Ongoing History Daily: The odd economic boost given to punk

For years, the top weekly music magazine in the UK was Melody Maker. Since the only radio came from the BBC, fans of pop and rock relied on The Maker for news on what was hot and new and worth listening to. Anyone who appeared on the cover suddenly sold hundreds of thousands of records.

Melody Maker also covered plenty of artists from North America and had an office and stringers in the US. But in the mid-70s, the pound fell sharply against the US dollar, forcing Melody Maker to close its American operations and to scale back its coverage of music on this side of the Atlantic.

For content, they redirected their music coverage to what was happening at home in the UK. And the mid-70s, that was punk. Melody Maker joined their rival, The New Musical Express, in highlighting and reinforcing the presence of this new music, which went a long way to making it successful with the public.

Weird how things happen sometimes, huh?