Research Task One : How has the UK consumer magazine industry evolved?

The key detail about the magazine industry is that every graph and figure is going down. This is because of a variety of factors such as the move online and still feeling the effects on the Covid-19 pandemic. Having been for a long time, and still is an important medium, print is in decline both newspapers and magazines and unfortunately for many of these publications subscriptions and releasing digitally are not making up for a drop in sales. 

With advertising in print magazines has also dropped falling 33% from 2019 to 2020, due in part to the pandemic but also being yet to recover from those effects. In 2000 the number of magazines in circulation were 1.6 billion. Last year it was 565 million. Along with a fall in number of titles to choose from. 700 titles reported in 2000 fell to 558 by 2010 and fell further to 241 last year. 

£669 million was spent in 2020 by consumers buying magazines yet was down by half from 2000 when £1.4 billion was spent. This is because a lot of the content magazines have to offer can be now found for free online with visual platforms such as Instagram replacing the need for many of these magazine titles as people are now getting the same content but for free. 

Wanting to survive, many of the once top magazine publications have now diversified to make magazine sales just a small part of their business and not even referring to themselves and magazine companies anymore. 

Magazines focusing on the subject of news account for more than half of subscriptions and this is unlikely to change in the near future, as one of the only magazines to still be remaining a strong sell among consumers.