Music Magazine Industry Research

The companies Bauer and IPC media, both deal with magazine production within the media, i will look specifically at the music magazines they produce.


Bauer's magazines are targeted at both niche and mainstream audiences, with Q being a mainstream music magazine, and Mojo and Kerrang being aimed at a niche audience.
Q magazine is one of the highest selling music magazines in the UK, and due to its popularity and large audience topics discussed in the magazine can be derrived from the world of sport, comedy, film and even politics, these intrest area's can also contribute as a defining factor to who the audience of the magazine will be, the price of Q magazine is
More niche audience's are targetted by the magazines Mojo and Kerrang. with mojo's audience being those who enjoy classic rock, and due to its latter production and affiliation with Q magazine, mojo can be seen as an almost sub genre of Q magazine.


IPC Media are the company which produce NME magazine, a magazine which aims at a popular audience (mainstream) and focuses on what is considered fashionable amongst music culture, and the genre's of music within the magazine, change over periods of time to whatever genre's is popular. The name itself "NME" when read out sounds like like the word "enemy" which connotes the attitude held by the audience of the younger generation, and as in some cases the genre's have been indie music, a sence of fighting capitalism maybe held.

Contents Page

Media Cover Analysis

Media, Magazine Cover Analysis
Q.

The
title of the magazine “Q” is significant, as the letter “Q” has the same sound
as the piece of musical terminology “Cue”, which in the sense music could mean
cueing up a record, getting the record ready to play.
This title may also be
relevent to the genre of music featured, which is generally Indie and older
bands, a mixture of new upcoming bands which will be succesfull, and looking at
those who are now succesfull but where once in a similar position to those
upcomers, due to this vast array of times regarding music lots of artists will probably be featured in the magazine, and therefore in relation to the Masthead,
lots of these artists are Cued up.

The Audience targetted by the magazine is a hybrid of who the mixture of genres appeal to; by this i mean i mean generally older generations, in this particularly people above the age of 30, due to having Roger Daltrey on the front cover - the lead singer of the who. Also a mixture of newer acts are featured like "The Ting Tings". Through this mixture, an almost niche itself is created of mainstream mixtures, e.g. Younger audiences who may listen to bands like "The Fratellis" also find a cult following in older bands that had a similar impact in the past; in this case "The Who". And working as the other side of the niche, is older audiences taking intrest in newer indie bands that would not normally have appeal to this. A juxtaposition is created also in this range of acts; i.e. the links of newer acts like duffy and Mark Ronson juxterposed with Paul Weller and other most mainstream acts of previous decodes. The gender of this age bracket dicussed is prodominately male.

The main image used on the front cover featured four men at a medium long shot, this is so that the majority of the figure can be displayed; i will now look at the mise en scene featured in this shot. Facial Expression is encompassed with mise-en-scene- when looking at the facial expression of Roger Daltery his smile and by putting him at the front of the shot, this connotes an introducing like stature ammongst the men in the shot - a "Proud to present" style towards the intodruction of the younger acts, which also links into the niche cross market of older and younger acts. All the males behind the front man, are almost expressionless and in relation to there relaxed body language and also proud stature, a connotation of masculinity is put forward onto the audience, and looking at the intended or prodominate audience of the magazine, this ideal self is connoted to the audience, a masculine person who takes intrest in music.

The use of font, colour and choise of words helps denote a sence of power and greatness amongst the magazine, the authors choice to use gold as the colour on the largest words, and the most well known of acts mentioned connotes this; and gold the colour itself has connotations of wealth and power. The General colour scheme is very simple and consists of only three colours, Red, White and Gold, all with connotations to wealth, and by using a simple colour scheme this makes the magazine appear quite sophisticated, which helps link in with the mode of address chosen by the author to speak to the reader; by using sophisticated colours which are simple and using a clear sans serif font, it helps put into context the Teacher/ Student mode of adress, lots of factual infomation. Items featured in the magazine would be featured such as using a Gold box again with Duets written inside in white, apposed to when it was written in Gold, this is a further connotation of importance to the concept being discussed in the magazine, and by having the word "20" written in gold it helps show the importance across all 20 acts that will be featured. Another Item used in the front cover is the masthead, "Q" is recognisable despite its simplicity due to mass popularity and its easy to remember logo, by having this ease of remembering a feature used in the cover is to have the front primary image overlapping the "Q" logo, because we know even when we cant quite see it is a "Q", we know it is "Q" magazine through the Serif Font and the use of trademark red square around a white "Q" with a drop shadow.

I will now look at the topic of mode of address, and as mentioned earlier, the mode of adress is a mixture of teacher/ pupil form of adress and parent /child, with the majority of methods adressing the audience not allowing an outside opinion to play a role into what the magazines audience thinks, for example numbered lists regarding opinion; such as "20 greatest Duets" and "The 10 worst musical actors", these listed style opinions cannot be argued in a sence due to the fact that they have already decided what is best and worst for the target audience, again connoting an ideal self, to the extent of opinions being influenced as well as image; e.g. the prodominate young/ middle aged males reading the magazine will see the front cover and adress fashions and combinations of genre, and then as they read on into the magazine they will find out bests and worsts regarding the things they enjoy/ dislike. Also regarding the teacher/ pupil method of adress, there is a great deal of infomation, so instead of telling mild gossip or things relevent to the age group, they look at wider scale issues, which will encompass facts, e.g. "Why retailers are bombarding us with tunes" and "New Albums" section, which will be very factual.

Readers are allowed to adress the magazine very quickly, the section "Q Mail" is put first before all the main body sections of the magazine.