“As much as it’s a very traditional product, we’re approaching it in a very non-traditional way,” Bishop explained. “Rather than print thousands upon thousands of copies and try to shift them at the news stand in bulk, we’ve changed that model up and have taken inspiration from industries like fashion, where you see the value in scarcity.”
The July/August NME issue will be available to order from 9 August from the music retailer Dawsons… But Dawsons doesn’t seem to have any shops open in the UK.
Each issue will cost £10
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“I don’t expect this new NME to be full of lacerating pieces about how terrible Ed Sheeran and Dua Lipa are, or for that matter Stormzy,” Maconie said. “It’s a very different product, a product of the times.”
Old Man yells at clouds
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I understanding making it a premium/scarce thing but the Dawsons thing is a head scratcher
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Schrödinger’s NME
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Some absolute gems in this particularly the hair guy’s article from 2018
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partnering with Ladbrokes is not good but in a world where football has been partnered with gambling companies in a huge way for absolutely ages, I can’t get too wound up by it
i mean, that’s also terrible and you can be wound up by both 
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Have been going back through the BBC’s archive of The Reunion and came across this episode on NME during the 1970s.
What an absolute steaming pile of self-important, self-serving nonsense! I loved NME as a teenager, and some of the writing over the years was no doubt good and had certain cultural weight.
But to hear a panel of music journalists talk about themselves and their colleagues as some sort of godlike figures who changed the world. Absolutely mad.
If I listened to this in 2007, when it originally went out, I would have been nodding away to much of it. But it’s curious listening to it 16 years on from recording and to note how ridiculous it all sounds. It really hasn’t aged well and I’m glad we’ve moved on from having these cultural gatekeepers trying to tell us what’s acceptable.
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When I read old NME articles from the 70s and 80s I usually can’t understand a word of what they’re trying to say. Writers trying really hard to sound clever rather than telling you anything useful about the music.
No better than the 00s imo (when I did read it a bit but was often annoyed by it)
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Indeed.
The impact of gonzo journalism on British music writing around this time was, in hindsight, probably a negative one.
I don’t doubt that lots of people will have loved the writing in the NME (as did I as a teenager) but I dislike the whole “golden era” nonsense.
As one of the contributors noted in the Reunion - who didn’t seem to be taking themselves as seriously as Paul Morley and Charles Shaar Murray always do - every generation tends to thinks that their musical and cultural touchstones are the best.
The general removal of gatekeepers and strict boundaries in music in the last couple of decades has been a good thing I think.
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And there’s loads of misogyny and casual racism in a lot of it, especially the American mags
Did NME ever print a second edition? Did anyone see the first issue?!
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