Institution/Publisher Research

Publishing is a process of producing a conglomeration of information and making it available to the public in a certain way, e.g. a magazine. Publishers can sometimes be the creaters of the media they are producing/publishing or otherwise are being commissioned to create the magazines/books by another company who do not have the resources needed to do it themselves.

Publishing companies are usually responsible for the despatch and distribution of the material they have created as well. The developments within the Internet and digital information world have made publishing firms area of expertise broaden sharply. Now it is not a case of just making a magazine and shipping it out to different parts of the world, the magazines and books created are now often made available to the masses through a simple click of the mouse online. This has created a bigger profit margin from a much bigger audience exposure area.


There are many stages of development that have been growing ever since the world wide web has come into fruitition, these include:

• Development
• Acquisition
• Copy Editing
• Graphic Design
• Production
• Printing
• Marketing and Distribution

Media Ownership is concentrated. This means that even though there may be hundreds of mainstream publishers and distribution companies currently working, these compaines are all owned by about 4-5 parent companies who create an element of rivalry between these smaller publishers to boost their own profits and fame. To put this into a simple example we could think about the top 10 selling magazines in England today, it is almost guaranteed that these top selling magazines will be owned by only about 3 parent companies. So as you may buy a lesser known magazine rather than a mass advertised one to try and act individually and to 'rebel' against a capitalist society, you are still ultimately giving money to the top companies as these are the only comanies that can afford to get their magazines on to most shops shelves and available to the masses. For example, 'IPC Media' currently own and run the publishing of about 80 magazines nationwide. These range from ultra-mainstream products such as 'Look', to the lesser known, rather niche audienced products such as, 'Wallpaper*' magazine. 

NME (New Musical Express) create a magazine and credit this magazine to be the 'longest published and most respected music weekly in the world'. The magazine is published by IPC Media and is available in almost every magazine selling shop you can find. NME try to convey the idea that they are in love with the music they write about and have made the magazine purely as a vehicle for their own musical interests and to spread the word of new music to the masses. This idea can be questioned when put together with their association with multi-million pound companies and publishers. Globalised, immensely rich and powerful companies have only got to have a 'big company' reputation by knowing how to make money. When a music magazine claiming to be in it for the music are associated with these big companies, the morals and ideas will be brought to question. The integrity of the company can be challenged as it seems like the completely musically focused company image they are trying to feed us, is only really in place to hide the morals of money-grabbing power-hungry company running the market.

This is not only relevant to 'NME' magazine, this can be said about almost any market in any country. It can also be traced back to forms of Gramsci's ideology concerning challenging ideas. Magazines that are made to rebel against the money making society of today, are often quickly bought out by one of the big companies to turn this new ideology into profit for themselves. Thus quickly eliminating the 'rebel company' and almost tricking the audience into buying their products.

The implications of this system could end up being very damaging to the music industry, as well as many different industries. The companies that own all the media concerning music industry will be able to advertise and expose their own bands to a mass audience, creating almost endless profit margins for them and creating a generation pseudo-individualistic bands because the smaller bands who have not already been bought out by major companies, who actually have individual music styles and almost always better morals, simply cannot earn enough revenue to continue producing music because the only music people can listen to on demand are bands that have been created to sound, look, talk and act in a specific way by their label. This passes onto music magazines and closes out all competition. 

So by giving the public a choice of 5 different magazines created by 1 parent company, they are effectively creating a society unknowingly ruled by Adorno's theory of de-politicised, formulaic and ultimately boring bands and artists.