End of a golden age? After 74 years on the stands, Melody Maker merged with its rival NME on December 14 2000. Photograph: PA Photos
The British music press is a favourite topic of discussion here, as fans and readers swap opinions on the numerous publications on the market, each competing for shelf space and - more insidiously - brand loyalty.
In amongst the posts explaining why NME isn't as good as was it was back in [insert appropriate decade here] are endless arguments about which publication is the best. Never before has the British music press been such a competitive market. Not only are magazines battling against websites and short attention spans; as genre boundaries begin to blur, they also find themselves competing to cover the same artists. (The success of Klaxons is partly down to the fact that they can feature in the rock, dance and lifestyle press simultaneously.)
Indie music, in particular, has permeated mainstream culture to such an extent that no lifestyle, arts-based magazine, broadsheet and tabloid newspaper would be seen dead without at least some music coverage, even if it is just a 50-word review of Mark Ronson in Cosmopolitan.
Which magazine do you prefer? An established weekly like NME, or one of the weightier monthlies? The likes of Word, Q and Uncut all offer different takes on recent music, while Mojo (my personal favourite) appears to me to be the most informed and least trend-driven. Every issue I discover a new musical gem - which is what we want from a magazine, surely? The Wire, meanwhile, stands splendidly alone, with its often scholarly coverage of innovative bands.
Then there's the specialist music press. Kerrang!, with little fanfare, continues to outsell NME, its rival Metal Hammer, and the underground hard-rock fans' read of choice Rock Sound. Mixmag, DJ and Hip Hop Connection cover dance and hip-hop. Then there are the more buttoned-up magazines based around record collecting, MP3-downloading or specific instruments. (How does Bass Guitar Magazine fill its pages every month?) And let's not forget the dwindling pop press, still led by Top of the Pops.
A new breed of magazines have interesting and often independently funded beginnings that reflect the culture that spawned them. I'm thinking Artrocker, Clash, FACT, the Fly, Nude, Plan B (run on a shoe-string by loveable music press legend Everett True) and the Stool Pigeon, whose staff numbers two and whose editor Phil Hebblethwaite hand-delivers every magazine to shops across Britain.
Music magazines are disposable and their readers fickle, which is why publications are constantly refining their content and presentation. Lest we forget, once flourishing publications such as Melody Maker, The Face, Muzik and Smash Hits have all gone to dust this decade, along with many others that have closed after just a few issues. But there's an upside to this: the UK has the best music press in the world. For me, US music magazines such as Rolling Stone or Spin just don't compare. They may occasionally offer heftier features, but they also seem to exist more in fear of the advertising clients whose accounts keep them afloat.
UK magazines offer some of the free-spirited, funniest, most informed, unflinching, passionate and comprehensive writing around. We should remind ourselves of that from time to time.
