UK Music Press 1950's, 1970's and present day

History of the Music Press (in the UK)

General: Music magazines include music news, interviews, photo shoots, essays, record reviews and concert reviews.


1950's

• Popular music magazines played a major part of the creation and promotion of the pop and rock music genres in the mid-1950’s. Music of the United Kingdom began to develop in the 1950s; and the UK very quickly become one of the leading centres of popular music in the modern world. By the 1950's forms of more traditional British music, including folk music, brass and silver bands, music hall and dance bands, were already giving way to the influence of American forms of music including jazz, swing and traditional pop, through film and records.
• The significant change of the mid-1950s was the impact of American rock and roll, which provided a new model for performance and recording, based on a youth market.

1970's

• Punk rock developed at around 1974, originally in the USA. The first punk band is usually thought to be the Ramones from 1976. This was taken up in Britain by bands also influenced by the pub rock scene, like the Sex Pistols and The Clash, (especially in London) who became a new musical/cultural movement, blending simple aggressive sounds and lyrics with clothing styles and a variety of anti-authoritarian ideologies.
• Punk rock bands created fast, hard-edged music, typically with short songs, stripped-down instrumentation, and often political, anti-establishment lyrics. Punk embraced a do it yourself ethic, with many bands self-producing their recordings and distributing them informally. 1977 saw punk rock spreading around the world, and it became a major international cultural thing. However, by 1978, punk had split up into the wider new wave and post punk movements.

Present Day

• The music press is constantly changing to adapt to what people want. Recently we have seen a revolution in music listening as the radio has gained popularity everywhere and new media and technology was developed to record, reproduce and distribute music.
• Music performances have become increasingly visual with the broadcast and recording of music videos and concerts. Music of all kinds also became increasingly portable. Headphones allow people sitting right next to each other to listen to different pieces of music.
• Magazines such as NME (New Music Express) were huge in the late 20th century however they have lost sat massively to the rise of the internet. This is because why would the majority of the public buy a magazine with information in it that they could quite easily find out for free online.