The early years

FACT started out as a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 bi-monthly music and youth culture magazine

Magazine

Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...

. It was founded in 2003.

The magazine became notable for commissioning covers by the artists including M.I.A.

M.I.A. (artist)

Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam , better known by her stage name M.I.A. , is an English singer-songwriter, rapper, record producer, painter and director of Sri Lankan Tamil descent. Her compositions combine elements of hip hop, electronica, dance, alternative and world music. M.I.A...

, Bat for Lashes

Bat for Lashes

Natasha Khan , also known by her stage name Bat for Lashes, is an English musician. She sings and plays the piano, bass, guitar, harpsichord and the autoharp....

, Shepard Fairey

Shepard Fairey

Frank Shepard Fairey is an American contemporary graphic designer, and illustrator who emerged from the skateboarding scene. He first became known for his "André the Giant Has a Posse" sticker campaign, in which he appropriated images from the comedic supermarket tabloid Weekly World News. His...

, Barry McGee

Barry McGee

Barry McGee is a painter and graffiti artist. He is also known by monikers such as Ray Fong, Lydia Fong, Bernon Vernon, P.Kin, Ray Virgil, Twist and further variations of Twist, such as Twister, Twisty, Twisto and others.-Life and career:McGee graduated from El Camino High School in South...

, Peter Saville, Trevor Jackson, Klaxons

Klaxons

Klaxons are a British indie rock band, based in London. Following the release of numerous 7-inch singles on different independent record labels, as well as the success of previous singles "Magick" and "Golden Skans", the band released their debut album, Myths of the Near Future on 29 January 2007....

 and Brazil's Os Gemeos

Os Gêmeos

Os Gêmeos are graffiti artist identical twin brothers from São Paulo, Brazil, whose real names are Otavio and Gustavo Pandolfo. They started painting graffiti in 1987 and gradually became a main influence in the local scene, helping to define Brazil's own style...

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FACT reached a circulation of 28,000 (25,000 UK and 3,000 overseas)and readership of 100,000+ per issue. FACT is available free from independent record stores, selected clothing outlets and music/arts venues in the UK, and in France, Germany, Spain and Japan.

Factmag.com

In 2005 Fact Magazine went digital and in 2008 it became exclusively an online magazine. The FACT web site, with regular updates throughout the day and a bigger audience than the print magazine, quickly grew to become the main focus of the editorial team's activities.

Fact's main editorial drivers have always been to surface new talent in the music domain before any other media.
In 2009 it started to showcase the best of the marriage between music and art within a vinyl context.

Fact's strategy daily very much centered around the download and streaming of exclusive tracks. Every week Fact also offers free mixes by a plethora of the world’s cutting-edge DJs.

Fact's has a world wide network of bloggers that write on a regular basis for the magazine.

Fact is part of the Vinyl Factory group.

Dr Martens advertisement controversy

In 2007, some controversy was caused when Dr Martens placed an advertisement in FACT featuring manipulated photographs of a number of dead rock music

Rock music

Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...

ians so that they appeared to be wearing the company's boots in heaven. When families of some of these musicians saw the advert, they reacted angrily, leading Dr Martens to dismiss their advertising agency, Saatchi & Saatchi

Saatchi & Saatchi

Saatchi & Saatchi is a global advertising agency network with 140 offices in 80 countries and over 6,500 staff. It was founded in London in 1970 but now headquartered in New York. The parent company of the agency group was known as Saatchi & Saatchi PLC from 1976 to 1994, was listed on the London...

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