music genre magazine analysis

1. Media Presentation
By Abiya Shah
A-1

2. History and Origin
• Rolling Stone is a New York based Magazine founded by music
critic Ralph J. Gleason and Jenn Wenner in San Francisco in
1967.
• The name of the magazine had 3 inspirations;
- a Muddy Waters song ‘Rollin’ Stone’
- Rock and Roll band The Rolling Stones
- Bob Dylan’s song ‘like a rolling stone’
• It initially started out as a music magazine and identified with
the current ‘Hippie counter-culture of the Era’
• In the very first edition of the magazine, Wenner wrote that
Rolling Stone “is not just about the music, but about the things
and attitudes that music embraces.”

3. • In 1970s, they started a political section
• In 1977, the magazine moved its headquarters from
San Francisco to New York City.
• During the 1980s, the magazine began to shift towards
being a general "entertainment" magazine.
• Music was still the main topic, but there was increasing
coverage of celebrities in television, films and the pop
culture of the day.
• An annual "Hot Issue” was also started around this
time.
• In the 1990s, the magazine changed its format to
appeal to a younger readership interested in youth-
oriented television shows, film actors and popular
music.
• This led to criticism that the magazine was
emphasizing style over substance.

4. Criticism • One major criticism of Rolling Stone
involves its generational bias toward
the 1960s and 1970s.
• One critic referred to the Rolling Stone
list of the "99 Greatest Songs“
• Rolling Stone magazine has been
criticized for reconsidering many
classic albums that it had previously
dismissed, and for frequent use of the
3.5-star rating.
• For example, Led Zeppelin was largely
written off by Rolling Stone magazine
critics during the band's most active
years in the 1970s, but by 2006, a cover
story on the band honored them as
"the Heaviest Band of All Time".

5. Print Format
The first publications, in 1967–72, were in
folded tabloid newspaper format, with no
staples, black ink text, and a single color
highlight that changed each edition.
The printed format has gone through
several changes.

6. From 1973 onwards, editions were produced on a four-
color press with a different newsprint paper size.
In 1979, the bar code appeared.
In 1980, it became a gloss-paper, large format
(10″×12″) magazine.
As of edition of October 30, 2008, Rolling Stone
has had a smaller, standard-format magazine size.

7. Website
• The articles and reviews are
sometimes in a revised form of
the published versions. The
website also carries political
and cultural articles and entries
selected from the magazine's
archives.
• Rolling Stone's website features
selected current articles,
reviews, blogs, MP3s and other
features, such as searchable
and free encyclopedic articles
about artists, with images and
sometimes sound clips of their
work.

8. Covers
Some artists have graced the cover many times, some of these pictures going on
to become iconic.

9. • Editor-in-Chief:Ernie Rideout
• Frequency: Monthly
• Publisher: Joe Perry
• Company: NewBay Media, LLC.
• Country: United States

10. Keyboard magazine is a
magazine that originally
covered electronic
keyboard instruments and
keyboardists, though with
the advent of computer-
based recording and
audio technology, they
have added digital music
technology to their regular
coverage, including those
not strictly pertaining to
the keyboard-related
instruments.

11. • Over the years, the print and online
editions of the magazine have moved
into discussions on anything related to
gear.
• The editors and writers of the magazine
have covered historical information and
stories on the development of
keyboards from their inception with
pioneers such as Moog Music.
• At times, editorial and guest articles in
the magazine have covered subjects
including music philosophy and
keyboarding instruction, music theory
and harmonics.

12. • Rock Sound is a British magazine whose main focus is on rock music.
• The magazine aims at being more "underground" and less commercial, while also
giving coverage to more well-known acts.
• It generally focuses on pop punk, post-hardcore, metal core, punk, emo, hardcore,
heavy metal and extreme metal genres of rock music, rarely covering indie rock
music at all.
• A tag-line "For those who like their music loud, extreme and non-conformist" is
sometimes used.
• It is published monthly
• Although primarily aimed at the British market, the magazine is also sold in Australia,
Canada and the United States.

13. History
• The British edition of Rock Sound
was launched in March 1999 by
the French publisher Editions
Freeway.
• The magazine was bought out by
its director, Patrick Napier, in
December 2004.
• The magazines offices are in
London.
• The magazine is well known for
including a free CD in most issues,
which has tracks from bands' new
albums that have not been
released as singles.

14. Front Cover Analysis
The very first issues of the magazine had a
different logo from the one used today. Serif
fonts and lower case letters were used.
The featured band or artist’s name was written
in big, eye capturing colors along with a
picture of the whole band or just the front
man.
As the magazine started out in 1999, Barcodes
have been present on majority of the issues of
Rock Sound.
Over the years, a rise vibrant colors and titles
has been seen.
The logo is different as they let go of the lower
case serif font and adopt an upper case san-
serif font.
Although a lot has changed over the years,
the tradition of a free CD with each issue of
the magazine was carried out up until
recently.

15. Each issue also comes with two page
spread posters that also carry the
magazine logo and the band’s name.

16. Audience
Rock Sound caters to the youth, but
as it sometimes also features some
old bands such as Metallica in a
2009 issue , it may also be targeting
an older audience.
The past few years as the magazine
has changed its layout. Bright eye
catching colors are used as can be
seen in the comparison of an issue
published in 2009 and one published
in 2015. the date of the issue and the
price are printed on the barcode.
The tradition of giving out a free CD
with each issue has ended but
instead, more posters have been
added to try and make up for it.
Although it can be clearly seen that
they have diversified their main
genre and now feature indie artists
such as Halsey, they still stick to their
roots and have a well established
place among other Britain based
rock magazines like Kerrang! and Big
Cheese