PowerPoint of music magazine research

1. Music and magazine research and
planning.

2. 1. What is a music magazine
• A music magazine is a magazine which focuses its information,
advertisements and entertainment aspects on a specific music
genre. It will include things such as stories, adverts, previews,
exclusives relating to the specific genre.

3. 2. What content would you expect to find in a
music magazine?
• Usually you would expect to find text. This will include stories,
interviews and previews relating to the genre of the
magazine. You will usually see double page spreads of
interviews with famous musicians and whole page
advertisements. Also images are commonly used, every page
usually includes a image relating to the magazines genre or
the content on the page itself. Also you will see albums, other
artists and concerts for the same genre and sometimes other
genres for advertising purposes.

4. 3. What images would you expect to find in a
music magazine?
• The images in a magazine completely relate to the genre of
the magazine, however you will predominately see images of
artists relating to the special story in that mag, if there isn't a
main story then a famous icon from the genre will usually be
portrayed. Also usually you will see images of events, where
they are and a image of what they look like to advertise the
tickets and to bring the event to life for the audience. Also
there will be images of products advertised, this could be
anything from any company in the world, they do not always
stick to items relating to music e.g. the football magazine 4-4-
2 you see men's perfume adverts with a whole page imagine
of the bottle and its features.

5. 4. Identify general characteristics/ features that
you would expect to find in all music magazines?
• In most music magazines the main feature you would expect
to find on the cover a main image. This will usually be a image
of a artist/band member who's music will relate to the genre
usually. Also you will expect to see aspects like the price of the
magazine, the date of publish and a strapline and cover lines,
telling the audience the what is inside the magazine and
providing bare details of the purchasing of the magazine
whilst portraying what the mag is all about.

6. 5. Identify the features/ characteristics
they all have
• All four of the magazines have a masthead. On one of the
magazines this if laid out in an unusually format which
potentially could effect the sale of the magazine. They all also
include straplines giving details about what is inside each
magazine. Each magazine has a wide range of colours, each
one sticks to a colour contrasting with the genre however
each mag is not bold or bare the colours attract nicely on the
naked eye

7. 6. Why are these features present on all of the
magazines? Why are important?
• These features are Important as they give the magazine its
own DNA in a way, the unique straplines, mastheads and
images relating to genre makes the magazine attract to the
audience otherwise it wouldn't sell and wouldn't provide
entertainment. The price and fate published are important as
the audience can know what they are spending and the date
allows the audience to keep up to date with the
weekly/monthly releases, if this wasn't included the audience
would not be able to keep up and therefore may loose
interest.

8. 7. Take one of the magazines covers and say
what type of music magazine it is
• Top of the pops is a pop music magazine. Firstly we can tell this from the colour
scheme. The colours used are pink, blue and white. These are happy, up-beat colours
which relate to the style of music, as an audience we see these colours and expect
happy, jolly music which you could dance to. Another way we can tell this is a pop
magazine is the font and style. We see pink bold capitals, some swirly font styles and
the text is large over the front cover. Again the writing is quite informal or seems
unorganised, pop music is associated with a younger audience who are seemed as less
formal. Immediately when we see the font we think happy music aimed at a younger
audience and pop fans would be attracted to this as it represents their style of music
and even lifestyle. Another way we can tell it is pop is the main image. We see famous
UK pop group One Direction who are one of the biggest pop groups of the last three
years in the pop world. When we see this we know that they will be included in the
magazine along with similar artists who will attract to the same target audience and will
most likely produce the same style of music. Finally the last aspect which shows us that
it is a pop magazine is the name which is ‘Top of the Pops’. This relates to a famous
show which shows music however simply the title just saying ‘pop’ tells us all we need
to know about the genre.

9. 8.Who do you think the target audience is?
• The target audience is most likely young girls ages 10-
13. This audience is more connected with the latest
pop music and the technology surrounding it. Also
band like One Direction attract to this age, however
boys of the same age are not as closely connected to
this side of pop music as that moves more to R and B.
One Direction and similar acts mostly aim their music
at young girls, there music is seen as being more girly,
fun and stats show that their music has been listened
to by way more girls than boys. Placing them on the
front is an easy target audience attracter and young
girls will immediately be attracted.