4.1% from this time last year. So, well done them.
