Price/Publishing

When thinking about the price of my music magazine and and how often it will be published, it is very important to focus of my refined target audience. The reason for this is because of the group my refined target audience fits into. Most people of my target audience do not have a lot of desposable income to spend on a lot of things, magazine being included and so this needs to be taken into consideration when thinking about the price and the distribution of my magazine.
I decided to reserach other magazine's prices and publishing. Nme is currently, £2.20 and is brought out weekly every Wednesday. Kerrang is also the same, at the price of £2.20 and is also published weekly. If someone in my target audience were to buy this magazine every time it is published, they would spend an average of £8.60 a month. Q magazine is a monthly published magazine and is prices at £4.99.
After researching other magazine's prices and publishing, I decided to price my magazine at £3.99 and publishing it monthly. When making this decision, I based it around my target audience. I decided to bring the magazine out monthly at a slightly larger price apposed to NME and Kerrang because if I brought my magazine out weekly at a smaller price, it all adds up at the end of the month and there is a great chance that my target audience may not be able to afford the magazine weekly. However, I decided not to price my magazine at an as high price as Q as because to my target audience, £4.99 on no desposable income, can be seen as quite expensive. Additonally, I decided to publish my magazine monthly due to the fact that it builds tension and excitment to my target audience in regards to what is going to happen in next months magazine as I feel if it came out weekly, it the loses this feature.

Refined Target Audience:

After analysing 3 different music magazine front covers, content pages and feature spreads, I had a better idea of what things were included in different styles of magazine which where targeted at certain niche audiences. Due to this, I felt it important to narrow down my target audience using demographics and psychographics.
Democratics are grouped into 5 different groups, technically 10 if you count each being also seperated into gender. When creating my music magazine, I have decided to choose a target audience of a democratic group of people ages 15-24 years old. The reason for this is because I think, after research, the stylistic of my magazine would be much more appriciated by people of this age and the music I plan to include in my magazine is mostly listened to by people of this age category.
Additionally, I decided to narrow down my target audience further using S.E.G. S.E.G is split into six groups. There are two groups I am aiming my magazine to be aimed at; E - Casual labourers, unemployed, state pensioners (13% of the population) and D -  Semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers (18% of the population). The reason I have chosen these two groups links with the democratics of my audience. Due to the age of my target audience, most of them will either; be students at school, college or university, part time working students, young people working in apprentaships or people with full times jobs. Due to these circumstances, they fall right into these caterogries in which I am wanting my magazine to be targeted at. Young people with full time jobs are probably the lowest percentage in this list.  

Market Research:

I decided, before thinking about my own front cover, to research exisiting popular music magazine front covers to see the conventions that they included and to give me my own ideas and insperations for my music magazine.




Q Music Magazine Front Cover-

Language - The deonatiation of this magazine front cover shows one main image, the famous artist Lady Gaga. We can tell that this is her because her name is included on the magazine itself. The masshead of the magazine is included on the magazine, it is bold and therefore stands out which is important for a magazine. The magazine's price is £4.50 which is included on the magazine's front cover. As well as this, different features and bands/artritst that are included within the magazine are also included on the front cover. I believe this is very important as this is one of the main reasons why people would buy the magazine, because of the bands and artists included in the magazine. Doing this draws not only the target audience of the magazine in, but also people who may not read the magazine but after seeing a band or artist that they like featured on the magazine, may consider buying it.


Institution - The institution of this magazine is Bauer Media.


Ideology - The ideology of this magazine front cover, I feel, is to make the magazine look and feel very modern and daring, in an attempt to grab the audience's attention. The reason I believe this is because of the image used on the front cover. It is very 'out there', daring and different from many images that are usually used on music magazine front covers. I feel that it gives off a very modern feel to the magazine because of the casaulness as it were of the image used shows how it is socially acceptable it is for women to pose for photos without being fully dressed in our modern day society. I also feel because of this, it is showing the liberation of women which is very modern, but bringing a hint of class and indervidualness to the image, unlike images we would see on the cover of magazines such as Nuts or FHM.

Audience - Due to the specialist style of the magazine it is obvious that the magazine is targeted at a niche audience rather then a mass audience. Due to this, the magazine's target audience become a lot more narrower. This means that people without a specific interest in the certain styles of music included in this magazine would not willingly go out of their way to buy this magazine as aposed to a different music magazine, not only because of this but because of the actual price of the magazie itself because compared to other magazines, it could be seen as exspensive to someone who is not interested in this type of music. Due to the bands and artists included on the magazine's front cover; eg Lady GaGa, Madonna, Vampire Weekend, Jimi Hendrix, Gorillaz, etc, the magazine instantly grabs the attention of the pacific target audience because the reason that they buy this magazine is because of the bands and artists themselves that are included in the magazine. The bands and artists may not be mainstream and so would not appear in many other, if at all any other magazines and so grab the audience's attention straight away. I think the age of the target audience would be between 15-late 20 year olds, possibly pushing early 30's. The reason I believe this is, is because stereotypically, it is assumed that older people would not find this magazine, the features included or the music that the magazine is based upon ineresting or in the simplest of words - 'their cup of tea'. Due to this, the magazine's target audience is narrowed further.

Representation - I think that this magazine front cover is represented to be very futuristic, out of this world and cool. When I look at it, I get this almost speechless kind of feeling because of the oddness and weirdness of the photo because of what Lady Gaga is wearing and I think other people would to. Personally, I believe this is what the creators of the front cover wanted to give of to their target audience one, because Lady Gaga is included on the cover and she is known for her weird and wonderful outfits and two, because I think that the people who buy this magazine want to feel different to other people buying other music magazines, the reason for this being is because they want to feel cool and different for buying this certain magazine.  

Q Magazine Feature Spread -

Language - Through out the magazine feature, a colour scheme of red and black is used. We can see this in the red writing used and the red boxes put around certain parts of the interview and the black writing used throughout the magazine. Linking with this colour scheme is also the front page as we can see that red is used on the title and some of the features included on the front page. Due to this, we can see the linking connotations through out the magazine and due to this, we presume to see more linking of colours through out the magazine. The colour scheme is broken down however in the actual interview itself, the questions to Lady GaGa being in red and her response in black. This gives the reader a clear visual image of what they are reader without actually reading the writing itself.

On the bottom of each page, the magazine’s logo, magazine’s issue date and the magazine’s website is included as well as the page number. Each of these things have been added for a reason, these being; the magazine’s logo, I think, has been added so that the audience never quite forget what magazine they are reading as they are constantly reminded with the logo, the same can be said also with the magazine’s issue date, the website has been included on each page, I think, so that the reader is constantly seeing this website URL and so, subconsciously think about going onto the website and the page number is obviously added so that it is easy for the reader to find a page/feature/article/interview/etc that they want to see by looking at the content page.

Institution - The institution of this magazine is Bauer Media.

Ideology - The ideology of this magazine’s feature spread from what I can see, links very much to the ideology of the front cover of the magazine due to the linking photography being used. The futuristic feeling towards Lady GaGa’s outfits and ‘out of the world’ quality of herself follow through into the magazine’s feature spread due to the similarity of the style.

Audience - As apposed to the front cover of the magazine, it can be argued that the actual feature spread within the Q magazine is targeted at a larger audience then the niche audience that the front cover targets. The reason for this is because the front cover of the magazine, due to the specialist information included (things like non main stream artists, gigs, etc) targets a niche audience. However, the Lady GaGa feature spread targets a larger audience because; she is very well known due to her main stream music, the genre of music which because some people say it does not fall into just one genre of music, it can be further targeted at a larger audience. Additionally, it targets a larger audience due to the fact  that she is very well known due to her being constantly in the public eye.

When putting an actual label on the audience however, it quite hard to do as Lady GaGa has a huge fan base ranging in age most definitely. However, I would say that this feature spread, due to the fact that Lady GaGa is in it, would target an audience of people from early teenage years to late 30’s. Mostly a female audience and very much so a gay audience.

Representation - There are many different representations to this feature spread. I believe the message wanting to be put across to an audience as a whole, taking into consideration the outfits/costumes worn by Lady GaGa, link very much so with the representation of the front cover of the magazine due to linking outfits/costumes being worn and used throughout the magazine and the same style of photography (camera angles, distances from Lady GaGa in the photos, etc) been used. Therefore, the representation has the same linking ideas of being a very ‘out of this world’ due to outfits worn by Lady GaGa, giving off a very futuristic feeling to the photos used in the feature.

A representation that could be argued for and against is liberation VS un-required nudity. Some people would say that Lady GaGa’s outfits that she wears through out the magazine are liberating. They would think this because of the fact that Lady GaGa is not wearing a revealing outfit that would be seen on the front cover or in a magazine such as Nuts or Zoo, but she is wearing a revealing outfit with class and sophistication.  Some people would additionally say that the way that Lady GaGa is, just as a person and her music is breaking down the barrier for women in the music industry and a lot of people can see that male artists dominate the music scene and have done so in the past.

However, it could be argued that Lady Gaga, in this feature spread as well as in the public eye, is just a pretentious woman who is just trying to be different and uses this as an excuse to be able to wear very little clothing. The reason for this is because it is a known fact that of this magazine, most reader’s are male and so, some people would say that she is just posing in this certain way, with a small amount of clothing on, so that male readers can look at her. Additionally, some people could easily get the impression that she is doing this in an attempt to sell her music as in the interview she is obviously talking about her music.

X magazine front cover -

Language – The mass head is included in the far left hand corner. We instantly now what the magazine’s mass head is due to the word magazine actually being used in the title as well as the large X used within the title of the magazine. The X is a well known symbol to the target audience of this magazine, as this magazine has been specially created and targeted at the popular TV talent show, X-Factor. Due to the actual X symbol being used, it is a simple convention used to grab the target audience’s attention and make them want to buy the magazine as they recognise the symbol. 

-The denotation of the magazine front cover shows one main image as well as other smaller images which relate to the text which is either next to or on top the smaller images. The main image is a photo of Danni Minogue at a medium close up and she is looking at the audience with a direct mode of address. We as an audience can instantly what her name is due to it being in large, white standing out front in front of the image. Due to the larger image of Danni Minogue, we presume that within the magazine, she will have an interview, or has had some recent publicity within the X-Factor. The smaller images are all mostly bands or artists, which links in with the obvious musical content of the magazine itself. However, in the top right hand corner there is an image of models fashioning clothes with text linking with fashion. Due to this, it is obvious that the magazine is not just targeted at music and also, due to this we instantly presume, due to stereotypes, that this magazine is targeted at a female audience as well as the pink and white colour scheme used on the text included on the magazine front cover as well as the borders for the text. Additionally, there is also a piece of text which says ‘WIN tickets to the live show!’. This immediately would grab the target audience’s attention to buying the magazine due to the fact that the target audience have bought this magazine due to the actual theme of the magazine (the X-factor) and so would buy the magazine due to the chance of winning tickets to go to a live show. Linking with this, is a colour scheme, in some sense. This button as well as the banner on the bottom of the magazine are the only things on the magazine’s front cover that are in a bold yellow colour. The reason, I think for this is because subconsciously, the colours grab a person’s attention and make them take into consideration to what is included within the yellow outlines.

- A barcode, price, issue number, date and information on the publicity is included on the magazine within the white box in which the barcode is included. It is important that the price has been included as it is a key feature that the target needs to know. The issue number and date is also important as the target audience can keep up to date with what issue is being sold as well as which one they are in need of purchasing. The publicity is also very important to be included on a magazine, however is not always included on the front cover of magazines. The reason for this is because the target audience instantly know how often the magazine is published and then know and have an understanding of how often, if they are dedicated to buying the magazine, how often they need so buy the magazine and how often they will need the money to buy it.

Institution – Haymarket Network

Ideology – The ideology of the front cover I feel is to create a girly and fun feeling to the magazine. Other magazines, like Q have very daring and individualistic styled photos included on the front cover. However, this can put some people off buying the magazine, people who don’t like ‘weird’ things and anything different to what they are used to seeing in their every day society. They find photos and ideas like these intimidating and off putting towards a magazine. These styled magazine don’t seem to be an easy read as it were, not something you could pick up and have a browse of whilst enjoying a nice cup of tea and a biscuit, they are they types of magazine that due to their specialist content, need attention when read. However, the ideology of this magazine, just by looking at the front cover I feel is a type of music magazine that although include a specialist type of music (X-Factor sang musicians) it is a type of magazine that can easily be read due to no sophisticated language used on the front magazine cover and all connotations being very simple. It is as if, although the magazine is dedicated to music, has elements of a gossip styled magazine with celebrity gossip culture due to the appearance.  

Audience – It is clearly obvious that the main audience of this magazine are people who watch and have an interest with the popular TV talent show, the X-Factor, due to the fact that this is what the magazine as a whole is based around. However, when looking furthering to the target audience, due to the colour scheme used on the front cover, as well as the main image, the bands/artists included in the magazine and the features it seems that the magazine is stereotypically aimed at a female target audience. Reasons for this can be seen when looking further into each of these features of the cover; the main image – Danni Minogue is well known by the target audience due to her appearance on the X-Factor, however due to her TV programme on ITV, Style Queen, she is also well known in the fashion industry, additionally due to her small singing career and her sister’s fame. These elements make her more instantly well known to women and not so much a male audience as stereotypically, men do not have a great interest within fashion. The colour scheme – the colour scheme used on the front cover is pink and white, the pink dominating over the white. Pink is a stereotypical girl colour and so, appeals to women more then men. The smaller images – most of the smaller images are boy bands or models fashioning clothes. The boy bands who have been included on the front cover are well known by females not just for their music, but for their looks. This is another feature which targets a female audience as they would buy this magazine to see their favourite looking stars within the magazine. This feature again, makes the magazine targeted at a more female audience. Additionally, both of the boy bands have a different target audiences which widens the audience of the magazine. JLS is a band most ‘adored’ as it were buy a younger audience of young teenage girls. Take That, being older targets an older audience. Due to this, women of different ages would be interested in buying this magazine.

Representation – I think the front cover of this magazine is representing a modern day pop genre of music as well as a pop celebrity gossip news culture and in doing so, following the stereotypical audience of people who the genre of music included through the bands features on the front cover and also the programme that the magazine is based on. The front cover is represented to be very feminine and girly with all the features and connotations used.

Genre of my Music Magazine

The musical genre I have chosen to base my magazine on is indie music. Insperations for this being NME and Q. The reason I have chosen this pacific genre of music to base my magazine on, aswell as the magazines to get insperation for my own magazine because this style of music is very popular to people in my target audience's age range right now. Due to this, it makes it very easy to get ideas and information I need for my magazine.
Also, the indie scene is very popular right now, especially with programmes such as Skins becoming increasingly popular as well as indie style of clothes, especially as a lot of famous people are to wearing these styles of clothes and living an 'indie scene' lifestyle . Due to this, I will have not just have musical themed things to include in my magazine, but also things from other genres like celebritys and TV features.

LIIAR interpretation of Brief

L - The front cover, contents page and feature spread each have their own conventions. The front cover needs to have: a masthead, a barcode, a price, a front cover image, feature headings, the magazine's website and the date of the issue. The conventions of a contents page are: the content itself, the magazine's website and photographs of what is included throughout the magazine. The conventions of a feature spread magazine are: photographs of whoever is being interviewed or being written about in the feature, and the text itself.

When thinking about camera angles, different types of angles can be more or less effective depending on what they are being used for. For a music magazine front cover, a medium close up shot would be the most effective as it is showing whoever is on the front cover of the magazine without to much happening on the front cover for it to be deemed as over the top showing to much of the background which would draw attration away from the main image. At the moment, I do not have any ideas for the colour schemes that I will be using throughout my music magazine. However, I feel it is very important to have a colour scheme as it keeps a key theme throughout the magazine and ties the magazine together making it look like the magazine has had hard work and effort gone into the creation of it.

I - I have decided for my magazine's genre to do an indie magazine. The reason I have chosen to do this genre is because I think I can do a lot of differnet things with this genre and can really have fun with it and let my imagination run wild, epesically with my front cover's image.
        Magazines I feel that could have things in common with mine are: NME and Q. The reason for this I feel is argably, they can both be put into the genre of indie magazines because of the artists that are included through-out the magazine. Typically, they are either currently in the charts and are well known or are not mainstream and therefore, give the magazine more of a unique feel to the magazine as they are not masssivly popular to a lot of people. Also, the uniqueness of the photos included on the front pages, content page and features throughout the magazine I feel, really bring out the indieness of the magazine. Additionally, the style in while the photos are taken I feel are  
       Magazines that contrast with my ideas to be used in my magazine are magazine such as Kerrang and Rock Sound. Both are magazines which genre is based around rock music and popular rock and punk bands. The reason for this is beause the musical genre indie and the musical genre rock and punk are very different and contrasting stules of music and so, they images that they present to their audience are very different. Also, the photos usually used on the front cover of a rock magazine are very simple and usually the same: normally, a standard photo of a band at a medium close up shot. However, usually on magazinse with the same genre as my magazine, a theme is usually used throughout the magazine with different camera length shots.

I - I feel that my magazine would be best fit into IPC media's range of magazines that they have created. I believe this because of the simple fact they have created the magazine NME, a magazine that I am hoping to use as my insperation for my own music magazine.

A - My magazine's target audience is late teens to late twenty year olds. The reason for this is because this pacific audience is the most likley audience who are to listen to the music that is to be featured in my magazine, aswell as just genreally enjoying the contents of my magazine because of the interests that they have beause of their taste of music.

R - Within my magazine, I dont want my magazine to be presented in a stereotypicalo fashion as I feel that this is boring and too predictable. Fortunatly, there isnt really a stereotype for indie music, not one that cannot be broken without looking to unconventional anyway.

Second Brief:

For our next task we have to create a front cover, the content page and a two page spread to be featured in the magazine. We have a choice of the specific style of music which our magazine will be dedicated to. When creating the magazine front cover, content page and feaure spread, I will be using photoshop.
Through-out the task, I shall keep in mind the conventions of a magazine front cover, content page and a feature spread.

Evaluation-

Media Magazine Front Cover Evaluation

The brief I was set was to create a college magazine front cover for the college I attend, Wyke 6^th Form, as well as a mock up draft for it’s content page. Included in the making of the magazine front cover and mock up of the content page I had to think of my own ideas, take photos as well as editing them myself and creating my own ideas. For this brief I was set a target audience of teenagers aged 16-19, the average age of a college student.

                        Unlike my last media assignment, I kept my mind open to explore different ideas for my magazine front cover. I started off however with research as I thought this would be the best way in which to get ideas for my own magazine. I annotated and researched two contrasting magazine front covers learning what codes and conventions they both had within the front cover. I learnt a lot from this, as I learnt what was needed to be included on a front cover of a magazine for example; a barcode, price, front cover photo, features included in the magazine, etc. Also, from doing this research I learnt not just the good things about their front covers, but also the bad things which I needed to make sure I didn’t include onto my magazine. For example; bad colour schemes, un-linking photos, etc.

                        After code and convention magazine front cover research, I started to research different magazine front covers from where I would get my inspiration from. I found inspiration from a college magazine which included politics on the front cover, using badges to ‘show off’ as it were the political issues in the college that the magazine was being sold at. This gave me great inspiration as I have personally took politics at college myself and so is a huge interest of mine. Due to this, I decided at that point to include politics on my front cover of my college magazine. After deciding this, I went onto the BBC website and researched different political stories. When doing this, I had to keep my target audience in my mind as I did not want to include stories that would bore my target audience, as stereotypically, teenagers are not interested in politics. I decided to include stories such as the university funds going up and the possibility of EMA benefits being cut. The reason I included these stories was because of the fact these are stories that my target audience can relate to as these are problems that are going to effect them personally, especially if they receive EMA and/or are going to go to university.

                        When taking photos for my college magazine, I decided to ask my friend who is in my media class to be my model. The reason for doing this is because last time I did a media project, my model decided last minute that she did not want to be my model anymore. Due to this, I did not want to make the same risk again and so, I asked a student for my class to model for my during the lesson as I wasn’t ensure to get the photos I needed. I got a range of photos so that I had a choice of which photo I wanted to take, as well as taking the photos at different camera lengths and angles. I chose an outfit for my model to wear, targeted pacifically at my target audience. I decided for my model to wear a Lyle & Scott red jumper, a famous brand known by teenagers. The reason I decided for my model to wear this is because it is a very popular and well known brand with my target audience and so it gives off the message I intended to be given off to my audience. This message was, in the most simplest of words, that politics can be ‘cool’. Lyle & Scott is a ‘cool’ and popular brand and so I wanted my model to wear this as it gives of the message to teenagers with a stereotypical mind that you don’t have to be a ‘geek’ to enjoy and have interest in politics and what is happening around us in the world, but can be seen as ‘cool’ I think the Lyle & Scott jumper subtly shows this to my target audience.

                        My content page, I decided I wanted to keep very simple. I used a photo of the same model that I used on the front cover in which to keep a linking theme through out my magazine. I only did a very rough copy of my content page as I did not want to narrow down my ideas before having chance to think through them properly. I decided on a main image and decided to have the name of the magazine on the top of the content page as I think this would be a nice theme to have throughout the magazine, reminding the students constantly on what they are reading. When developing my content page, I would add a website on the bottom as well as obviously more content. The reason I did not add much content to my content page was because again, I didn’t want to have to narrow my ideas down as this was only a draft and I wanted to be able to think long and hard about what I would include in my content page.

                        If I were to do this again, I would spend a lot more time on my content page. Even though it was only a draft, I would have like to have included more information about my magazine and what is in my magazine. Also, the next time I do a media assignment I will ask if there is any other way in which to present my work as blogger has failed me to many times. It crashes constantly, refreshes the page on its own, in which making me loose all my work and has made me fail to put my evaluation on blogger on time. Also, due to the fact I only have a a certain access to the internet, it makes it very hard for my to do a lot of work on the internet.