Some key ideas are;
Maintaining the house style - all of the magazines I have looked at have kept a certain colour scheme througout the whole magazine - the name of the magazine is always in the same font - the article text is always the same size and same font - all of the photographs have a certain style about them, they are always in colour too - some magazines are serious magazines so serious colours such as red and black and white are used and the bands always have serious expression on their faces in photographs.
The price is always affordable for the audience they've selected. The magazines I have looked at range from £2-£3.90 which is suitable for the quality of each magazine e.g Rocksound is the most expensive as it's the largest magazine and has better quality images and articles/interviews.
In most cases, each magazine has a main target audience for age. In these cases, it's for teenagers, because lots of teenagers like to look at magazines to keep up to date with the latest music gossip and latest tracks. However, they do not have a specific gender that they are aimed at, this is more general. Therefore I feel that it would be good to create a magazine that is aimed at a specific gender. I feel that when magazines are aimed at a specific gender, it tends to be a male audience, so my magazine will be aimed at teenage females as I think this would become popular.
When considering my audience, I started to think about who my main competition would be. Obviously magazines like Kerrang! and Rocksound are very popular amongst both male and females and they already have a long running reputation for bringing the latest music to their audience. However, I know that a lot of teenage girls read music magazines as I found this out in my questionaire.
My magazine will be based on the rock/indie genre because this seems to be more popular than RnB and hiphop when looking at my questionaire results. It will also be more relevant as there is more to write about a band than an individual artist such as Rihanna that is often covered in tabloids or gossip magazines.
Things I have learned from my research and critical studies:
- Colour is key to attracting a certain audience, may it be personality, gender or age.
- The name of the magazine is why a lot of people buy it, the name needs to be recognisable and the brand needs to be reliable for bringing the best music first.
- Carrying out house style throughout the magazine is very important as a reminder that the magazine is important and worth remembering. It makes each magazine unique.
- Article fonts need to be easy to read when it comes to font/colour.
- Busy front covers are the most popular as it implies there is a lot more inside and therefore value for money.
- The main audience for music magazines is mainly female teenagers.
- The most popular genre of music is Rock.
- Teenagers want value for money over anything else, price is key.
- There are a lot of great looking magazines, and so you need to come up with something that's unique, for a different audience, different colours, fonts, that offers different things or more of what's already on offer e.g more gig reviews/listing or more celebrity gossip.
- It is important to maintain the quality of images throughout the magazine as this is what helps sell the magazine at first glance.
- Language that connects with the chosen audience is key.
- The way you choose to lay the magazine out affects people that consider reading an article. No one wants to read an interview that has bits of texts here there and everywhere. This is why most magazines use columns.
- Give aways and free posters as well as competitions help sell the magazine as a last resort if all other forms of persuasion fail.
- It's important to link colours, font style and images to the genre of music your magazine is selling.
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