What is the NRS?

The National Readership Survey is a 'joint company between in the UK between Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA), the Newspaper Publishers Association (NPA) and the Periodical Publishers Association (PPA).'

It gives information about audience research about magazines and newspapers in the UK. It covers over 250 of the major newspapers and magazines, showing the size and nature of the audiences they have. Here are some results from music magazines:

From these results we can see that a total of 156,000 people read NME/New Musical Express and 93,000 of them are in the ABC1 group which is the upper class and more wealthy. 63,000 people from the C2DE group - the middle class read NME so from this we can tell that more of the upper class read NME. 

The next category is 15 - 34 year olds which shows that 97,000 people of that age read the magazine. Then 59,000 of the readers are 35+ so we know that more of their readers are younger. 

However the NRS doesn't always give the best information as the range of audience is too big. The 15 - 34 year old category is a rather wide range and there is a big difference between the ages. So it suggest to us that all the readers in that category have the same interest whereas they probably don't and could only share the same music taste. 35+ is also a rather large age range so therefore it is more difficult for the results to be accurate.