Melody Maker

British weekly music newspaper, founded by Lawrence Wright in 1926. In 2000 it was merged into New Musical Express. Founded on the growing popularity of dance-band and jazz-style music in the UK the magazine beat the launch of television in the UK by two years. After the war, and staunchly following the trail of 'easy-listening' and jazz-oriented music, the weekly was slow to embrace the emergence of skiffle, rock n' roll and blues and soon found itself competing with the likes of New Musical Express [NME] and Beat Instrumental. The main feature which helped maintain its sales in the growing and ever-competitive 'music mag' market was its adherence to quality reviews of equipment and a willingness to report on reader's demo recordings. However, despite a glossy-cover relaunch in the 1990s the 'MM', as it was known, finally became merged with NME along with its core journalists under the umbrella of IPC Media.