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.

School magazine: pictures

I am thinking about using this picture as my school magazine front cover, as it shows a sixth form student going into the sixth form area. It reaches the brief by being a medium-close up and being of only one student. The person in the picture is also looking posing for the photo by at the camera and smiling.

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These pictures are good but I decided to use the first one as its better quality (because I turned the flash on)

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 I didn’t want to use these pictures for my magazine either because, although they are good pictures and represent the school in a positive way (because she is doing her work) she doesn’t look like she’s posing for them, which does not apply with the brief for the work, and doesn’t work with the usual conventions for a magazine

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 I didn’t want to use these two pictures because there is too much writing already on it and there wouldn’t be much more room to write on the front because of the signs she is posing in front of.

                                                                                       

School magazine: masthead

To start off our school magazine I did a spider diagram on the computer of a few masthead ideas and what the masthead needed to be like.

I drew some ideas on paper as what I wanted the masthead to look like, things such as the colours, font and font size. I decided to call my school magazine '#emrys' so that is what my masthead says, I want to under line my masthead and have the prize in some sort of shape by the side. I will now do a draft on the computer and take pictures to go on the cover for my magazine.




I Then went back on to the computer to look at different fonts in which I could write my masthead in, and decided which to use.

task 2: teasers

today we looked at different magazine teasers, I looked at GQ magazine, ELLE magazine and OK magazine.

 This magazine has teasers on the left hand side. They show part of the story that are in the magazine, but not the full story, they are there to make people want to buy the magazine to read the full story.  The way teasers are written are in the least amount of words possible. The teaser in the middle which is bigger than the rest, most probably because it is the most important or the best story they have got in the magazine, it has more information that the rest because it has bullet points about the story but still does not give away the full story, you can also tell because the size of the font is the same size as the masthead.  The other teasers at the side are secondary teasers. This magazine has 4 teasers and they all have pictures of who it is about.
                                                               ELLE magazine has a lot of teasers on the front which are all a similar size this could mean there is no main teaser or secondary teasers, although there is a picture of a celebrity on the front and her name is written in a teaser in bold, this could be the main teaser but as there are about 10, it is hard to tell. This magazine is cluttered with a lot of words and a lot of teasers, 2 of the teasers are even written in between the letters of the masthead. This magazine looks more of a fashion magazine more than a gossip magazine, OK magazine looks more like a celebrity gossip magazine because it is a paparazzi’s picture on the front and not a photo

This magazine is kind of a mix between both of the above magazines; this has 6 teasers on the front, and the main teaser is about Harry Styles from the boy band One Direction, you can tell this is the main teaser because there is a picture of him on the cover as the main image and the name ‘HARRY’ is wrote in capital letters almost as big as the masthead. This magazine is not as cluttered as ELLE magazine but has more teasers than OK magazine, I think this one looks more appealing than OK magazine as the photo on the front is clearly from a photo shoot whereas the photo on that one looked like a paparazzi picture, which does not look as professional.

task 1: masthead

our first task was to look at different magazines and analyse the masthead of them, we had to look at things like the size and colour.

LOOK magazine is a popular fashion and celebrity gossip magazine; it is that popular that the masthead is covered by celebrities heads almost every time. The name of this magazine ‘look’ tells that it is most probably going to be something to do with fashion, and as on most issues the colour of the masthead font is either pink or red with a female celebrity on the front shows it is targeted for women, you can also tell this as there are women’s clothes on the front. Another magazine like this with the masthead almost completely covered is Vogue.




Other magazines that are not as popular or long established and well known do not have the masthead covered; this may be because when people are looking for it, if the masthead is covered then they may not find it, or if it’s not popular they will have to put a masthead on their magazine so people will know what magazine it actually is.




Bazaar jewellery magazine does not have its masthead covered because it is not a fashion magazine it is just for jewellery, so you would probably only get this magazine if you were specifically looking for it, if it does not have a masthead it would be harder to recognize and find.

what makes a magazine influential.

in the first lesson of media we looked at magazines and the different types of magazines, why they were influential and what actually makes them influential, I chose to analyse OK magazine.



OK magazine is an influential magazine because it shows pictures of celebrities, interviews and stories about them, this is influential because people may want to change the way they look or do things to be like celebrities or a certain celebrity. Some celebrities want to be in this magazine because they know it is a popular and influential magazine. OK magazine is similar magazine to HELLO magazine, OK magazine is similar to HELLO magazine which was launched in the United Kingdom in 1988 and covers over 100 countries, whereas OK magazine's first published issue was in April 1993, which could mean OK magazine could have been influenced by HELLO magazine.