Full analysis of one music magazine

NME has been the best-selling music magazine in Britain since the 1970s, and with a current readership of 411,000, it is still going strong. It has the most-viewed website of any music magazine in Europe. With 1.3 million unique users generating over 13 million page impressions, www.nme.com is the U.K's premier music content website.
All the little things that make up NME contribute to the target audience. For example; the website at the present moment consists of announcements of festival line-up's and news on when the tickets will go on sale. This shows that people who read NME will enjoy attending festivals and are therefore more likely to be younger. It is a weekly published magazine, therefore would be a regular feature in a persons life, although to spend time reading a magazine every week, you need spare time. Who has spare time? Students. Also, the pricing strategy is low enough for a student, being priced at £2.20 makes it affordable for any student per week. The sort of things NME will adverise will also relate to younger people's lives, for example, NME has worked successfully with advertising brands such as; McDonald's, Rizla, Strongbow, iPod, Lynx, Levi's and the list goes on. However all these brands and companies are included in a young person/student's lifestyle. McDonald's; students are seen as lazy and unable to cook, therefore fast food is perfect. Rizla; younger people are all seen to smoke far more than healthy as it is an act out against society, which all younger people want to do, obviously. Strongbow; all young people are thought to drink excessively, especially students at University. iPod; these are definitely aimed at the younger generation as old people don't seem to get on with technology. All of these products and brands that are advertised in NME are included in a stereotypical lifestyle of their target audience, a young person. Also they advertise other brands for the older part of their target audience, as their target audience is 17 - 30 males. They do this by advertising; ING Direct, HSBC, The Sunday Times, The Guardian and Specsavers.

Initial ideas for your own music magazine

My original target audience was mainly male’s, aged between 15 and 25. They would mostly come from a working class background and would be working class themselves, most likely employed in a small café, or McDonalds, or Tesco etc. Fairly unimportant jobs, e.g. working on tills, shelf-stacker. Most likely to be in full or part time education, at high school/college/university; therefore mainly aimed at students. I wanted it to be at a price affordable every week for a student. Therefore I believe £2.99 was the right price. I believe it comes under the ‘Genre Specific’ category as it only really revolves around the ‘indie’ and ‘dubstep’ genre. I would expect my magazine to be sold in big supermarkets, like Tesco, and also smaller newsagents and off-license stores, for example; McColls.

NME Feature Article Analysis

The colour scheme is blue, black, white and red. This is because these are easy colours to use as they can be used in contrast to each other and make things stand out. They’ve used four colours so they do not go over board and look like a piece of art a six year old child has made. They have used a pull quote to point out a key quote from a band member which would usually relate to the audience, in this case it is about teenagers constantly having sex on their mind, which is a stereotype they have been fitted with. This is backed up by the posters of women not wearing very many clothes on the wall behind them. On the side it gives you things that the magazine have suggested for you, it’s almost like a ‘if you like The Teenagers, then you might like these…’ section. Also the fashion of the boys would allow the target audience to relate to them, as that is the sort of clothing that is fashionable at the present moment. The picture used is of the three boys laying back, relating to the stereotype of teenagers being lazy.

Institutional Data 'Music Magazine'

NME MEDIA KIT:
Key Facts
Price: £2.20
Frequency: Weekly
Circulation: 56,284
Readership: 411,000
Launch Date: 1952
Male/Female: 73%/27%
Average Age: 25
ABC1: 73%
Target Market: Men 17-30

NME, or The New Music Press, is a trusted and well-known brand and has been around for 59 years. It is categorised as a music tabloid. It is published weekly and has a readership of 411,000 people. This has grown rapidly over the years, as people became more familiarised with the brand. It has a very loyal readership, many of them with subscriptions to the magazine. In the 1970s it became Britain’s best-selling music magazine. As you can see it is mainly aimed at men in their mid-20s. You can tell this by looking at some of the articles included in NME and also due to the imagery used on the front cover. However, over the years it has changed its image and its format. For example; in the 1970s it was more of a newspaper set-out and was more aimed at the punk-rockers, due to the outburst of punk at that time. NME is now based mainly around the indie genre, but also includes artists from other genres in articles.

break down of cast, props, setting, location for magazine pictures.

For all three of the photo's I used a female teenager. This was because she fitted in nicely with my target audience. I decided on a girl because I thought you can get away with more shots of a female than you can with a male; basically some shots that a female poses for, a male would look unconvincing posing like it.

For the front cover image, I made sure, from the angle I took the shot, that there was enough room to the right of the person to fit the text on the cover nicely and make it look coincidal. I took the photo whilst the girl was standing infront of a plain white wall, this was to make it easy for the image to stand out, also for when the text went onto the white wall for the front cover, that it would be easily readable. Also this make it easier to make certain parts stand out. I decided to take all three photo's in the same hallway, in the same college. This is because my target audience are most likely to be students, so would be familiar to this environment and could then familiarise themselves. I did not tell her to wear anything specific as I knew her fashion style was exactly that of my target audience, so I just let her chose. For the contents page image I just got a bit of a background of classrooms and hallways, so, once again, the reader can relate to it. With the actual image of the female I just asked her to look straight at the camera and smile, as I did not think the contents page particuarly needed anything out of the ordinary, I thought a nice inviting photo would look good there. I had her sitting on the floor because i wanted to get some different angles and heights to stop the photo's looking too familiar. However for the double-page spread image, I made sure she wasn't fully in the shot. This was because she could have then took up the majority of a page so people knew who it was. I asked her to look down and smile, this is because this is a regular reaction if someone laughs at something, and I wanted it to look as if I had asked her one of the questions in the article and that was her reaction. Also, the character she was being comes across in the media as quite a happy person. So this shot was perfect and fitted well. Also, leaving a plain white wall to the left of the female made it easy to write the article and make the points i needed to stand out, such as my pull-quote, easy.

Front Cover

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Mood Board Analysis

The demographic profile of my chosen magazine’s target audience is roughly aged between 15 and 23. I think the percentage of my audiences’ gender would be about 65% male and 35% female. In terms of regionality, they would be working class, therefore living in suburban areas or estates. Things that they like would be; parties, Facebook, Blackberry’s, branded clothing, gigs, socialising, and ‘junk’ food, as displayed on my mood board. The stereotypical teenager is seen as lazy, mainly unemployed, and if they did have jobs, they would be very low importance job, e.g. shelf stacker at Tesco, or a till-worker at McDonalds. All the things that would really revolve around a teenagers life cycle have been included in this mood board. What they would watch on tv; Family Guy/Skins, where they would eat; McDonalds/KFC, what they would do in their spare time; Facebook/socialise/drink alcohol and party. I also got the 'student' aspect of it across as they are most likely to still be students at the target age. I have done this by encluding EMA and students graduating in my mood board.

Institutional data 'Overview of Industry'

Institutional data ‘overview of industry’
IPC Media produces over 60 iconic media brands, with print alone reaching almost two thirds of UK women and 42% of UK men – almost 26 million UK adults – while our websites collectively reach over 14 million users every month.
IPC's diverse print and digital portfolio offers something for everyone, with a focus on three core audiences: men, mass market women and upmarket women.
Our men's portfolio (IPC Inspire) comprises a wealth of leisure brands including Country Life, Horse & Hound, Rugby World and Decanter, as well as lifestyle brands including Nuts, Mousebreaker and NME.
Our mass market women's division (IPC Connect) comprises famous women's weeklies including Look, Now, Chat and Woman; TV entertainment brands including What's on TV, TVTimes and TV & Satellite Week and, online, the goodtoknow network.
Our upmarket women's division (IPC Southbank) comprises luxury fashion brands including Marie Claire and InStyle, lifestyle brands including woman&home and essentials and home interest brands including Ideal Home, Livingetc and housetohome.

Analysis of IPC Media
IPC Media are a mass market business, meaning they range across many different classes of people and genres of leisure’s. It reaches from ‘Mousebreaker’, the online games website, to ‘Marie Claire’, the women’s fashion magazine. They have a massive influence on what we do, where we go, what we eat and what we are, as their so powerful. They reach across both genders; with males, they cover from ‘Country Life’ to ‘Nuts’, gaining a massive audience. Whereas with women, they have two different groups; mass market women and upmarket women. They have two different names for their two different sections of women. The mass market section is called ‘IPC Connect’ and the upmarket called ‘IPC Southbank’. The mass market section covers things such as; ‘Look’ magazine and the ‘TV Times’ magazine. Whereas the upmarket section covers ‘InStyle’ magazine and ‘Ideal’, the home interest brand. Due to IPC Media owning all these brands, they have a lot of power and can influence almost everything we do and how we live.

Analysis of Kerrang! Feature Article
The colour scheme of this article is very goth/rock, black, red and white all contrast together and are very much related to the Goth or rock genre. Also the pictures being in black and white relate back to these genres. The main image used is of a gig, which shows their target audience as people who would rather go to gigs than sit in and watch x-factor. Also the fact they have a shot taken in the studio shows they make their own music, not like someone like Simon Cowell, once again relating back to their target audience. They have an inset in the form of a capital ‘M’, this automatically draws attention to the beginning of the paragraph. Quote used as the title, written in white and red writing, which creates a contrast against the black and automatically stands out. Various other shots are used which relate to the article. Practically the whole of one half of the double page spread is used entirely for images, the other being for the story and a few smaller images. This is so the reader doesn’t look at the text as if it were a long essay, find it daunting and eventually not even read the article. However the fact they’ve got ‘WORLD EXCLUSIVE’ plastered at the top of the main image will also attract readers, as they would want to know things that maybe not everyone knows.

Analysis of NME Contents Page

This contents page has got a blatant colour scheme to it; black, white, red and yellow. These are colours associated with NME, as the title on the front cover is originally in red, which they have used inside the contents. Also the contrast created by the black and white makes things easy to read and also stand out. They have only used one image, which must relate to the main article, as it is splashed right in the middle of the page and takes up quite a lot of space. The image is of a well-known indie band, Kasabian, inside a church hall, which relates to the title of the article, ‘Kasabian got romantic in a church’. This would also create a bit of humour as Kasabian are not the stereotypical Christian people who attend church. NME also include a little snippet of the main story underneath the headline, this is to give the reader a little taster of the story, to see if it interests them, if so they will carry on reading on the other page. A band index is also included on this particular contents page, this would allow the reader to easily access the page of their favourite band or maybe even just bands that interest them. Down the left hand side of the page you have everything else you need to navigate your way around the page, such as; News, Reviews and Features. This contents page is very useful for the reader as it is very easy to find out where you want to go, which would keep the reader happy. An advert is included at the bottom of the page, funnily enough for NME. The information on the contents page is hopefully interested the reader enough to make them want a subscription, hence the advertisement.

Analysis of Kerrang! Contents Page

This is a classic Kerrang contents page, containing lots of pictures, a contrast of 3 or 4 colours, a note from the editor and a quote from a featured artist. The colour scheme consists of yellow, black, red and white, all colours relating back to genre. Kerrang seem to be more interested in image of the genre rather than music, hence the big amount of pictures, for example; the picture of You Me at Six posing as a spoof of the film ‘Shaun of the Dead’. The types of things they contain in their magazine are; gigs, articles about artists that fit in the genre, reviews, news and feedback. This is all to attract their target audience, because if one thing does not attract them then another aspect of it may, for example; if they are not interested in reviews they may want some news of the rock world. The white background creates a contrast with all the writing on the page, making it stand out and easy to read.

Analysis of Kerrang! Front Cover

In this issue of Kerrang it promotes its main article which is ‘100 Greatest Gigs Ever!’ which obviously shows their readers would go to gigs, therefore they would be moderately younger. You automatically get an idea of the genre of music this magazine is about from the bands mentioned, e.g. Metallica, Green Day and Bullet for my Valentine. Their colour scheme consists of black, white, red and yellow, colours more associated with the Goth group of people. The main picture is of a well-known musician playing a guitar, which relates back to rock genre. All the images are shots taken whilst the musicians are playing their concerts, which relates back to the main article. Also it mentions other bands at the very top of the page, bands like; Enter Shikari, Linkin Park, NOFX and Led Zeppelin, which all fit into the rock genre and would appeal to all the target audience. The front page contains 7 images , Kerrang are well-known for using many images on both front and contents pages, I believe the reason for this is that maybe if one of the images doesn’t interest the reader, then one of the others will, it is an incentive to buy the item.

Analysis of NME front cover
Straight away you can tell the target audience of this magazine just by the main image. It is of a young-looking man with bright red hair. This would appeal to younger people as older and middle-aged people do not tend to dye their hair outrageous colours. Although NME is predominantly aimed at a younger audience, it also appeals to slightly older people as well, by using pictures of older musicians, such as; Iggy Pop, Debbie Harry and Syd Barrett. I believe the genre of this magazine ranges all across music. It contains artists such as; Rihanna and Magnetic Man, who are seen as maybe r & b or chart singers, however it also contains rockier bands, such as; My Chemical Romance and Alice Cooper, reaching out to more of a varied audience. NME say themselves that their gender percentage of 411, 000 readers is about 73% male and 27% female, at an average age of 25, which is perfect for them as their target market is men with an age range of 17 – 30. They believe 73% of their social status of readers to be in the ABC1 groups.

Potential Pictures for Music Magazine