This document outlines a magazine proposal focused on mainstream indie and rap artists. It will combine aspects of Billboard and Vibe magazines by including features on both established and upcoming artists. The target audience is 16-25 year olds interested in music and the music industry. The magazine will be published monthly and include articles, interviews, photos from concerts and festivals, and regular updates on artist news. Social media will be used to promote the magazine and engage readers.

1. My Magazine Proposal
Genre
Frequency
Target Audience
Similar magazines
Content
Ideas
Mood/Values of your magazine
Publicity
Unique Selling Point

2. Magazine Proposal I have chosen to do a mainstream
indie and rap artist magazine. I have chosen to do a
music magazine aspiring to be combination of Billboard
and Vibe as they are both extremely successful and well
known. I will style my magazine like Vibe as I will include
an eye catching simple front cover, a double page
contents and a double page spread. This will be similar
to Vibe as Vibe has a large amount of content in its
magazine as does Billboard, this being the reason why
both are quite expensive. However the information within
my magazine will be more of a combination of the two
due to my chosen established music content. However my
magazine will different as the layout of the main double
spread will have a different column structure and the
contents page will have more than one main image.
Therefore I will be including and combining different
aspects of both magazines to appeal to a broader
audience and to make my magazine more successful. My
unique study point will be that my magazine is going to
be about both the artists and the fans which means that
my readers will feel as if they’re getting key music
information whilst also feeling involved with the industry
also. My magazine will encourage both loyalty and support
as it will show how fans of the artists help make them
so established, it will also allow fans to get recognition
which I believe will be a good selling point. This is
Genre

3. At the moment I think I want my magazine to be
a monthly issue rather than weekly, this is
because in the world of music some weeks can
be considerably slow with not much going on in
them. I also think that a monthly issue will be
best for the type of magazine that I'm doing
because this way much more information is
included and its easier to get all of the months
goings on as they happen instead of in little
pieces every single week – week could become
too repetitive with the target audience. However a
monthly issue will mean that there will be more
pages in my magazine in comparison to a weekly
one because more information will be needed. On
the other hand, this also means that there will be
more interesting things to read about, the
important features of the month will be included
instead of meaningless, smaller stories in a
weekly magazine just to fill up the pages if its a
slow week.
Frequency

4. Target Audience My primary target audience will be 16-25 year
olds ABC1 males and females. I chose this age for my audience
as they will most likely have disposable income that they can use
to purchase my magazine, also because I believe this is the
typical age group where music is one of their main interests. Also
at this age they will have freedom and time to appreciate and
find interest in the music industry so will not only be able to
afford it but also use it for information and advice if they aspire
to be an artist themselves. My audience will be individualists as
well as main streamers due to the content of my magazine being
upcoming as well as established. They will have a strong interest
in the music industry and a huge interest in music such as Indie
and Rap, they will all mostly like similar artists such as Lana Del
Ray, Years and years ect. My audience will also have an interest
in social networking and use music accounts online to stream the
artists they like. My target audience is both male and female but
the ratio will be 55:45, this is because the genre of articles in
my magazine will attract more males than females as they might
prefer to read about the artists I will be involving. However both
sexes will be interested in concerts and reviews being the reason
I chose my target audience to be both genders. More over this
means that the indie style and fonts used in my magazine will
have to be very unique and bold but also neutral colours such
as white, blue and black, my target audience will buy my
magazine as they will want to keep updated with current and
exclusive new information within the music industry.
Target Audience

5. Similar Magazines
My magazine idea is very similar to magazines such as
Vibe and Billboard and Fader I chose to have a
magazine similar to these as I like the tidiness and
how professional the front cover and contents page look,
it is very clean and everything on the page is right in
your face and obvious to the eye. They are very unique
and they are unlike a lot of other music magazines,
this making them original, they include a variety of
artists and music genres, and this is perfect for my
magazine as it is two completely different genres but
that can also fit in well together in a magazine, as we
are shown in Vibe and Billboard.

6. Contents Page
I am going to include a vary of different features in
my magazine from articles and interviews from all
different types of artists for example upcoming artists,
establishing artists and old artists. I will also include
different images of artists and festivals so that my
audience can see everything that goes on with the
genre, location shots live from festivals, concerts and
gigs which not only creates a more exciting theme to
my magazine but also lets the audience know when
festivals are on. I will also include regular features
every month of the latest news on artists and
interesting stories, I will have to include a lot of
information as it is over the space of a month so it
gives me plenty of news to include

7. Ideas
At this point I have a good idea of what to include
in my magazine. Including photographs from both the
studio and location as it will make my magazine look
a lot more interesting and appealing to my target
audience, some of which could include shots of
upcoming artists and established artists taken in a
studio. Or photographs taken at festivals, from behind
the scenes or from the audience. I want to use bright
lights with dark colours and a dark main colour and
dark gels for my photographs to convey a sense deep
and eye catching photos relating to my target
audience.

8. Mood/Values of
Magazine
When creating my magazine, I would want it to fulfil
a variety of different purposes, I want my magazine to
be a serious but also fun and a way to escape real
life. I also want my magazine to be communicative
with my audience, for example I will like to include a
response section where the audience can right in and
go into the magazine. I would also want one main
colour which is used throughout, which makes me
magazine noticeable and eye-catching to the die-hard
fans.

9. Publicity
My primary target audience is 16-25 year olds, so I think that social
media would be a great way to put my magazine out there as a
lot of young people use social media and it is a very easy way to
see things such as magazine advertisements. A lot of magazines use
social media such as twitter and Facebook to gain feedback and
promote their magazine, I think this is effective because it gives The
audience a chance to interact with the magazine producers them
selves and let them know what is good and bad about the
magazine, this therefore allows the producers to gain the knowledge
of what the audience like so it makes their job slightly easier. I
would also create a website as well as putting it on social media
because it would be more in depth and contain more detail, so can
be used to inform my audience in addition with entertaining them.

10. Unique Selling Point
My unique selling point will be the audience feedback and the
amount of information in my magazine, the dark colours will
stay consistent throughout ever magazine so this will therefore
be eye-catching and effective. I will also include giveaways, just
for entering by signing a page in the magazine and sending it
off, the giveaways will carry each month and you can have a
chance to win huge freebies.