NME

New Musical Express (NME) is a British music, film, gaming and culture website, bimonthly magazine, and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a "rock inkie", the NME would become a magazine that ended up as a free publication as well as a webzine, and the brand has also been used for their NME Awards show, the NME Tours and the former NME Radio station. As a "rock inkie", NME was the first British newspaper to include a singles chart, adding that feature in the edition of 14 November 1952. In the 1970s, it became the best-selling British music newspaper. From 1972 to 1976, it was particularly associated with gonzo journalism then became closely associated with punk rock through the writings of Julie Burchill, Paul Morley, and Tony Parsons. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s and 1990s, changing from newsprint in 1998. The magazine's website NME.com was launched in 1996, and became Britain's most popular commercial music site on the web, and had 1.6 million users worldwide in 2006. With newsstand sales falling across the UK magazine sector in the early 21st century, the NME magazine was relaunched in 2015 to be distributed nationally as a free publication. The first average circulation published in February 2016 of 307,217 copies per week was the highest in NME's history, beating the previous best of 306,881, recorded in 1964 at the height of the Beatles' fame. However in March 2018, the publisher announced that the print edition of NME would cease publication after 66 years and become an online-only publication. In July 2023, the print edition of NME was revived, now as a bimonthly release. NME was acquired in 2019 by Singaporean music company BandLab Technologies, which put all of its music publications under the NME Networks brand in December 2021, when the company was restructured.

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