Why are Magazine sales plumeting in todays magazine industry?

There are many different factors that come in to magazine sales having gone down in the last few years some being more direct and noticable that others and some having started out as minor problems and growing into big problems as the years went by.

Here are the figures of music and film magazines for the first half of 2008

Dance Music

-ixmag 34,073, down 8.3 per cent year-on-year
-WD 31,333 down 5.1 per cent

Rock Music

Q 113,174 down 13.1 per cent
Mojo 106,367 down 5.1 per cent
The Fly 105,212 up 11.1 per cent
Uncut 86,925 up 1.2 per cent
Classic Rock 66,632 down 0.9 per cent
Kerrang! 60,290 down 27.9 per cent
NME 56,284 down 17.4 per cent
Metal Hammer 48,540 down 1.2 per cent
Rock Sound 22,527 down 3.2 per cent

Other Music

Word Magazine 33,775 down 3 per cent

Film & Video Reviews

Cineworld Unlimited 500,500 no change
Empire 187,202 up 4.4 per cent
Total Film 84,520 down 1.3 per cent.

The Economy

One of the main and most obvious factors is the current recession we are going through; it has affected almost everthing about our lifestyle including the prices of products, businesses and peoples employment. Because many people are trying to cut down on the more unneccesary things which include magazines because magazines on average cost about £3-£4 which may not seem like all that much but it adds up to a fairly large amount when you think about how many people buy because some people buy more than one magazine and poeple even subscribe to them on the internet whci again can add up to large sums of money.

Other Media Forms

Another major factor is the fact that because of all the media forms we have today we can find out the things we would in a magazine from other forms of media.

The Internet

one of the main scources we can get this information from is the internet. there are many websites which show the information,articles and pictures we would get from a magazine, many people prefer to do this rather than buy a magazine because it is cheaper and they don't get all the adds they would in a magazine; it is the same principle as downloading music on to an mp3 player rather than going out and buying a CD. people are even able to access the internet on their phones so they can look for the information they would find in magazines on their phones instead.

T.V. and Radio

People can also find out about the issues looked at in magazine by watching programs on television which look at the same thing that the magazine does and radio stations that have talk about these issues aswell. even some magazine have spawned their own t.v. and radio stations which some people are focussing on more than the magazine itself meaing that even though the magazine company has expanded in the media they begin to loose magazine sales.

Conclusion

Overall I think that Magazine are facing up to new media forms which is making it harder for magazines because in some ways they have been replaced by major media forms and I think that Magazines will never have as many sales as they did years ago.