Melody Maker was a British weekly music magazine, one of the world's earliest music weeklies. In January 2001, it was merged into "long-standing rival" (and IPC Media sister publication) New Musical Express.
It was founded in 1926 by Leicester-born composer, publisher Lawrence Wright as the house magazine for his music publishing business, often promoting his own songs. Two months later it had become a full scale magazine, more generally aimed at dance band musicians, under the title The Melody Maker and British Metronome. It was published monthly from the basement of 19 Denmark Street (soon relocating to 93 Long Acre), and the first editor was the drummer and dance-band leader Edgar Jackson
Odhams Press took over the magazine in 1928, and the format was changed to a 16 page weekly newspaper in 1933.
The Melody Maker (MM) was slow to cover rock and roll and lost ground to the New Musical Express (NME), which had begun in 1952. MM launched its own weekly singles chart (a top 20) on 7 April 1956, and an LPs charts in November 1958, two years after the Record Mirror had published the first UK Albums Chart.
From 1964, the paper led its rival publications in terms of approaching music and musicians as a subject for serious study rather than merely entertainment
In 1999, MM relaunched as a glossy magazine, but the magazine closed the following year, merging into IPC Media's other music magazine, NME, which took on some of its journalists and music reviewers.
