The Wire

The Wire is the world's leading independent monthly music magazine. The first issue was published in 1982. More than four decades on the magazine remains committed to reporting on a dynamic global network of underground, alternative and experimental musics by publishing journalism and photography by some of the subculture’s most original and authoritative critics and observers.

A digital subscription gives you access to the complete online archive of back issues of The Wire since issue one, summer 1982 — that's over 40 years, 470 issues and 40,000 pages. Click here to read the free trial issue, or click here to see the full archive.

Digital only subscriptions can be bought by clicking the Add to basket button below.

Print subscriptions — which also include free access to all the digital issues — are available direct from  The Wire shop priced from £41 for six months — click here for details.

If you subscribe via The Wire or Exact Editions you can view the complete archive online as well as via the iPhone, iPad, Kindle Fire or Android apps. Please note that if you subscribe via an app, you only get access via that app.

Digital subscribers also get full and exclusive access to The Wire's complete archive of audio downloads in the Below The Radar series - click here for details - and The Wire Tapper series - click here for details.

For details on campus-wide digital subscriptions for institutions, please email support@exacteditions.com.

2024 Rewind: the Year in Underground Music, including the Top 50 New Releases of the Year, the Top 50 Archive Releases of the Year, our critics’s cultural reflections, our columnists’ genre charts and analyses, and essays on healing sounds, feedback, analogue tech, and compact discs. Plus: features on Bridget Hayden, YATTA, the history of algorithmic music, Sakina Abode, Oranssi Pazuzu, Black Rain, and Michael J Schumacher. In the regular sections: Invisible Jukebox: Pat Thomas, Global Ear: Zurich, Unlimited Editions: Strategic Tape Reserve, The Inner Sleeve: Pamela Z, and Epiphanies: Rafael Toral. In the review sections: BEAM SPLITTER + Phil Minton, Emahoy Tsege-Mariam Gebru, eat-girls, Diemajin, The Haunting, Degradation x Iceman Junglist Kru, George Rayner-Law & Stonecirclesampler, Dominic Goodman, The High Llamas, Bryan Ferry, Phil Manzanera, Joe McPhee, feminist sound studies, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Semibreve and much more.