1998 – A Bad Year For Music

The music sector of the magazine market reflected the eroding sales of popular music in general. Even the ‘teenybopper’ magazines saw their recent successes at the expense of the more ‘serious’ music titles reversed quite spectacularly as both Smash Hits and Top Of The Pops recorded sizeable year-on-year losses. The more general, lifestyle orientated Sky and specialist dance publication Mixmag also suffered. Only Uncut, which mixes film articles with its musical content, and middle of the road Q had anything much to celebrate.

Six month audit period comparisons reveal the second half of the year being a period of decline for most. Whilst Mojo and Rhythm sold less in the latter part of 1998, their July-December audit was actually a year on year increase.

The circulation trends for this sector show an overall decrease for this market sector from approximately 2.7 million copy sales to less than 2.5 million in the last year. Q bucks this trend by uncovering a steadily improving set of figures.

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