Key Concepts

Representation Research- My genre for my magazine will be rock/indie music. Rock music is normally represented by being very aggressive angry and dark. The colours of a rock magazine are normally bold colours eg black, red. Also they have many bright but bold colours most rock magazines contain colours like oranges and bold blues. Indie magazines have a calm feeling to them. They normally go with the basic white, black, and grey and then have an stand out bold colour. They never normally go for neutral colours. They do this to make it stand out. My magazine will be a mix of these as my magzine is a mix of rock and indie. gathering a wider audience. I shall make my magazine stand out and be bold like a indie magazine but I also shall have an angry tone to it as it also is rock a magazine example for this is NME and Kerrang these magazines create a great rock atmosphere and have a huge audience that manage to keep buying their magazines every week. i would like my magazine to be along the lines of them magazines as they are very successful and give a good example of a leading magazine. I  choose rock/indie not just because i am into this genre of music it is because i know their is a gap in the market for a magazine like this as i am questioned many people with the same genre of music as me and we agreed it would be perfect to have another magazine like kerrang but a little bit toned down. and this is why my magazine shall be perfect for my audience and the gap in the market. i shall disturbte my magazine through festivals, on tv programmes eg E4. also having them at gigs. and getting people to do reviews or tweeting us their thoughts so they can be in our magazine and possibly gain more followers with the same opinions as you.

Audience - I think the reason why music press remains so popular is because everyone is interested in music whether its rock, classical or pop. People all like music and they all want to know what’s going on with their favourite artist or band. As we have grown so have ways of presenting information people now use the internet to find out information where as others like to believe that its un reliable and still want to buy music magazines. I believe the reason that it remains so popular is the fact that everyone enjoys music. The simple reason for this is that they are able to sit down, flick through the pages and finish within a time limit getting all the relevant pieces of information. The more popular magazines that are sold are the rock and heavy metal magazines instead of the mainstream dance, pop music magazines.

Institution - The magazine NME gets its money from its circulation 20,011 copies sold per week. Also they make most of their money by advertising. To advertise in an NME magazine it costs £6,920 per advert in the magazine.  Kerrang magazine has wider assests and get a wider audience as they have a radio station, online website and TV channel. This creates a much bigger audience than just having a magazine because Kerrang is then on most technology for everyone to listen/watch/read. Kerrang and NME manage to retain their readers by adding freebies, competitions and always having a main big article with the biggest artists/bands out on that week. 

Conventions of music magazines –

 

Front Cover – with music magazines on the front cover you usually expect to have a well known artist on the front cover dragging the audience into the magazine because they want to know more about why this famous artist/band is on this magazine. They also use very strong and interesting cover lines to grab the reader’s attention. The images on the front cover are normally very eye catching maybe close up’s or a band doing something crazy. They mostly always put the photo in front of the magazine name to show the importance of this artist/band and to show they don’t need their magazine name to be the biggest thing on the page as it is already very well known and makes many people want to buy this magazine. Also mostly every music magazine has buttons to for fill the front cover as they are normally very busy with lots going on this makes them stand out and again attract the readers.

 

Contents of the magazine – Many music magazines include bundles of interviews, photos, behind the scenes, freebies, festival information.. They do this to make the readers think they are getting their money’s worth. This helps sell the magazine and also helps promote artists/bands/festivals. Very known to music magazines is having a double page spread of a known artist or band and the article tends to be very honest and opinionated they also do this with reviews on new songs and albums. They include many more things like tour dates, upcoming festivals or past festival gossip. This makes readers feel involved with the music industry and like they we’re there with the bands/artists. Music magazines also include freebies to make the readers feel they are getting their money’s worth.