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.

aya, Joke Lanz, Satch Hoyt, Bios Contrast, Ailie Ormston, Trân Uy Đúc, MIC (Master Of Inane Conversation), Laura Cocks, John King, Invisible Jukebox: Alvin Curran, Epiphanies: Surgeon on William S Burroughs, The Inner Sleeve: Seymour Wright on Anne Gillis, Global Ear: Copenhagen, Unlimited Editions: Greyfade, Against The Grain: No more jazzy music. In the review sections: Gryphon Rue, Eska, Dead Pioneers, Ed Kuepper & Jim White, Kim Salmon & Masami Kawaguchi, Strata-East reissues, Music under Stalin, Matthew Shipp, Borealis, CTM, 160 Unity, Mona Mur, Carl Craig, Peaches, a tribute to Julius Eastman, Leigh Bowery, and specialist columns from avant rock to Size Matters. Plus: charts, letters, listings.

Also this month, all the magazine’s subscribers can download a copy of Below The Radar 47, the latest volume in our ongoing series of subscriber-only underground music compilations. The album contains new tracks, many previously unreleased, by Ava Mendoza & Malcolm Mooney, From The Lips To The Moon, Monika Badly, Adriana Morn, Kim Cass, Bianca Scout, Larry Wish, Degradation, Semay Wu, Nour Sokhon, YATTA, Duo Falak, Abdullah Miniawy, Lulenga, Felinto, and CECILIA. Get it here: thewire.co.uk/audio/btr.