investigating music magazines.

Investigating music magazines

I am carrying out research about music magazines and the music magazine market; I will write a detailed report using both primary and secondary research. I am researching for ideas and information to make it easier to make my music magazine, and to also make my music magazine more realistic.

I first researched what magazines are actually available to purchase and the music magazines that are available are magazines are things such as ‘Q’, ‘Kerrang!’ and ‘Mojo’, there are over 100 music magazines just in the United Kingdom so it would be hard to name every single music magazine there is. There are so many types of different magazines because most of the popular magazines are different genres, because if there were a lot of magazines all the same genre of music not everyone would buy it. When I looked at who makes music magazines and found that Bauer publishes a lot of magazines. They also make the popular music magazines such as ‘Kerrang’, ‘Mojo’ and ‘Q’ magazine. TimeIncUK also publish popular magazines, and they publish the music magazine ‘New Musical Express’ (NME), which is a very popular British rock magazine. The publishers of magazines are basically the general manager of a magazine; they are large companies that are in charge of circulation, sales, production and editorial. Bauer publishers publish three different magazines; ‘Q’, ‘Kerrang!’ and ‘Mojo’ magazines. ‘Kerrang!’ and ‘Mojo’ magazine are more rock magazines which are about bands and rock music whereas ‘Q’ magazine has rock music, pop music, hip-hop and other genres. There are different genres of music therefore there are different music magazines are aimed at different people; this is because people like different genres of music and not just one type. ‘Kerrang!’ magazine is aimed at people who prefer rock/punk music because that is what the magazine is about, if people liked pop music then they probably wouldn’t buy this magazine. When researching the circulation of magazines I found a table showing the top circulated magazines in different countries, in the UK there was no music magazines on the list whereas in America the ‘Rolling Stone’ magazine was number 53 in the chart selling 1,469,267 in 2013.

53

Rolling Stone

1,469,267

1967

Wenner Media

This may show that music magazines are more popular in America than they are here in the UK, or that it is hard to find circulation for UK magazines. I think the trends in circulation of music magazines is declining as there are more things people can get information from, such as the internet and there are even music channels on the TV which have news about music and even celebrities on it, people may just watch that instead as that may interest them more, although certain people may like magazines more as they are physical copies and can take them anywhere, unlike the internet or a TV.  According to Media Finder, 82 magazines closed in 2012. that number might sound high its far lower than the 152 magazines that closed the year before. There were more magazines that closed in 2012 than magazines that launched. The ones that closed in 2012 are magazines such as 'healthy cooking', 'Nintendo power', 'whole living', 'sporting news' and many others, although there were no music magazines. Some of these magazines stopped printing copies of their magazine although they can still be found on the internet and may carry on for some time, I think mainly because it is probably cheaper to do it that way, and also more efficient and futuristic, as you can get most of the information that is in a magazine, from the internet anyway. The problem with using the internet as the only source is that you don’t have a hard copy. The content in magazines may vary as magazine have different genres, you can get a lot of different types of magazines with different information such as; photography magazines, fishing magazines, cooking magazines, music magazines, gossip magazines and sport magazines. These will all have different information in them because you wouldn’t buy a gossip or celebrity magazine and then it start to talk about photography or fishing randomly in the middle. The specific content in music magazines such as photographs and opinions could be similar on magazines if they are the same type of magazine, but if not then the pictures, opinions or the people featured on them wouldn’t be similar at all.
Music magazines sometimes use convergence to advertise their magazine on television, for example Kerrang is a music magazine that also has a music channel as well, sometimes convergence is used in magazines to advertise a television programme or a CD, examples of convergence between magazines and television are ‘Radio Times’, ‘TV times’, ‘What’s On TV’, ‘TV pick’ or ‘TV choice’.  An example of who reads music magazines would be people that like music, specific genres and bands. In music magazines there is usually posters and interviews of different artists, so maybe some people would buy a magazine as a one off because their favourite artist or band have an interview in it,  or maybe they had a photo shoot for the magazine and they would want to buy it to get that. I asked Megan, from my media class if she read any music magazines, and she said she didn’t so then I asked why she does not read music magazines and she said that music magazines cost a lot of money considering the factors that you can get the information off of the internet instead of buying the actual magazine. Also you can’t choose what is in a music magazine you just have to basically buy it even if there it 3 pages you want to read, if you go on the internet you can choose exactly what you want to read and find it really quickly. It’s also free information, you don’t have to pay. I don’t read any music magazines as I’m not really that into music, I read other magazines such as fashion magazines. I think music magazines are very varied and I don’t like just one genre of music if there is a song I like then I like it, I don’t like just one genre, this is mostly the reason I don’t read music magazines. If there were a new music magazine being published People would expect it to be different than other existing magazines, as if it’s not people would not buy it over existing magazines, unless it offered something better or different than others that already exist. A new music magazine could offer some freebies such as a competition like the chance to win a concert ticket, or a free item, this may persuade people to buy their magazine. I think acoustic music doesn’t really have its own music magazine, which people may be interested in, and I don’t think the indie-pop genre have many magazines, most music magazines are rock type of music e.g kerrang, NME and Q magazine. The reasons for this gap may be that their used to be these magazines but not many people bought them so the magazine folded, so no one has really bothered making any more because they would be losing money. The generic codes and conventions of a music magazine are that there is normally a picture of a musician on the front, being either a solo artist or band, they have the masthead big and bold like any other magazine. They include buzz words like ‘wow’, ‘new’ and ‘free’

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Music magazine planning.

music: mind map

Here I have brainstormed the word 'music' and wrote the things that come to my head when I think of the word music, I also researched the word music on the internet, I did this as I am making a music magazine and it may have given me ideas and inspiration for the title of my magazine and the genre my magazine is going to be about, which is something that might otherwise be quite time consuming.

music magazine investigation: magazine mood board.

To start off my music magazine investigation I have looked at different music magazines with different genres, and created a mood board, I did this to give myself an idea on what kind of magazine genre I could do and other ideas on things such as fonts, colours and pictures.

school magazine contents: draft

 Here is a draft that I did on the computer of the contents page that would be inside the magazine to show what is on which page. It also shows a letter from the editor of the magazine, and further teasers which there is boxes and an explanation of what pictures would be in them, it also would show where we can find the full stories. The 'Contents' title is the same font, colours and theme as the masthead on my magazine cover as it fits with the school colours.

school magazine: draft 2

I decided to change the picture on my front cover to this picture because it has more of a plain background and looks more professional

I am satisfied with this magazine cover, I think I could have done better with this magazine cover, if I were to do it again and I could change certain aspects I would probably do more with the background and just make the magazine look more professional using a different picture as the cover or editing the picture I have more and make the teasers all the same size, font and colour. To distribute my magazine I would sell it to pupils, students and teachers in the canteen because they have tills and people go there every day so it may catch their eye while they are buying food at break or lunch time. I went about producing my cover firstly by analysing other popular magazines to look at the usual codes and conventions of magazines, then I designed some masthead ideas on a piece of paper and decided what colours I would use on the font, on this magazine I decided to use the school colours (purple and green) as it is a student magazine for Emrys Ap Iwan.

school magazine: draft 1

I used the picture that I wanted to use as my front cover on my draft 1 and started adding a background.

then I started adding the conventions of the magazine.