Music magazines have played an important role in the cultural fabric of our society and have been the life blood of the music industry for fifty or sixty years.
In the nineteen fifties something happened: the teenager emerged as a financial power in modern society. What the teenager was concerned about was pop music, and what they spend their money on was records, and when they were not listening to music they were reading about music, reading about their favourite pop stars and, most importantly, finding out about new music and new pop stars.
This is where music magazines came in. The music business relied on the music magazines to publicise their new records and stars and to keep existing stars in the limelight. Teenagers devoured the music magazines to keep up to date on the latest sensations, and even musicians used music magazines to advertise themselves in the small ads to try and put a band together.
This went on for a long time and to a certain extent carries on to this day, but in the sixties things did start to change. As the teenagers grew up their tastes grew up with them. As a result, pop music grew up with them. Pop music started to be about more than just about “boy meets girl”. Pop musicians started to write their own songs, taking as their subject matter things that concerned them. As a result the music magazines started to change to reflect this. They started to publish serious articles about musicians.
vanityproject.co.uk © 2009