IPC Media is to raid the NME and Melody Maker archives in a bid to kick start sales of music and film title Uncut, which relaunches on Tuesday.
The monthly magazine, which saw its circulation fall 14.2% year-on-year in the most recent ABC figures, relaunches on 28 February with a refreshed design and new editorial features.
Among these, Uncut is promising classic interviews from fellow IPC titles NME and Melody Maker, which closed in December 2000, with the relaunch issue running an extract from a 1996 NME interview with Bruce Springsteen alongside a review of the singer's new album.
In doing so, Uncut is tapping into a trend among music magazine publishers to increasingly repackage their archive content.
NME frequently publishes classic interviews in its weekly magazine, while Uncut itself has released a number of one-off artist specials which reuse old material under the Ultimate Music Guide banner.
"For years this [content] has been fairly dormant," said Uncut editor Allan Jones. "There have been one or two attempts to make use of it, like the Ultimate Music Guides, but it is coming up with the idea and context for the material. There is stuff in the archive which is just amazing."
The redesign has also seen Uncut's reviews section revamped to reflect the growing importance of back catalogue album sales. Reviews will be divided into two sections – one for new albums and one for archive releases, reissues and box sets.
"If there is one thing we know about our readers, it is they love reviews and they love reading about music," said Jones. "It seemed an opportune moment [to redesign the reviews section] because there are so many lavish box sets coming out these days with so many extras, it can get a bit mind-boggling."
The magazine will also include a new live reviews section, how-to buy guides and more artist Q&As, while uncut.co.uk will feature a cleaner design with more searchable content, an increased emphasis on blogs and recommendations, bigger photos and video functionality.
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