PG: “The publisher said that, soon after the magazine’s closure, work started on the digitalisation of the Melody Maker archive, with a company employed to electronically scan every page of every issue of Melody Maker magazine, with a view to making the complete searchable digital archive available online under the Melody Maker brand.”

Now the “technical aspects” of the project are complete, but there are still legal issues that need to be addressed. IPC says that “a range of business models” are being considered for the content.

Owner IPC Media last year reorganised its online ad sales team, consolidating different magazines’ sales people into single units. Sales for a would-be Melody Maker online would fall to the Ignite category that already takes care of online sales for NME.

The weekly magazine was one of the oldest music publications in the UK, running from 1926 until it was merged into sister publication NME in 2000 amid falling circulation. Currently melodymaker.co.uk redirects to the NME web site, and IPC has not returned calls asking when the online launch of the archive is to take place. An IPC spokesperson says, “We hope to make more details of our Archive project available within the next six months or so.”