About Musikexpress

Musikexpress

Musikexpress — the German monthly music magazine published from Berlin-Kreuzberg — is the veteran of the German pop press: founded in 1956 in The Hague as the Dutch Muziek Expres, published in German since 1969, and the monthly that has documented rock and pop music for the German-speaking world for over five decades.

Overview

The Musikexpress is a monthly German magazine dealing mainly with rock and pop music. Alongside detailed interviews and articles on important musicians from rock, electro, hip-hop, pop and independent music, it publishes reviews of recordings, concert reports and articles on pop literature, pop art, cinema films and DVDs. Each issue (except 11-2024 and 02-2026) includes a CD accompanying the issue's topics; since April 2021 the CD has been delivered by post with the issue only for subscribers. At irregular intervals the issue also appears with extras such as 7-inch vinyl singles, books, calendars and DVDs. The magazine is published by the Mediahouse Berlin GmbH in Berlin-Kreuzberg; the sold circulation was 51,836 copies (IVW Q4/2018). Its ISSN is 1618-5129 and its website is musikexpress.de.

History

In January 1956, Musikexpress was founded in The Hague under the name Muziek Expres — to promote the concerts organized by the Dutch promoter Paul Acket. In the early 1960s the magazine published the programme of the pirate radio station Radio Veronica, which led to an increase in circulation — the music magazine and the pirate station, growing together in the Dutch pop explosion. The Veronica connection gave the young magazine something no competitor had: the offshore station's rebellious glamour and its young audience, the Dutch teenagers discovering pop music beyond the state broadcasters' control. The magazine that printed the pirates' programme became the pirates' paper.

In 1969 a German editorial office moved into offices in Cologne and since July 1969 has published an independent German version — the year of Woodstock, of the German student movement's aftermath, of rock music becoming the defining culture of a generation. The German Musikexpress arrived exactly when Germany needed it. For the 50th anniversary in 2019, a reprint of the first German edition was enclosed with issue 09/19 — the July 1969 original, reproduced for readers five decades later. Since 1971, Musikexpress has been published every month in Germany.

The ownership history traces the German music press's consolidation. In 1974 Acket sold the Dutch company Muziek Expres, with the Muziek Expres and Popfoto brands, to the VNU publishing group. Until 1975 the German editorial work was done in the Netherlands; from March/April 1975 Jörg Troska became editor-in-chief of the German editions of Popfoto and Musik Express in Cologne. In the same year, Musik Express and Popfoto were sold by VNU to Claus Grötzschel and Wolfgang Schrader — both managing partners of the Hamburg Sounds-Verlag, which published the magazine Sounds; in November 1975 they founded with Christian Kümmer the Christian Krümmer Verlag, which published Musik Express and Popfoto.

In 1983 the Sounds publisher Legath sold Sounds to the Swiss publisher Jürg Marquard, who already published Musikexpress and now brought both periodicals out under the double title Musikexpress Sounds — in a form that largely corresponded to the traditional music-and-journalism understanding of the Musikexpress. Numerous Sounds editors and authors jumped ship and moved to the magazine Spex — the 1983 merger as the founding trauma of German pop journalism's great schism: the Musikexpress traditionalists on one side, the Spex avant-garde on the other, a division that shaped the German music press for decades. After a takeover by the Axel Springer publishing house in 2000, the title became simply Musikexpress again — the Sounds name retired, the Musikexpress brand restored.

The magazine has appeared at the Axel Springer Mediahouse Berlin since the editorial office moved from Munich to Berlin in 2010. In June 2023 Axel Springer gave up its majority shares; the Musikexpress has since appeared — still alongside the German-language edition of Rolling Stone and Metal Hammer — in the Mediahouse Berlin, with publishing and editorial offices in Berlin-Kreuzberg.

Content and Concept

The Musikexpress covers rock, electro, hip-hop, pop and independent music with detailed interviews and articles on important musicians, reviews of recordings, concert reports and features on pop literature, pop art, films and DVDs. The monthly CD — accompanying each issue's topics, and since April 2021 reserved for subscribers delivered by post — makes the magazine a physical music object as well as a journal: the reviews you can hear. The CD tradition, maintained for decades, was the magazine's signature: new music, curated by the editors, in the reader's hands with the issue — the print magazine as record label.

The irregular extras — 7-inch vinyl singles, books, calendars, DVDs — turn selected issues into collectibles, a strategy that plays to the music press's collector audience. The magazine's tone is the knowledgeable fan's: serious about music, skeptical about hype, rooted in five decades of pop history. The Musikexpress voice — the German pop press's establishment voice, against which the Spex avant-garde defined itself — remains the reference for mainstream rock and pop criticism in Germany.

Coverage and Audience

The Musikexpress appears monthly, in German, from Berlin. Its audience is the German rock and pop public: readers who follow guitar music, electro, hip-hop and independent sounds with the attention of connoisseurs — the generation that grew up with the magazine and the younger readers discovering it through the digital brand. The sold circulation of 51,836 copies (late 2018) reflects the music press's structural crisis, but the title's 50-year continuity gives it an authority few German music magazines can match. Within the Mediahouse Berlin cluster — Rolling Stone, Musikexpress, Metal Hammer — the Musikexpress is the pop monthly: the broadest musical brief, the longest German history, the magazine that has covered every wave since 1969.

Ownership

The Musikexpress is published by the Mediahouse Berlin GmbH in Berlin-Kreuzberg — the operation that also publishes the German Rolling Stone and the German Metal Hammer, and which has been largely independent since Axel Springer gave up its majority shares in June 2023. The German Wikipedia lists Sebastian Zabel as editor-in-chief and Petra Kalb as managing director.

Digital Presence

musikexpress.de extends the magazine's music journalism online with news, reviews and features, competing with music blogs, streaming platforms and social media. The brand's digital operation serves the German rock and pop community between the monthly issues, while the print magazine — with its subscriber CD and occasional vinyl extras — remains the physical anchor for the collector audience. The June 2023 Mediahouse independence — Axel Springer giving up its majority shares — opened the title's next chapter: the veteran pop monthly, published from Berlin-Kreuzberg, on its own terms.

From The Hague in 1956 to Cologne in 1969 to Berlin-Kreuzberg today: the Musikexpress has documented popular music for the German-speaking world for nearly seven decades — through the pirate-radio years, the Sounds merger, the Springer era and the Mediahouse independence. The monthly with the CD, the extras, the five decades of pop memory: still publishing, still listening. The 2019 reprint of the first German edition — July 1969, enclosed with issue 09/19 — was the magazine's gift to its own history: fifty years of German pop journalism, reproduced for the readers who lived it — and for the next generation discovering the magazine — the Musikexpress story continues, monthly, from Berlin — since 1969, without interruption, every single month.