This month’s round-up of market insights details the current state of the UK magazine industry. Ongoing challenges continue, and the overall magazine market is showing an RSV decline of 3.0% in the three months to March 2024. However, this does represent a 0.5% MoM improvement compared to the previous period. 

Monthlies continued showing signs of performance improvements. Volume decreased by 7.4% YoY but showed a 0.9% increase MoM. Value declined by 2.5% YoY but also improved by 0.9% MoM compared to the previous three-month average.

Looking at 12 months, the total magazine market declined by 9.9% in volume and 5.8% in value to March 2024. Monthlies declined by 10.6% in volume and by 5.7% in value over the period, while overall RSV levels were 0.4% higher versus the previous twelve-month AVG. Weeklies declined by 9.7% in volume and by 5.9% in value. The YoY RSV trend was 0.1% better MoM.

Improving Segments

Puzzles

Puzzles continue to grow, with a 12.9% YoY increase in RSV and a 1.2% YoY increase in RSV share. Logic and Arrowords are again the two strongest performers, showing 14.3% and 15.8% YoY increases, respectively.

Music

Music has experienced YoY growth in both RSV and RSV share, showing 8.8% and 0.2% increases, respectively. While exaggerated by the presence of bookazine series such as Future Select and Future Special, Music still outperforms the total market, with growth of 0.1% YoY excluding these. 

TV Listings

While TV listings has experienced a 2% YoY decrease in RSV, it has grown its YoY RSV share by 0.3%, likely due to the strong performance of Christmas double issues.

Negative Segments

Crafts has seen the worst RSV performance, down 18.7% YoY. Sewing and Papercraft have both seen YoY declines of over 30%. However, Colouring stands out against the trend with growth of 11.5% YoY. Sport has seen a decline of 14.2% YoY, with Shooting in particular 30% down YoY.

Channel & Place Performance

The High Street is still the best-performing Retail channel. Despite showing a small decline of -1.4% YoY, it is outperforming the total market. While supermarkets have seen a revenue decline of 5.3% YoY, they remain the largest channel and their share of the overall market has grown 0.2% YoY to 39.9%. Independents are the worst-performing channel with a declining RSV share of 0.7% YoY.

At a retail group level, Puzzles continue to perform well, even with a 4% decline in YoY RSV at Independents. M&S shows a national RSV growth of 2.5% and has seen YoY growth across 7 of the top 11 sectors.

Conclusion

While the magazine industry continues to show YoY declines in both value and volume, we continue to see certain segments buck the trend, and the early signs of MoM improvement are clear. While the latest ONS figures for GDP show zero growth in April, inflation has now fallen below the BoE’s 2% target. 

Barclays’ Consumer Spending Report showed a -0.4% fall in retail spending in May, but 18% of customers report planning on increasing spending with the arrival of summer. This represents an opportunity for further MoM growth as 2024 progresses.

*Data for this month's Intermedia industry report is taken from Marketforce.