In mid-March 1993, Munich publisher Ulrich Scheele planned to launch another magazine for the entertainment media industry in 1981[3] founded publishing house Entertainment Media another magazine for the entertainment media industry.[4] He spoke to Stuttgart based music journalism Manfred Gillig-Degrave, who has worked successfully at various Hifi magazines such as Audio,[5] but had just suffered shipwreck with the music magazine Zounds, on how to proceed.[4] The Popkomm held in August seemed suitable as a showcase forum and its opening date was therefore targeted as the completion date. On 5 July 1993 the zero issue was available and the marketing campaign began. The campaign officially began on 9 August with issue 32/1993. In the following issues, starting with news from Austria and Switzerland, the service was expanded bit by bit.[4] In 1994, topic specials were published for the first time independent scene, multimedia law, radio landscape, Folk music. Furthermore, bi-weekly jazz charts were introduced and the first "Who-is-Who" poster with the contact details of label staff was included.[6]
Editor-in-Chief was Gillig-Degrave from July 1993 to July 2000. He then moved to Hannibal-Verlag, which specialised in music books, but returned to MusikWoche with effect from 1 January 2002.[5] Since July 2015, he has acted as editor. Norbert Schiegl and Knut Schlinger took his place.[7] In 2000/2001, Christian Stolberg (previously WOM Magazin, afterwards Musikexpress) replaced Gillig-Degrave as editor-in-chief.[8]
In 2007, the publishing house Gruner + Jahr acquired the entertainment media publications from Scheele and the Ebner publishing group, which now held a share of around 83 percent.[9] In 2014, after rethinking the strategic direction of the large Hamburg-based company, they were up for sale again. The newly founded Cologne-based company Busch Business Media seized the opportunity and has since distributed them together with the magazine range around MusikWoche and Blickpunkt:Film [de].[3] However, the editorial office was only marginally relocated from Aschheim near Munich to the Bavarian capital. According to estimates by market experts, the revenue for Gruner + Jahr was in the "higher single-digit" million range.[9]
