Another nail in the coffin of dance magazines. Respected dance music monthly Muzik has printed its last issue. IPC have closed it down after a period of poor sales and advertising revenue. Muzik's year on year circulation decreased 11% to 36,089 copies in the six months up until to December 2002.
The resurgence in guitar-based music has given new life to the previously moribund NME and Kerrang! titles, while titles like Mixmag and Muzik waned after the Ibiza/clubbing/dance music subculture dwindled. DMC scaled down its Seven magazine and even Ministry magazine – once the biggest magazine in the booming dance mag sector – was closed down last year (word is Ministry has teamed up with Condé Nast and plan to go the style mag route with a new title called 'Trash'). With Muzik magazine gone the dance mag sector is now pretty much dominated by EMAP's Mixmag and the more specialist titles like Jockey Slut and DJ Magazine.
Announcing the closure and the redundancy of the magazine's ten staff IPC Ignite MD Tim Brooks told reporters: "We have a very talented and dedicated team on Muzik and I want to thank them all for their hard work and their grace under pressure. Sadly, nothing they could do in isolation was going to turn around this sector of the music market. Just like the broader music industry, of which we're proud to be a part, we have to channel our resources to where the consumers are."