Weekly trade title for the music industry, Music Week, has had its second redesign in just over a year.
It has ditched a radical redesign created by design agency This is Real Art in favour a more conventional look produced in-house, with the help of freelance designers.
Editor Paul Williams, who has been with the title 12 years, took the helm a year ago shortly after the last redesign under then editor Martin Talbot.
Williams said that the previous design didn’t give him the flexibility to ‘tweak”, so the team have examined how they’re covering the music industry and completely revamped the title.
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He said: ‘The music industry is changing at a pace quicker than ever before and some would wrongly conclude that it is in trouble. In actual fact parts of it, such as live music, are doing very well at the moment.
‘Given that it is changing we constantly have to look at how we cover the industry – a mixture of external research and our own analysis lead us to believe there were certain sectors that we needed to give a clearer focus o and expand the coverage of.”
The news section is now divided into a two-page news section dedicated to the live music industry including a chart listing the highest grossing concerts of the week and a chart covering the demand for tickets online; a media section covering radio, TV, press and online coverage of music news and data; and a music publishing section.
The charts featured in the magazine were previously bundled together in the back section, but are now spread out and placed in the relevant sections throughout the magazine.
The magazine also has a new weekly half page feature called Music Week Unearthed which features a new unsigned band.
The redesign was masterminded by production editor Ed Miller, with the help of freelance designers.
Williams said: ‘We’ve taken some elements of the last design, the best elements, but with the new design we have the opportunity to cover certain parts of the industry in more deep and meaningful ways.”
Press Gazette reported in May that Music Week was working without any news reporters or a web editor following redundancies on the title which included two reporters, the online editor, a member of the sales team and a database manager.
This left the title with five journalists who were all editors: the editor, an associate editor plus editors for news, features and talent sections.
Since May, Music Week has recruited three new staff.
Long running freelancer for the title, Robert Ashton, was appointed associate editor almost three months ago, and this week the title announced Gordon Masson as contributing editor and Archie Carmichael as deputy advertising manager.
Williams said: ‘We have the editorial and advertising teams in place now.”
CMPi-owned title Music Week has a paid-for circulation of 6,771.
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