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- MediaGuardian,
- Thursday December 14 2000
The death of Melody Maker will be mourned as the end of an era.
The music title, which closed today, was always something of a little brother to IPC stablemate NME.
The 73-year-old music title never quite attained the iconic status of the NME, but at its height in the 70s it sold over 250,000 copies and was a must-read for anyone interested in rock and pop.
But with the rise of house music culture in the 90s, NME and Melody Maker both lost sales to a new generation of magazines including Mixmag, Muzik and Ministry.
Mike Soutar, managing director of IPC Music & Sport, said: "Market conditions in the indie rock music magazine sector are extremely tough, as evidenced only two weeks ago when Emap closed Select magazine.
"Over the last year Melody Maker's circulation has dipped to a point where we could also not sustain the costs of publishing."
Last year Melody Maker was reborn in a glossy monthly format and positioned as a rock/indie read. But this wasn't enough to save the title, which lost 21% of its sales in the six months to May.
IPC's decision to bite the bullet and fold the magazine into the more robust NME will be deeply regretted by many music journalists, but for more critical observers the paper's format was believed to be no longer sustainable.
Melody Maker and NME had their heyday in an age when young people cared about something called rock 'n' roll - an entity for a single constituency.
But the growing fragmentation of the music market has eaten away at the audiences of these once popular magazines.
IPC is thought to be set to reposition the NME as a more mainstream music title.
A number of jobs will be found for Melody Maker journalists on NME and NME.com.
