Music Magazine: Research & Planning

MUSIC MAGAZINES RESEARCH 

Task: You are now at the stage where you need to complete research and planning tasks which are specific to music magazines. You must conduct research into the product and target audience. You must relate your research to your own product. 

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Research:Different Genres 

These four magazines represent different kinds of music genres. Each genre can be clearly recognised from the style of fonts and from the celebrity that is on the front cover. KERRANG
has a masthead with shattered font, the layout, the rest of the font  and the artists on the cover clearly represent that is it a rock magazine. I like the style of the rest of the three magazines ( billboard, NME and VIBE). The way that they are laid out and the style of the magazines is the type of style that i am looking to go for, for my magazine. I am very much into rap/ urban mainstream music and i think using these three as ideas could help me to make my magazine a success. I have done some further research into other magazines such as XXL, and this has helped me to gain more ideas of that i could potentially use. 

The main image on this magazine is of Wiz Khalifa and his partner. They are iconic in the music world and having them there makes it easy for the audience to recognise them. From seeing him it is easy for the audience to recognise what they would expect to see in the magazine and the type of genre that would be contained within. I think this type of magazine is not for older adults but mainly for the older range of teenagers and young adults. It clearly doesnt cater for those of a young age as it seems a bit too explicit or in some way grown for them.

I know the basic style that I would like for the presentation of the front cover and now I have to think of the type of cover lines that I could have. Most magazines tend to have the name of the artist on the magazine so that its easy for those who are reading to know what they could be expecting to read about in the magazine. I don't really want to have a lot of cover lines, I want the image of the front cover the centre of attention of the magazine. With this magazine i like the positioning of Rihanna's name with the large font, with the Chris Browns name added to it aswell, they are a very hot topic and the audience will easily understand what will be in the magazine. 
I will also need to take into consideration the type of audience that I'm trying to appeal to and whether the cover lines and picture will be the type that would appeal to them. For example if I was targeting it to males putting a picture of a girl with a lustful pose is something that would draw them to the magazine unlike a family image.