NME.COM:AN EXPERT'S VIEW.(music Web site)(Brief Article)

NME. com may have a newlook but IPC's music site still seems old, Dominic Mansour argues

I've been asked to review the new NME.com website, which relaunched last Monday. I'm a huge music fan and follow my personal favourites closely (Bob Marley -- although his career seems a little stagnant in recent years, Massive Attack, Tricky et al). I also happen to fall perfectly into the NME.com target audience.

So why have I never spent any time on the site, other than to check that one of our ads is running as it should be? Surely the magazine's unique reputation for musical expertise and irreverent attitude would be copied to the online environment and appeal to me? Perhaps it's because I never used to read the magazine itself.

The new site has caught up with technology. Video footage of gigs and interviews of all my favourites (except Bob) are sitting waiting to be downloaded. There's plenty of links to online radio sites, impressive amounts of content, some worthy ideas and even live webcasts. However, the site's navigation and design is pretty basic. In fact, it's all a bit text heavy -- but perhaps that's because they have so much content at their disposal.

I'm not a big magazine man, but the electronic equivalents seem to suit my requirements much better than the paper versions.

I like the idea of being able to read about something (a band, for example) and click on a link from the "e-zine" to buy the thing I'm reading ...