Oh how things come round in circles. Just a few years after we saw the rock magazines go into decline while the dance mags boomed, the reverse is now true. After Ministry axed their flagship dance mag last year (supposedly to allow a revamp, though no news on a replacement), both EMAP's main dance title Mixmag and IPC's Musik are seeing a decline in readership. Mixmag has lost a third of its readers (though the latest figures were going to be significantly lower after it materialised EMAP had included copies of the mag distributed for free in past sales figures) while Muzik saw a 11% decline in its readership.
Meanwhile rock titles aimed at older record buyers continued to boom. IPC's movie and music title Uncut saw an increase of 25% in its readership. EMAP’s Q’s readership was up 12% (despite them too having to knock free distribution off their sales figures). Nostalgia rock title Mojo also saw an albeit slight rise in readership.
As for the big two rock titles aiming at the younger market, IPC’s NME is still struggling to close the gap on the ever successful Kerrang! – the former selling 73,338 copies a week, the latter 84,173.