Ireland edition first step in NME’s global plans

IPC has launched its first international edition of NME, in another indication of the music magazine's global ambitions.

NME Ireland, the new Irish edition of the weekly magazine, coincides with the launch of Club NME in Dublin.

The move is the latest in the globalisation of the NME brand. Last month, the title opened Club NME Los Angeles and plans to do the same in New York. It has recruited US-based news writers and a digital edition of the magazine has also launched, to reach international readers quicker than its printed version can.

NME editor Conor McNicholas said of plans to go global: "NME is a very British brand and always should be, but its core values of speaking to alienated young people who feel that music is a great source of escape for them — that's a pretty universal concept throughout.

"NME.com is a free platform that allows all those people to be in one place at one time, but there's no reason why we shouldn't go out and have print editions that speak to those people. We'd have to look at it territory by territory. We're certainly looking with a global eye in terms of what we can do with NME, without a doubt."

NME Ireland will directly compete with homegrown music fortnightly Hot Press, which has had a virtual monopoly on covering the Irish music scene on its own turf since its inception in 1977. The new IPC launch promises to contain eight extra dedicated pages focused on the Irish live music scene, plus the same content the parent magazine runs in its UK version.

The idea came about after McNicholas spent time in Ireland and spotted a generation of young music fans who "aren't being served any more and don't have something they can call their own."