About us

Since its first issue in April 1923, Gramophone has grown up alongside the classical record industry. In our pages we have followed the latest technical developments – which today, of course, includes downloads – greeted the greatest talents and watched the repertoire expand to embrace music that our founding editor, Sir Compton Mackenzie, would not have dreamed possible.

Gramophone came about because of one man's passion for music and his desire to see the record catalogue - pretty restricted in 1923 - embrace the greatest works of Western music. Mackenzie championed any initiative that enriched the offerings of the record companies and used his monthly editorials to stimulate the industry to action. He was joined in this task by his brother in law, the broadcaster Christopher Stone, and together they ensured that classical music of record received serious and informed criticism in the pages of Gramophone.
 
Three generations of the Pollard family (Cecil, his son Anthony, and his son Christopher) steered the fortunes of the magazine through some Golden Ages in the record industry (the post-war rebuilding of the industry and the arrival of LP, and, three decades later, the explosion of productivity engendered by the birth of the CD). In 1999, Gramophone was acquired by Michael Heseltine's Haymarket Group and the 'brand' has expanded beyond the paper version (and a handful of foreign language editions which deliver a worldwide circulation of about 90,000 copies) to become a much-visited destination in the digital world, initially with gramophone.co.uk, and now with gramophone.net which hosts the magazine’s entire archive.
 
In April 1923, Compton Mackenzie promised to 'write as servants of the public, and if we sometimes take upon ourselves a certain freedom of speech in dealing with our masters, such freedom of speech is the privilege of all good servants'. It's a philosophy, combined with his desire to 'obtain the finest opinions procurable', that persists to this day under the latest generation of editors. We pride ourselves on being the most-respected and most-authoritative commentator on recorded classical music - and our international readership and online constituency continues to support that ambitious claim.