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Music

07th Mar 2018

NME Magazine will put out its final ever print edition this week

Dave Hanratty

NME Magazine

A genuine collector’s edition up for grabs as an iconic magazine calls time.

The New Musical Express is no more, at least not in its physical guise, anyway.

The long-running British music magazine will cease printing following the release of the final ever physical edition of the magazine this week.

Its editor, Mike Williams, stepped down at the end of February after the magazine’s publisher Time Inc. UK was sold to private equity company Epiris in a deal reported to be worth about £130 million.

NME announced its closure of the print edition via a press release on Wednesday that primarily focused on expanding its “digital-first strategy” to the point that that aspect was the headline.

The real story, however, is the death of a household name magazine that first hit shelves in 1952.

At its height, NME sold up to 300,000 copies a week in the 1970s. By the early 2000s, it was very much creating and championing its own indie scene, pushing the likes of Oasis, The Libertines, Bloc Party and The Strokes especially hard.

Its modern format, however, was that of an advertising-heavy weekly free-sheet available in the likes of Topman and train stations.

“NME is one of the most iconic brands in British media and our move to free print has helped to propel the brand to its biggest ever audience on NME.COM,” said Time Inc. UK’s Managing Director for Music Paul Cheal.

“The print re-invention has helped us to attract a range of cover stars that the previous paid-for magazine could only have dreamed of,” he added. “Unfortunately we have now reached a point where the free weekly magazine is no longer financially viable. It is in the digital space where effort and investment will focus to secure a strong future for this famous brand.”

Music Week, meanwhile, has confirmed that a number of redundancies will occur as a result of the magazine’s closure.

In the wake of the news, many journalists and musicians took to Twitter to share their thoughts and memories of the NME: