2. Kerrang! Magazine
This is the cover of the latest issue of
Kerrang! Magazine .
Kerrang! is published by Bauer Publishing.
It was first published in 1981
3. Audience
Bauer Media states that the audience profile fro Kerrang! is: ‘Individually minded,
independent of thought and musically experienced, an audience defined by
attitude, passion and loyalty.’
This chart shows both the circulation and readership of Kerrang!
800 125
700
Readership (000's)
Circulation (000's)
100
600
500 75
400
300 50
200
25
100
0 0
Jan - Dec 01 Jan - Dec 02 Jan - Dec 03 Jan - Dec 04 Jan - Dec 05 Jan - Dec 06 Jan - Dec 07 Jan - Dec 08
Readership (000's) Circulation (000's)
4. Here is the official Kerrang! Readership
profile.
6. Publisher
Bauer Media is a division of the Bauer Media Group, Europe’s largest privately
owned publishing Group. The Group is a worldwide media empire offering over 300
magazines in 15 countries, as well as online, TV and radio stations.
Bauer further expanded in the UK with the purchase of Emap Consumer Media and
Emap Radio in 2008 to become the UK's biggest publishing group.
It was founded in 1875 and is now one of the biggest publishing companies around
with it’s large international span. It’s based in the following countries:
•Germany •Czech Republic
•USA •Mexico
•Spain •China
•France •Russia
•Austria •Slovakia
•Poland •United Kingdom
•Portugal •Nigeria
•Romania
•Hungary
7. Magazine Content
The graphics have moved on with the years as technology has progressed, however,
the conventions of both issues have stayed the same. They both have anchorage and
menu bars and the logo. The logo has changed dramatically as better technology has
come along. The logo has gone from being cartoon and comic like to a more edgy look
of simple black and white with a look of smashed glass. The type of artists and colours
that are used change as the audience changes as they need to keep their audience
interested in their magazine.
26/01/11 8 May 1993 issue No. 442
8. Advertising/Sponsorship
Kerrang! Magazine uses it’s radio station to advertise the latest issue. Kerrang! Are
sponsored by Relentless Energy Drink on some occasions. Together they create a yearly
tour which takes in around 13 UK cities.
Convergence has enhanced Kerrang!’s popularity as it’s many different medias will
bring in different audiences and all of them will be connected up to social networking
sites such as Facebook which their radio uses everyday to get the audience more in
touch in a way that will not cost them and they advertise this more than they do with
texting and calling in.
One example of synergy that they use is when they embed videos in to their website.
They use these videos to show interviews and also the latest music videos of the
hottest bands.
9. Web 2.0 and NMT
Kerrang!’s website is similar to an internet magazine in the way that it has interviews with bands
and competitions on there too. However, to add to that there are different sections of the website
for different products that they produce, for example, they have a section specifically for the
magazine. In this section you get to see the front cover of the magazine and the two main articles
in photo form and then it gives you a brief outline of what to expect in the latest issue. They also
have a Twitter, Facebook and MySpace account which helps their audience get in touch with them.
To make it more digital than just articles they have video interviews and also they post latest music
videos and the latest tracks from the biggest bands.
The physical magazine will have the best articles will be published and all the others will be posted
on their website. The website has the use of videos which no paper format magazines have which
is an added bonus. This is them synergising with other types of media. Kerrang! is now a brand
name that has many different publications. They have Kerrang! Magazine, Kerrang! Radio and
Kerrang! TV and their website backs all of this media up.
12. The future
If I was the editor of Kerrang! I would not change the type of magazine it is and I would
still focus on type of music it caters for. I would only add similar music genres to the list if
one became very popular with our target audience. Kerrang! has changed over the times
as it has moved from a metal and punk magazine to a more softer emo and pop punk
magazine. By doing this it has gained a larger female audience than it once had. In the
past it has been a more of a male audience.
In the next five years I think Kerrang! is just going to keep on growing and growing until it
reaches its high. I don’t think it will die out for a while as it has converged and synergised
so well with various media’s and collaborating with other companies.
14. Has the audience undergone any significant changes? Why?
How? What are they? Does it change how audience’s use,
benefit from or enjoy the magazine (uses and gratifications
theory)?
The audience has not really changed, only grown in a sense. Over the years Kerrang!
has changed the genre of music it focuses on by adding to the genres they already focus
on. By doing this they have reached a new audience; females are now more interested
in Kerrang! They have managed this by having the emo stereotype as one of their
focuses as a audience member. I don’t think this has changed how people use or
benefit from the magazine. They may have lost some audience members from when
they focused more on metal music but in the long run they have gained new members
by introducing pop/punk.
15. Is there anything that has or could affect
interest in your subject area?
The music scene has been facing tragedy since illegal downloading became possible.
Singers aren’t making as much money as they used to even if they are at the top of the
charts. The charts used to go on how many CD’s had been bought but now as hardly
anyone is willing to go out and buy a CD they rely on downloads to create the charts
now. At one point Radiohead allowed their album to be legally downloaded and didn’t
specify what price they wanted their customers to pay. This is a sign that the music
industry is becoming desperate. They will do anything to get they money they need to
survive, like Radiohead have shown. Another singer who has took the fall is Lily Allen;
she has left the industry out of her own free will as she sees it as a dead end for her.
She won’t have been getting what she wanted out of it so in most peoples eyes she is
doing the right thing and is now getting money out of TV programmes and creating her
own clothes line. I don’t think that CD’s will come back into the picture; it is always
going to be downloads whether it is legal or illegally done.
16. Has the magazine changed (or adapted) its style or content? You
might take a look at a range of covers to detect what type of
photograph is dominant.
These are a few issues of Kerrang! One from it’s early years and two from its more recent
years. The photographs used are all the same style: the artists of the main feature article.
They also use all the conventional techniques of using a mid shot. Even one of the latest
issues that has seven different artists on the cover still uses mid shots.
8 May 1993 issue No. 442 03/01/2007 26/01/11
17. Does it have a central purpose i.e. passing itself off as a
'definitive guide', creating a social space for a particular social
group, offering you a lifestyle choice etc.?
Kerrang! gives the emo scene social space as it focuses on them as one of the target
audiences. It offers them a lifestyle by showing them the way into the emo scene. It
gives people something to follow, trends to follow, music to follow. It focuses on the
music they will like as the emo scene is focused around music. In most cases music is
their life and Kerrang! touches on this element.
The stereotypical emo world
18. Have sales and web traffic increased or
decreased over the years?
In an article on Media Guardian it compared all music magazines and told us who was
falling year-by-year and who was growing. It said: ‘Bauer's Kerrang! leapfrogged Metal
Hammer to take fifth spot with a respectable 4.5% uplift in year-on-year circulation to
42,967. The title fell 2.4% period on period.’ However, beforehand it said: ‘IPC Media's
NME, which was the only title in the sector to report a double-digit year-on-year fall,
had a circulation of 32,166 in the second half of last year, a 5% fall on the previous six
months.’ This just shows how well Kerrang! is doing compared to it’s major rival NME.
The graph below shows how Kerrang!’s web traffic has increased over the past year.
The website had its peak time in the summer of 2010 which is understandable as more
people will be off work and off school
or college. But what the graph does
show us is that overall Kerrang! has
increased their web traffic as in
February 2010 they only had 10,018
visitors and now in February 2011
they have 22,285 visitors.
