In the 1950's Music in the press was very uncritical. The magazines and other forms were just listings. These included new singles, up and coming gigs and the charts. New musical express, a music magazine, focused mainly on the rock and alternative genre of music while Melody maker focused on pop and rock. Overall the music press was a positive place.
Music press in the 1960s was the same as it was in the previous decade but with the addition of The rolling stones, The Beatles and a new drug culture which surrounded the music press.
1970's
NME start to embrace punk culture. With change in genre comes change in writing. The authors of articles for nme started to branch off into different topics. One of those were politics. They started to discuss the lyrics and the views of the band. Acts such as the likes of David Bowie, Mud, T-Rex, ELP and Yes were introduced. The whole point of the change was to get a younger audience and recruit 'hip, young gun slingers'. However the change did not go down all well. In the late 70's ratings of NME dropped dramatically because there wasn't enough things about 'normal' bands and it was becoming all about the politics. Then nearing the end of the decade, NME started to focus on the younger audience and wrote about lifetyles of band members. Pop also became more of what it is today, all about the appearance. People were more interested about the style, make-up, fashion and the music video itself rather than the the meaningful content of a song.
1980s' and 1990's
More magazines were introduced such as Face and Blitz. Magazines became more exciting, losing their newspaper style and becoming more modern with new typography, layout and graphics. Then finally came the transition from paper to technology. MTV was created and music was now on TV. This meant spending's for musicians were increased. Music videos were becoming more popular and the overall quality of music was better. This meant a small, unknown band could make money with just a well produced music video.
2000's
Music bloggers seem to have replaced the magazines. These musician bloggers can give critique, reviews and have a more unprofessional, democratic review on what they thought of the music. As these bloggers are just ordinary people, they are more relatable to avid music listeners.
Present day
Music press and pop culture is constantly surrounding us. Everyone who believes they are someone thinks they can make it big! With platforms on the internet such as YouTube, anyone can share their music. Music can now be downloaded straight onto our personal devices without us actually having to leave our home! There are still some big music magazines now like The rolling stone. Having many platforms of press means a wider audience of consumers. NME has it's very own website where they offer reviews, film, blogs, tickets and more for consumption.This is also a global website meaning everyone around the world has access and can keep up to date with their favourite bands. Magazines nowadays are very genre separated. You can have rock magazines, pop, alternative, techno, classic. There is more information around us than ever before.
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