BMA Magazine is an Australian street press

Street press

Street press is a term used to describe a certain type of publishing, between zines and magazines/newspapers in terms of distribution, content and audience. They are particularly prolific in Australia, although there are also some examples from Europe and North America...

 and music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

 magazine

Magazine

Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...

 focusing on popular music

Popular music

Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...

, concerts, live events and popular culture

Popular culture

Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...

 in Canberra

Canberra

Canberra is the capital city of Australia. With a population of over 345,000, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The city is located at the northern end of the Australian Capital Territory , south-west of Sydney, and north-east of Melbourne...

 and surrounding areas. It is published fortnightly and is an independent publication.

Profile

BMA is an acronym for Bands Music Action. It is available free to readers in both print format and as a web download. The magazine estimates print readership to be around 35 thousand and generates around 10 thousand downloads per issue. The content includes a cover story, regular columns, interviews, band profile, a comprehensive gig guide of forthcoming tours or events in and around Canberra, reviews of singles, albums, live events, theatre and films. Recently the magazine has converted to a full color layout, whereas initially it was printed black and white. At the moment, it is the only music magazine local to Canberra . Some of the notable cover stories on BMA were on Sonic Youth, Midnight Juggernaughts, Silverchair and Powderfinger, Steely Dan, John Butler, INXS, Stonefest, Trackside, Hilltop Hoods, Clare Bowditch, Deep Purple, The Presidents of the United States of America, Wolfmother, Grinspoon, Grandmaster Flash, Chemical Brothers, Cypress Hill and James Blunt.

History

The magazine was founded in 1992 by Lisa Howdin and Peter Spicer after Blitz magazine folded. The first edition of BMA came out in February 1992, it was tabloid in size and the cover featured Tex Perkins. The first editors were Vanessa Bowden and Melanie Sheridan. A small office (3m x 3m) was established upstairs at Gorman House where often both editors and contributors worked simultaneously. The first advertising and marketing rep was Vicki Anderson who later went on to join The Brag in Sydney and then street press in London. Key contributors included Cathy Sexton, Andrew Collins, Dan Etheridge, Emily Robertson, Ryan Sheridan, Jason Richardson, Shawn Stanley, Anna Sarris, Geoff Chaplin, Chris, Emina Redzic, Telia Neville, Simon Hobbs, Chris Doyle, Tim, Benn, Chris Fresh, Roger Ramjet, Sull-e & Nicole.

A full set of the magazine can be found at the Canberra Library and at the National Library of Australia.