Farewell to the NME

Time for a confession. I think I've stopped buying the NME.

I've been reading the UK music press since sixth form, and on a regular weekly basis since university. I've only missed maybe 2 or 3 editions in that time, and those have been when I was out of the country for too long.

It used to be that there was a choice: Melody Maker or NME. To my mind Melody Maker was always a better read, and covered slightly better music, but a few years ago it was subsumed by the NME and I had no choice but to either stop altogether, or switch music papers. So I switched.

Then for a few years I was reasonably happy with it, but slowly although I was still buying it every week, I was reading less and less of it. And then last year they had a big rejig and changed the format a bit. And it got to the point where all I was doing was reading (some of) the album and live gig reviews. And there are much less live reviews than there used to be.

So last week I thought "sod it" and I didn't buy it. Figured I had a week or so to change my mind. But I didn't change my mind, and I never bought last week's edition. I didn't buy this week's one today either. I may buy it occasionally in the future, or I may not. Time will tell. Welcome to the new era.