magazine industry essay

"The magazine industry has survived the coming of the digital age because it has been able to exploit technological advances. Indeed, it has always done so throughout its long history."

The magazine industry has huge competiton from digital advances,such as the internet,portable computers and the advances in mobile phones. Due to these advances, magasine's have found themselves being discontinued or selling a considerable less amount of copies. For examle; In mid-1973, the magasine- NME was selling nearly 300,000 copies per week but today they are only selling 38,486.

Many people today prefer to look at a magazine's website or subscribe to the online copies, as it is more portable, access to it is easy as you do not have to carry it round with you. Also the world we live in at the moment is very concerned with the enviroment, therefore by looking at the magasine on the website, you are not killing trees. Although paper copies of magasines are still avaliable t buy and many people do, therefore showing that they have survived the technical advances.

Although magazines are trying to keep paper copies of their magazines, they are still resposible for exploiting technical advantages. In the 1990's mainstream magazines started to create their own websites, filled with what the target audiences wanted, this showed an increase of interest into the magazine as computers were becoming a 'MUST HAVE' in nearly every house hold. Therefore meaning magazines were exploiting technology, to increase its popularity and readership.

Then came the advantages of internet access on mobile phones and apps for mobies, such as iphones. The first weekend the i phone came out over million bought it, this shows the popularity for the advanced mobile and people therefore wanted the latest apps. Due to this , all major magazines created there own app, which once again exploited their readership and keeping their name a popular and well known brand that people still want to buy.

Therefore all of this is showing that although magazines are facing being dicontinued from our supermarket shelves, they are keeping up with technology advantages and exloiting them as much as they can to keep their popularity and increas thier readership.