Magazines have changed significantly over time due to various influences: - Smash Hits aimed at young girls brought a colorful, celebrity and gossip focused style that influenced magazines like NME to adopt a more pop culture oriented tone. - Loaded introduced objectification of women as a tool to gain sales and influence other publications through reinforcement of the male gaze. - Fanzines like Sniffin' Glue showed the potential of DIY publications without major publishers and fought against ideas that certain genres were corrupt. - The rise of MTV in the 1980s brought a new visual element but also provided magazines new content to discuss while potentially reducing sales by providing an alternative for music news.

1. How have magazines changed
and developed?
Media Studies
James Gardner 12Y

2. Influential Magazines
• NME
• Smash Hits
• Loaded
• Sniffin’ Glue
• Music videos/MTV

3. The development of NME
• The NME has made many changes
since it was first released in 1952.
You can immediately see that one of
the major changes is the
introduction of a far more colour
orientated design making it more
appealing to today’s audiences. You
can also see that they have changed
from their original broadsheet
newspaper print to a more glossy up
to date magazine look. The NME has
always been a magazine that treats
music like an art form but the
changes that magazines like Smash
Hits introduced forced them to
slightly change this attitude and
adopt a more colourful and
irreverent style to fit in with the
times.
These two magazines show just how much
Change the magazine has undergone in around 60
Years. You can see how they incorporate the male
Gaze theory in the more recent issue in the way
That Amy Winehouse is represented on the front
Cover (direct address weak/vulnerable etc.) You can
also see that the front page contains more buzz
words and previews of what it contains as this is
now the only way to captivate an audience.

4. The introduction of Smash Hits
Smash Hits was a magazine that was aimed at a much
younger audience than the NME as it was aimed at
young girls who enjoyed music. It arrived in the 1980s
and was around until 2006. Smash Hits brought a
new image to music magazines as it created this
colourful and childish take on a magazine and
because it sold so well it became the normal way a
magazine was made and this influenced most
magazines even influential ones like the NME. It
made looks become more important than content
which was the opposite of most magazines of the
time. It would give song lyrics for free in it’s issue and
interview pop-stars with ridiculous questions. It
created music ‘celebrities’. It was, at heart, a
childish, colourful and irreverent magazine for
children and in today’s music industry the younger
generation control it due to them being at an age
where illegal downloading is not yet known and
buying CDs and lusting after boy bands gives the
music industry it’s fuel to continue.
You can see from the magazines
design immediately that it was
designed for children as it uses a
variety of bright colours, it centres
attention on the boy band
‘celebrities’ and uses lots of buzz
words and free incentives.

5. The introduction of Loaded
Loaded first came about in 1994 and markets itself
as the magazine “for men who should know better”.
The construction of this magazine is strange in the
way it tries to be a lifestyle magazine but at the
same time it presents itself as a ‘lads mag’. It uses
the objectification of women to gain sales and it fills
a hole in the market as there is no lifestyle magazine
for men as men seem to like single-topic magazines.
The magazine also came out before the internet first
became a big thing so this helped it to gain lots of
sales due to it’s content and appeal as a ’lads mag’.
Loaded is an influential text in the magazine industry
because it managed to sell itself through the
objectification of women et it still disguised itself as
a lifestyle magazine for men. This reinforced the
usage of the male gaze and the objectification of
women in other published texts for example the
NME cover from earlier and the examples shown.
You can immediately see from the front covers
of these magazines that re massively complying
with the male gaze theory due to the way they
are portraying women on the front cover. They
also use lots of buzz words to bring in an
audience like naked, plus!, sex etc. They also
try to remain having the look of a lifestyle
magazine by putting lots of their articles and
content on the cover to make the magazine
seem crammed with content.

6. Sniffin’ Glue
• Sniffin’ Glue was a fanzine that started in
1976. It followed the punk genre which
was a genre that was not covered in the
media due to it being something that
society thought was corrupting the minds
of teenagers. The fanzine has a very DIY
look about it because it was glued together
by one man and then photocopied many
times to reach it’s audience. It was
influential because it showed people that
they could create a fanzine and make it
successful without the help of a major
publisher. It also was one of the first
successful fanzines to be produced and it
was revolutionary because it fought against
society’s ideas about the Punk genre being
corrupt by letting the fans of Punk get their
fix of it.
Sniffin’ Glue immediately looks very DIY in the
way everything has obviously been written by
hand and just stuck together to make a
magazine. However you can still see the codes
and conventions of a regular magazine cover.

7. Music Videos and MTV
• The introduction of MTV and music videos
brought about a huge change to the music
industry because the artists were able to
express themselves through a whole new
means, through visuals. It came about in
1981 and it affected the magazine industry
because it provided a new source to get
the latest musical news and hits so
obviously this would affect magazine sales
greatly as people were less likely to buy
them, instead they could get their news
and listen to latest song through MTV.
However music videos could provide the
magazines with more content to discuss as
sometimes the music videos present an
important part of that song.