Head of Content | George Garner [1] |
---|---|
Former editors | Tom Pakinkis, Tim Ingham, David Dalton, Steve Redmond, Selina Webb, Ajax Scott, Martin Talbot, Paul Williams, Mark Sutherland [2] |
Categories | Business |
Frequency |
|
Format | B4 |
Circulation | Not publicly available since 2011 |
Founded | 1959Record Retailer ) [3] | (as
First issue | March 18, 1972 (as Music Week) |
Company | Future |
Country | United Kingdom |
Based in | London |
Language | English |
Website | www |
ISSN | 0265-1548 (print) 2052-2371 (web) |
OCLC | 750494535 |
Music Week is a trade publication for the UK record industry distributed via a website and a monthly print magazine. It is published by Future.
Founded in 1959 as Record Retailer , [3] it relaunched on 18 March 1972 as Music Week. [4] On 17 January 1981, the title again changed, owing to the increasing importance of sell-through videos, to Music & Video Week. The rival Record Business , founded in 1978 by Brian Mulligan and Norman Garrod, was absorbed into Music Week in February 1983. Later that year, the offshoot Video Week launched and the title of the parent publication reverted to Music Week.
Since April 1991, Music Week has incorporated Record Mirror , initially as a 4 or 8-page chart supplement, later as a dance supplement of articles, reviews and charts. In the 1990s, several magazines and newsletters become part of the Music Week family: Music Business International (MBI), Promo, MIRO Future Hits, Tours Report, Fono, Green Sheet, ChartsPlus (published from May 1991 to November 1994), and Hit Music (September 1992 to May 2001). By May 2001, all newsletters (except Promo) closed.
In 2003, Music Week relaunched its website of daily news, features, record release listings and UK sales, airplay and club charts. In early 2006, a separate free-to-access site for the Music Week Directory listed 10,000 contacts in the UK music industry. In mid-2007, the magazine was redesigned by London company This Is Real Art. In October 2008, another redesign led to major changes.
In June 2011, Music Week was sold to Intent Media. [5] [6] [7] The package was sold for £2.4m [6] [7] and also contained titles Television Broadcast Europe, Pro Sound News , Installation Europe, and additional websites, newsletters, conferences, show dailies and awards events, which generated £5.4m of revenue in 2010. [7] As of issue 30 July 2011, UBM is still named as publisher, [8] as the new publisher Intent Media took over on 1 August 2011. [9] In the first edition under new ownership it was announced that the title would switch its day of publication Monday to Thursday with immediate effect. [10] NewBay Media acquired Intent Media in 2012. [11] Future acquired NewBay Media in 2018 and decided that the publication would go monthly from March 2021, in keeping with its Louder Sound publications such as Metal Hammer and Classic Rock magazine. [12] [13] [14] [15]
Music Week features these British charts: the Official Top 75 Singles of the month, the Official Top 75 Albums of the month (similar to charts used by Top of the Pops [16] in the early 1990s [16] and Absolute 80s on Sundays) [17] [18] and the Official Vinyl Charts. Specialist charts include the Official Top 20 Americana, the Official Top 20 Classical, the Official Top 20 Hip-Hop & R&B, the Official Top 20 Jazz, the Official Top 20 Country, the Official Top 20 Dance, the Official Top 20 Folk and the Official Top 20 Rock & Metal. Also found in Music Week are charts for streaming and various album compilations, whilst James Masterton's weekly Official UK chart analysis column can now only be accessed online by subscribers. [19] [14]
When the magazine was a weekly publication, it included Top 75 Singles, Top 75 Artist Albums, Top 10 Downloads, Top 20 Ringtones, Top 20 Compilation Albums, Top 50 Radio Airplay, Top 40 TV airplay, and a number of format and genre charts (Music DVD, Classical, Rock, etc.), as well as a background on sales and airplay analysis from Alan Jones. [20] Following a redesign in October 2008, the magazine introduced live charts based on Tixdaq data, a Box Office chart, and predictive charts based on information from: Rakuten.co.uk, Amazon, Shazam, Last.fm, HMV. [21] [22]
Music Week compiled and published weekly club charts from chart returns supplied by DJs in nightclubs; Upfront Club Top 40, Commercial Pop Top 30 and Urban Top 30. The magazine also published a weekly Cool Cuts chart compiled from DJ feedback and sales reports from independent record shops, which traced it roots back to James Hamilton's BPM section in Record Mirror (a publication which ended up as the middle dance music section of Music Week in 1991).
Even though the magazine is now a monthly publication, the website still posts weekly Charts Analysis pages for the UK Official Singles and Albums charts. Alan Jones was the writer of the section until he retired in March 2020, when Chart Watch UK writer James Masterton was hired to take over the role. [23] [24] [25] Masterton wrote two weekly Charts Analysis pages [26] [25] for the website (as the magazine now features charts compiled from monthly sales and streams) until 29 October 2021, when Music Week staff performed the role. After Andre Paine and Ben Homewood wrote one each of the Charts Analysis posts on 5 November 2021, [27] [28] Alan Jones resumed the role again, writing the 12 November overviews, with no explanation of why he returned (with the pages titled Charts analysis: ABBA's Voyage opens with huge sale of 204,000 for the albums and Charts analysis: Adele spends fourth week at summit ahead of album release for the singles). [29] [30]
Music Week is published monthly by Future (from the March 2021 edition), though previously it was a weekly magazine (50 editions p.a.). [31] It was available as a B4-sized printed magazine and a PDF digital edition. ISSN 0265-1548.
As of July 2021 print edition
Former editors [2]
The weekly print circulation in 1997/98 was 12,503, [34] but by the time the publication left the ABC scheme in 2011 it had fallen to around 5,000 weekly copies. [35] In October 2011, Music Week deregistered with ABC after 54 years of membership. [36]
The website musicweek.com had 63,904 monthly unique browsers for the audited period 1–31 October 2008. [37] By 2009, the website had been deregistered with ABC. [38]
Kerrang! is a British music webzine and quarterly magazine that primarily covers rock, punk and heavy metal music. Since 2017, the magazine has been published by Wasted Talent Ltd. The magazine was named onomatopoeically after the sound of a "guitar being struck with force".
James Masterton is a British music critic and columnist, his work focusing on the UK Singles Chart having been an online fixture on various sites since the 1990s. Masterton is also a producer for talkSPORT, and has worked on air as a presenter at the Bradford independent local radio station the Pulse.
The UK Singles Downloads Chart is compiled by the Official Charts Company (OCC) on behalf of the music industry. Since July 2015, the chart week runs from Friday to Thursday, with the chart date given as the following Thursday.
Record Mirror was a British weekly music newspaper published between 1954 and 1991, aimed at pop fans and record collectors. Launched two years after New Musical Express, it never attained the circulation of its rival. The first UK album chart was published in Record Mirror in 1956, and during the 1980s it was the only consumer music paper to carry the official UK singles and UK albums charts used by the BBC for Radio 1 and Top of the Pops, as well as the USA's Billboard charts.
The Official Albums Chart is the United Kingdom's industry-recognised national record chart for albums. Entries are ranked by sales and audio streaming. It was published for the first time on 22 July 1956 and is compiled every week by the Official Charts Company (OCC) on Fridays. It is broadcast on BBC Radio 1 and found on the OCC website as a Top 100 or on UKChartsPlus as a Top 200, with positions continuing until all sales have been tracked in data only available to industry insiders. However, even though number 100 was classed as a hit album in the 1980s until January 1989, since the compilations were removed, this definition was changed to Top 75 with follow-up books such as The Virgin Book of British Hit Albums only including this data. As of 2021, Since 1983, the OCC generally provides a public charts for hits and weeks up to the Top 100. Business customers can require additional chart placings.
The UK singles chart is compiled by the Official Charts Company (OCC), on behalf of the British record industry, listing the top-selling singles in the United Kingdom, based upon physical sales, paid-for downloads and streaming. The Official Chart, broadcast on BBC Radio 1 and formerly MTV, is the UK music industry's recognised official measure of singles and albums popularity because it is the most comprehensive research panel of its kind, today surveying over 15,000 retailers and digital services daily, capturing 99.9% of all singles consumed in Britain across the week, and over 98% of albums. To be eligible for the chart, a single is currently defined by the OCC as either a "single bundle" having no more than four tracks and not lasting longer than 25 minutes or one digital audio track not longer than 15 minutes with a minimum sale price of 40 pence. The rules have changed many times as technology has developed, with digital downloads being incorporated in 2005 and streaming in July 2014.
"Come On Home" is a song recorded by American singer-songwriter Cyndi Lauper and released in August 1995 as the third and final single from her greatest hits album, Twelve Deadly Cyns...and Then Some (1994). It peaked at number 11 on the US Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart and at number 39 on the UK Singles chart.
"Filling Up with Heaven" is a song by English synth-pop band the Human League, released as the third and final single from their seventh full-length studio album, Octopus (1995). It was jointly written by lead singer Philip Oakey and producer Ian Stanley. The song was released on 5 June 1995 by East West Records in a variety of vinyl and CD single formats. These included various third-party remixes of "Filling Up with Heaven" and "John Cleese; Is He Funny?", including mixes by Hardfloor.
"Lovely Day" is a song by American soul and R&B singer Bill Withers. Written by Withers and Skip Scarborough, it was released on December 21, 1977, and appears on Withers's sixth album, Menagerie (1977). Withers holds a sustained note towards the end which, at 18 seconds, is one of the longest ever recorded on an American pop song. The song was listed at No. 402 on Rolling Stone's "Top 500 Best Songs of All Time" in 2021.
The Official Classical Singles Chart was a record chart based on downloads and streaming of classical music in the United Kingdom. Each week's chart was compiled by the Official Charts Company (OCC) and was first published on Monday afternoon on their official website. The chart ran for 140 weeks from 2012 to 2015, during which time a total of 23 singles by 22 artists reached number one. The most successful artist was the Italian pianist Ludovico Einaudi, who topped the chart with three singles for a total of 54 weeks, while the most successful record label was Decca Records, which spent 89 weeks at number one with six singles. Einaudi's track "I Giorni" from his album of the same name spent 51 weeks at number one, longer than any other single. In January 2013, following the release of Einaudi's album In a Time Lapse, singles by the pianist accounted for 13 of the Top 20 on the Official Classical Singles Chart. Martin Talbot, managing director of the OCC, described him as one of the chart's "biggest and most consistent stars".
This is a summary of the year 2014 in British music charts.
The Ultimate Collection is a compilation album from Elaine Paige, released on 12 May 2014 by Rhino UK/Warner Music UK to celebrate her 50th anniversary in show business.
Blossoms is the debut studio album by English rock band Blossoms. It was released in the United Kingdom on 5 August 2016, by Virgin EMI Records. The album was produced by James Skelly and Rich Turvey. It peaked at number 1 on the UK Albums Chart and number 12 on the Irish Albums Chart, reaching Silver certification in the UK in April 2017. Then in June 2017 it went Gold in the UK after surpassing 100,000 sales.
"If You Only Let Me In" is a song by British R&B group MN8, released in April 1995 as the second single from their debut album, To the Next Level (1995). It peaked at number six on the UK Singles Chart and number three in New Zealand.
"Steam" is a song by English pop boy band East 17, released on 19 September 1994 by London Records as the second single from their second album by the same name (1994). The song was written by band member Tony Mortimer with its producers, Matt Rowe and Richard Stannard. It was a major hit in Europe, peaking at number six in Portugal, number seven in the UK and number eight in Scotland, while becoming a top-20 hit in Australia, Denmark, Finland, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Its accompanying music video was directed by Kevin Godley, featuring the band performing onstage at a concert.