The Emap heavy and nu-metal weekly is reaping the rewards of the success of bands such as Limp Bizkit, Blink 182 and Sum 41, and nudges IPC Media's NME into second place in the weekly market in the July-December 2001 ABCs. NME did, however, manage to stabilise, rising 0.6% year on year to level out at 70,456 under new editor Ben Knowles. However, it is a far cry from the early 1990s when it regularly sold 120,000 copies a week.
In the monthly market, Emap's Q retained the number one spot, but slides 1.7% year on year to 200,636. Sister title Mojo, aimed at the over-30s, piled on 15.3% year on year to record a circulation of 96,837.
Mojo's position behind Q is safe for the time being, but IPC's Uncut is slowly gaining ground. Both titles are aimed at the older end of the market, but Uncut's mix of film, music and a covermount CD of bands featured in its pages is proving to be popular. Its circulation rose 37.6% year on year to 73,186 -- a 15.5% period-on-period rise, leaving it 23,651 copies behind its Emap rival.
Rock may be on the up, but the dance music titles are struggling. The fragmentation of dance music, or clubbers getting older, may be the reason behind the 6.8% year-on-year slump in the sector.
Market leader Mixmag, published by Emap, dropped 5.5% year on year to 100,277, while Ministry fell 8% to 83,006. However, Ministy's slump is tempered by the fact it did pull off a recovery in the second half of the year, rising 10.3% since the January-June 2001 ABCs, no doubt helped by its Ministry-branded chart-topping dance compilations. IPC's dance title Muzik continues to sink, however, sliding 7.3% year on year to 40,550, a level at which is in danger of being pulled off the dancefloor and shut by trigger-happy IPC.
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