The magazine initially focused on dance and easy listening music in the German Democratic Republic, and slowly expanded its content to pop and rock until its discontinuance in 1991.

From its launching to the 1990 German reunification, Melodie und Rhythmus remained one of the most popular magazines in East Germany with a circulation of 270,000 copies in 1989, only limited by the amount of paper.

In 1974, it established a colored outfit and, in December of that year, the Puhdys were its first modern rock band featured; eventually, Melodie & Rhythmus would become the main publication to report the developing Ostrock movement.

[7] After the reunification, Melodie und Rhythmus was acquired by the Berlin-based company Henschel-Verlag which discontinued it in February 1991 due to the flood of Western German music magazines.

For this relaunching, its content mixed coverage of well-known international stars and artists from the former Socialist Bloc which are not popular in the Western media, trying to "fill a gap", according to Der Tagesspiegel.