Case studies of music magazines

The genre of the magazine is rock and it is currently published by Hamburg based Bauer Media Group. This devoted audience of rock fans is made up of 60% males and 40% females with Kerrang!’s fall into the social class of D-C, however Kerrang!  aim more at a male audience and appeal to them by using content such as hard rock and metal iconic male bands pulling angry faces or violent expressions. The female audience is target by using pull out posters of male bands. The target audience is from the age of 16-24. The magazine’s psychographics is defined as ‘people who aspire to be respected among other people’ The reason for choosing this magazine is because it wouldn’t be something that I would choose to read normally and I think it would make an interesting analysis for a magazine.

The masthead of the magazine is the colour red normally this connotes danger. This might be because rock music is usually considered as heavy and energetic and in circumstances those type of energies could be considered as dangerous therefore it appeals to the target audience. Another reason for it being red because it is a very bold colour that can’t really be missed. Normally a music magazine has a colour scheme generally using 3 colours. The main colours are red which I have already highlighted as well as yellow and blue, however the blue isn’t used very much as you can see on the image of the magazine. Black and white are also used these are neutral.

There are many cover lines around the magazine, these all play a big part in attracting the reader as they briefly inform them about what the magazine has to offer and they do this by trying to say as less as possible. Cover lines are very essential to a magazine because without them it would appeal to the reader at all. They are made to seduce the reader whether they buy it or not determines how good they are.

The barcode is always found on the right or the left hand side in this case it’s the right. The barcode makes the magazine conventional so it can be scanned in shop, also it’s fast and reliable.

Normally in magazine there is one person at the front of the cover page, however there are many people stood in front but as you can see one person is still the main person as the shot is a medium shot. This highlights to the reader that he is more important than the others celebrities. The Mise-en-scene has definitely been arranged for it to be a particular celebrities that the target audience will recognise therefore this possibly suggests that he is the lead singer. His costume very much relates to what the typical audience would wear the whole rock idea (short sleeved jeans jacket, dark colours ‘black’ and the chains which you can barely see) but it also contradicts the cover line because the cover line clearly says in bold yellow righting ‘black veil brides’ however they are all men and none of them are wearing any black veils.

The main cover line ‘BLACK VEIL BRIDES’ suggest that it is a special magazine edition. We know this because underneath it say ‘take over Kerrang’ the whole intention could be to make a special edition so that the magazine can appeal to more than one type of reader. This bring extra readers that won’t normally read Kerrang. It could also be a nickname for the band. The font is very rustic and bold, the colour is also a bright yellow, yellow produces a warming effect, arouses cheerfulness and stimulates mental activity and because of the font being a very big size, almost the size of the masthead this makes the importance of the cover line almost equal to the masthead.

There are faces that I don’t recognise except Ozzy Osbourne this makes the magazine engaging because any one who may not know any other celebrity may see Ozzy Osbourne and cause them to pick up the magazine. Also Ozzy is a big time role model in the rock music industry, so as soon as we recognise his face in the magazine we can easily relate the genre of the magazine to rock. However his image is very small and is in the bottom left hand corner so this could suggest that he has a small section in the magazine which would interest his fans.

The magazine is split up into 3 columns this is done as it makes it clear for the audience on what to read also everything is set up neatly and gives the magazine contents page a nice format.  The content is very bold this is so people know where to find what they are looking. If it weren’t bold I think people would be confused by the numbers and everything else. Unlike other magazine this 1 doesn’t seem to have a double page contents this might be better in this case because you don’t have to scroll over to both sides and it makes it much easier. The editors’ letter is a big section in the right hand corner as it takes up a large part of the page. The letter relates to the audience allowing them to feel more involved with the magazine also at the end of the letter it is signed which make the magazine seem more personal. There aren’t many images on this page this might be because the magazine is trying to limit the amount of pictures that are at the beginning of the magazine so that the readers are more interested whilst reading when they go through it. Also the fact that there is less images at the front and a few of a couple celebrities highlight that the magazine might be based on these people this also might be another attraction.

 This double page spread uses a large image, this is good as it entices the reader and allows them to enjoy the article visually. As you can see it looks like the male character in the image is falling out of the blow up boat. and you can link this to the title as it says 'fall out boy' so they literally have portrayed the image, this is very effective as because it gives the reader an idea what double page spread might be about (mise en Scene). The cover lines also link very effectively to the title because it is also giving us much more of idea of  what the double page spread will be about.They are all used to seduce the reader, as all the elements sly give away what the both pages might be about but it is done so briefly that we have to actually have to continue reading to find out what the article is about in this case it is about an artists new single. 

The colour scheme is has been kept the same throughout the content and the front page. Normally the colour scheme can change either to follow the front page or the contents page but in this case it has been kept the same. 

   

This is my second case study as you can see my front page is not as creative as my previous case study. The colour scheme is very dull colours, black and white. These  are very simplistic but is still very effective colours. Normally 'black and white' are associated with very 'dark' types of music for instance rock and heavy metal and this is very obvious as my first case study  included these colours and the genre of the magazine happened to be rock. However, this is effective because it doesn't make the magazine look like it's from any type of genre, we know that it is an R&B magazine because it has Rihanna as the front cover star. The masthead of the magazine is bold which makes the masthead stand out, it is in white which contrast's the black. The masthead being white connotes purity which can link to the word play in one of the coverline 'Holy ...' holy is generally defined as sacred and within the christian community and purity is also a big association with the christian community. Overall we can link this to the fact that rihanna is dressed also in white therefore 'NME' are trying to portray her as a innocent looking character. There is also another way the picture and the cover line interlink. Rihanna is blowing smoke and the cover line says 'Holy smoke its Rihanna' The publisher/ editor who ever designed the magazine has used wordplay which fits the picture perfectly.
There aren't many cover lines on this magazine just two which is very unusual for a music magazine as they are normally covered in coverlines. This may suggest that there isn't much to read or that the whole magazine is based entirely on Rihanna because there is nothing else to suggest otherwise that the magazine could include anything else. The cover lines are simple and just state the obvious, 'World exclusive interview' and 'Holy smoke! It's Rihanna'.

Just like the front page the contents page also doesn't include much. The layout of how a contents page is normally set if very different in this case.