The New Musical Express (NME) started in 1952. London music promoter Maurice Kinn bought The Accordion Times and Musical Express on the day it was due to close down and relaunched it as the NME. Inspired by the Billboard chart, NME established the first weekly singles chart in a British newspaper in the 14 November 1952 edition.

In 1959, the NME introduced the NME Poll Winners' Concert, an awards event at which poll winning artists voted for by the public performed. From 1964 onwards, the concerts were filmed, edited, and transmitted on British television a few weeks after they had taken place. They ended in 1972.

During the 1960s, the paper championed the new British groups emerging at the time, including the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. The paper’s focus was on pop music for most of the 1960s, and began charting the rise of psychedelia towards the end of the decade. Its closest rival, Melody Maker, was known for its more serious coverage of music.

At the start of the 1970s, NME lost ground to Melody Maker, thanks to its focus on pop instead of the emerging progressive rock genre. The paper almost closed in 1972, but new editor Alan Smith recruited writers from the underground press, including Charles Shaar Murray and Nick Kent. By the middle of the decade, NME was the best selling music newspaper in Britain.

In the mid-1970s, NME started to champion underground music genres such as glam rock and punk. Although NME was not as quick to champion punk as Sounds or Melody Maker, writers Julie Burchill, Paul Morley and Tony Parsons helped to move the focus of the paper towards punk from 1976. The paper also featured youth-orientated issues and became more openly political during the time of punk. It took an editorial stance against political parties like the National Front.

From 1979, Morley and Danny Baker championed new post punk bands, including Joy Division. With the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979, the paper took a broadly socialist stance for much of the following decade. It supported the Red Wedge movement and had a cover feature interview with Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock in 1987.

Writers in the early 1980s included Chris Bohn, Paolo Hewitt, Danny Kelly and David Quantick. By the middle of the decade, the NME was again in danger of closing due to falling sales. Readers began to leave NME for new magazines The Face and Smash Hits. The former editor of Sounds, Alan Lewis, joined NME in 1987, charged with turning the paper’s fortunes around. Lewis brought in new writers including Andrew Collins, Stuart Maconie, Mary Anne Hobbs and Steve Lamacq to give the paper a stronger identity and sense of direction. NME featured new bands coming out of Manchester, such as the Happy Mondays and the Stone Roses, and focused on the Acid House scene, helping to increase its readership.

The 1990s saw NME focus on the Madchester scene that emerged in the UK out of Acid House, the British indie and shoegaze scenes, the Seattle grunge scene and Britpop. The magazine launched its website NME.com in 1996.

In 2000, NME absorbed its rival Melody Maker, which had also suffered a decline in readership figures. The market for music magazines was shrinking and NME attempted to broaden its music journalism to include hip hop acts, electronic musicians and R&B groups. This was unsuccessful and NME returned to its more traditional coverage, helping to introduce US and Australian rock bands to a UK audience, and continuing the champion the growing British indie scene.

In 2008, the magazine received a redesign aimed at an older readership with a more authoritative tone. Repeated redesigns and relaunches of the magazine under a rapid succession of editors failed to boost sales. A transition to a cross platform approach, including print, web and app content, was more successful.

From September 2015 to March 2018, the print version of NME was distributed as a free publication. NME output is now delivered entirely digitally.