The Wire (or simply Wire) is a British music magazine publishing out of London, which has been issued monthly in print since 1982. Its website launched in 1997, and an online archive of its entire back catalog became available to subscribers in 2013. Since 1985, the magazine's annual year-in-review issue, Rewind, has named an album or release of the year based on critics' ballots. Originally, The Wire covered the British jazz scene with an emphasis on avant-garde and free jazz. It was marketed as a more adventurous alternative to its conservative competitor Jazz Journal, and targeted younger readers at a time when Melody Maker had abandoned jazz coverage. In the late 1980s and 1990s, the magazine expanded its scope until it included a broad range of musical genres under the umbrella of non-mainstream or experimental music. Since then, The Wires coverage has included experimental rock, electronica, alternative hip hop, modern classical, free improvisation, nu jazz and traditional music. The magazine has been independently owned since 2001, when the six permanent staff members purchased the magazine from previous owner Naim Attallah. Publication history The Wire is a monthly magazine that specialises in a diverse spectrum of avant-garde and experimental music. A 1999 subscription flyer for the magazine advertised its subject matter as "non-mainstream" music. In the late 1980s and early 1990s The Wire transitioned from exclusive coverage of jazz to coverage of contemporary music in general, maintaining its prioritisation of the avant-garde. Since its founding in 1982, its monthly circulation has reportedly ranged from about 7,000 to about 20,000. Within the American and British music journalism markets, The Wire was among a generation of music magazines launched in the 1980s. That decade also saw the debuts of The Face (1980), Kerrang! (1981), Maximumrocknroll (1982), Mixmag (1983), Alternative Press (1985), Spin (1985), Q (1986), Hip Hop Connection (1988) and The Source (1988), among others. According to writer Simon Warner, The Wire took on a level of "influence disproportionate to its niche readership" compared to other music magazines born in the 1980s, because "not only listeners but music makers and producers were drawn to its columns." Most of these magazines, The Wire included, differentiated themselves by targeting a narrow segment of readers based on demographics and taste. This was commonly done, for example, by devoting coverage to specific musical subcultures as Kerrang! did with heavy metal or The Source with hip hop. Another