The Daily Swarm

Times UK: They think it’s all over for the NME:

But there were glum faces and dark mutterings among the assembled media insiders. One key reason for this gloom was the magazine’s circulation figures for the second half of 2007. Averaging around 64,000 per issue, they are the lowest ever, and a steep decline on previous years.

Given NME‘s growing profile online, on TV, at festivals and branded tours, these figures seem a strange and bitter pill. Some industry commentators are even speculating that the print version could close within months.

[...]

IPC has responded to NME‘s poor circulation figures by announcing yet another revamp. But perhaps it is simply wrong to interpret poor sales as a crisis in this post-print age. Even if its weekly cousin loses readers, the magazine’s online presence continues to expand, recently surpassing the monthly benchmark of two million “unique users”. Pat Long insists that NME deserves credit as a pioneer of blogs, online news and web videos.

“The future will see more focus on that content being sold to third parties with the magazine used more as a focus to hold the different brand platforms together,” Long predicts. “The problem is it’s difficult to talk about things like brand platforms without imagining Nick Kent somewhere, sobbing.”