Plans for Music Magazine

Currently on SurveyMonkey I have 33 responses which I feel is sufficient so I am going to compile them into a more detailed analysis tomorrow. However its is necessary that i choose my colour scheme for my music magazine so having gained knowledge from studying NME and Kerrang! as well as the response to my survey I am going to decide now.
It is clear that I need to include black in the colour scheme which iwas intending to do anyway as it is a basic colour and suits part of my genre as rock music connotates to dark colours.
However other popular colours include, predominantly blue but then also: White, Purple, Red and several votes for Yellow/Gold.
I will follow up all the questionnaire responses at a later point this week.

Also the second purpose to this blog was to explain about how the plans for my double page spread have been coming along. I decided near the beginning of the course that I wanted to use a real band for my music magazine and luckily I have managed to, in a very short period of time (as the images really need to be taken by the middle of next week) get a meeting time with a band. They're called 'The Rileys' and can be found here: www.myspace.com/therileysmusic They are quite successful performers, not yet mainstream and as I am already attending their gig on Friday I emailed them enquiring as to whether I could meet them before the gig for a short "photoshoot" which they were all too happy to do, so on Friday I should be meeting them, along with my friend Vicky, at the Barfly in Camden to get some photos and also, Joe (guitarist) is completing a text-interview for me which he's going to email back to me tomorrow or the day after.

The only problem now is to find a digital camera, so I am going to have to ask to borrow someone's as mine is currently broken.

Double Page Spread Analysis - Kerrang!

I am going to analyse a double page spread as I'm not sure what type of article I'm going to make with my music magazine so thought it'd be useful to analyse an article about a band.

i) Kerrang! - Issue No 1288 - Pages 6&7
This article is actually about 'You Me At Six' a poprock type band (can be found here: www.myspace.com/youmeatsix) who are relatively new to the music scene and are building their way up to famedom. Magazines such as 'Kerrang!' and their relations, such as Kerrang!Radio have been all too ready in the past to slate YMA6 because of their poppyness and their massive teen-fan-following which is why the title has been created in such large white font and all in capitals "WE WILL CHANGE YOUR OPINION!" i.e. they are trying to appeal to the Kerrang! fanbase more. This also is a direct quote which is quite conventional as it grabs the audiences attention. The white font here contrasts the dull-toned image of the band in the background which is 'bleeding off the page'. The five band members are placed quite typically of a rockmagazine with the lead at the front in the middle and then the other members going either side a bit further back. The dark colours also are typical of Rock bands as rock is generally associated with black and the colours mainly in the photograph are black, greys, whites and browns so they have connotations to rock musis which emphasises the purpose of the article more.
In the article there are only six paragraphs, averaging at about 9 words per line and about 80 words and 8 lines per paragraph which seems to be similar to other articles in the magazine. This main piece of writing is situated in the bottom right of the double page where there isn't much action in the picture its been placed in front of. Clear font has been used and the headline is "You Me At Six Prepare to Shake off their PopPunk "Stigma"..." linking also to themselves rebranding and getting rid of the 'run-of the mill pop-punk band' attitude that some people have towards them.

Returning to the image, there is only one of them on the page and the poses are quite serious and they are portraying the typical moody-band image. They don't seem to be very relaxed and do not look to be having fun - trying to show they are serious about music.

The article mainly consists of quotes (from lead, Josh) that have been constructed together to create an article, this is why the most common piece of punctuation, other than the full stop, is the speech mark. But we also have brackets which are used to inform the reader of the name of YMA6's previous album (Take Off Your Colours). The language is quite contemporary and simple with lots of music/band terminology such as 'recorded', 'debut', 'feauturing', 'producers', etc. Therefore the target audience would be music fans of a younger age, ranging maybe from about 14 to 25 or so but some of the articles in the rest of the magazine would suggest that Kerrang! caters for more ages than this.

This article isn't completely relevant to what I would like to do as I would need breaking news to create an article like this so maybe the live review analysis may be of more assistance to me. However, it is a good example of:

• Use of images in the magazine i.e. dull colours - sullen facial expression
• Use of musical terminology
• A news article if I wanted to report music news rather than an interview/review
• The overall response a reader gains from a magazine piece

I would like to achieve a magazine quite similar to Kerrang! however more open to pop-music as I believe Pop and Rock music can go hand in hand.

Audience Research Results

So far I have got 30 responses to my survey, which is more than for the preliminary task which is better as having more responses gives more reliability and also more ideas (which is useful!). But hopefully I will get a few more over the next couple of days. However I'd just like to collate some of the ideas and points that have been raised from the survey.
Points:
1) I should've changed the question '. Which bands would you enjoy reading features on?' to 'Which artists ....' as some people have questioned whether they can choose single artists as well as bands. The site I used (SurveyMonkey) is quite useful however and has let me change the question now.

2) The artists suggested by the survey have made me question whether I want to stick to the genre of PopRock, or expand it to including Rock artists and Pop artists too - however I wouldn't wish to go down the cheesy pop route, so this is an issue I will look at further once I have gotten all my responses.

Ideas for the name:
I have actually received quite a few different ideas for names which I will list below, but I have categorised them into No's and Maybe's:

No:
Epic Magazine of Coolness and Wonder
Kerrang (Already in use, obviously)
I Love Rock and Roll
Popy Rock Star
Now! (too many links with Now! Thats What I Call Music)
urMusique
KABAM (too much like Kerrang!)
PR Magazine (bit boring)
Musicmonthly (already in use)
Pop-Culture (already a magazine called 'PopCult'
LoudMusic (doesnt really have good connotations)
Noise! (Same as above)
HEADROCKERS

Maybe:
Pop Rock Today
Sound
Unpublished
Prock
Deviant
PopRock
Buzz
Transition
Ropazine
RP
JUMP
BacktoBeatSix
TRIP (Techno Rock Indie Pop)
Rocky Road
Rave!

Once I have made more decisions I will update.

Market Research

As I said I got two magazines recently for some research, I got the 21st November Issues of NME and Kerrang! and I had already got October 17th Issue of Kerrang! Here are the front covers of each of them:

17th October Kerrang!

21st November NME

21st November Kerrang!

The 21st November Kerrang

I really like this front cover because the colour scheme works well, it is immediately recognisable as a Rock magazine. The title is nice and big and although the image is laid ontop of the heading, people still recognise it as it is very popular. The black and white is found on every copy of Kerrang, but the theme colour changes and I think the blue works well. The necessary information, e.g. barcode is found in the bottom right which keeps it out of the way. I like the way in which the images are used and the fact there is more than one too. The main feature from Fall Out Boy stands out to grab the attention of the desired audience. The conventional banner at the top of the frontcover gives more details of whats inside.

I also chose to analyse a double page spread from Kerrang! Which is below:

This article is about You Me At Six who are a Pop/Rock band who in this article try to explain that they are trying to change their poppy-image which is a typical article to be found in this magazine as it tries to influence bands to be more rocky. This analysis is continued in a later blog post.

Music Magazine Audience Survey

Just finished creating my audience survey for my Pop/Rock Music Magazine, I made it on SurveyMonkey, which although has the restrictions of only allowing 10 questions (for free use) and up to 100 responses, it builds surveys nicely and there is a big variety of question types to choose from and 10 questions should be enough hopefully.

The ten I chose were:

• What would you call a music magazine in the Pop Rock genre?
• Name one to four colours you would like in the colour scheme? (In order of preference)
• Which bands would you enjoy reading features on?
• What types of advertising would you accept?
• What content would you like?
• What style of font would you like?
• What prizes would appeal to you?
• How many pages would you like the magazine to be?
• How much would you be willing to pay for the above amount of pages?
• How often would you like it to be released?

You can find my survey here:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/8FZFCCC

I am hoping to get most responses to my survey back before Thursday as then that can help me make a more informed decision about the design of my masthead and the colour scheme. So once I have access to my regular email I am going to email the link to the people I know that are interested in Pop/Rock Music. I am hopefully going to get about 50 responses, (fingers crossed). It will also hopefully help me think of some ideas for the images I need to take next week. Also when I have my email back I'm going to email a band called 'The Rileys' as I am attending one of their gigs next week so I am going to enquire whether I could take some photos of them beforehand.

Music Magazine Research

Recently just bought two music magazines to help me create my own one, picked up Kerrang! and NME, both of which come from a similar music genre to my aim. It also meant I got the chance to see what other music magazines were popular.

In the next couple of days I am going to analyse a double page spread from one of the two magazines, perhaps Kerrang!'s double page spread on 'You Me At Six' (www.myspace.com/youmeatsix)

I also found it quite interesting to actually buy a copy of NME as I have never done so before and as I recently analysed it in a case study and having read about the history of NME it is clear that it has developed from the broad audienced version in 1952 to todays copies. Before I also didn't realise that NME was an acronym of 'New Musical Express'. Interesting!

I also did a case study on Smash Hits! which has been discontinued, I am only going to post a snapshot of my case studies in which I explain how they have helped me for my decisions for my music magazine...

NME: "This case study has helped me consider what genre of music I am going to aim for and realise it needs to be quite specific as a broad ranged magazine wouldn’t be popular and it has backed me up on the type of content I intended to include; such as, interviews, reviews etc.but also the style of language to use, i.e. quite contemporary. As the magazine is in competition with Kerrang! I also realise that I need to have a USP for my magazine so as to gain more attention from the public. One of the reasons I chose to do a case study on NME was because I am interested in focusing my magazine on this genre of music, though perhaps more pop/rock and it has shown me how to lay out a similarly themed magazine which will help me to compile my double-page spread."

Smash Hits! :

"From this case study I can conclude that I would want my magazine to be more sophisticated and be more focused on the songs and live performances of bands rather than the make-up, the video, the hair. It has also suggested the idea of polls however, which was also found in my audience research for my preliminary task and it is a possibility that I may include a poll in my magazine. Looking at examples of front covers, toned down colours would be more relevant to the genre I’m looking at and it shows that the theme of music you choose affects the images chosen also as smiley 90’s popstars is too cheesy for the style I am aiming for. I have also learnt from this that the music magazine industry has changed quite a lot as in the past, up to 16/17yr olds would have read Smash Hits yet now they wouldn’t, so pinpointing target audience is very necessary."

So the case studies have definitely helped me understand more about how to construct my music magazine.

I'm going to do some audience research similar to the Preliminary task, so another questionnaire, but I'm not going to give it just to students from my school this time, as the survey needs to get useful feedback and not everyone in my school likes Pop/Rock music, so I will probably find an online site to create the survey on and then give the URL to people I know through bands. I also hope to conduct a couple of interviews with some individuals for some more qualitative research.

Preliminary Feedback

Got some feedback about my preliminary task of creating the front cover of a sixth form magazine from other people in my class, which was mainly positive. Just a couple of quotes from the feedback sheets:

"Quirky image" "Colours and text stands out"
"Easy to read" "Relaxed, quite informal"
"Having fun" "Language, short and snappy to easily capture audience's attention"

But also some useful criticism:
"Model could be slightly bigger" "[image] could be centralised"
"Could have more about what is in the magazine"

So I thought it was a very useful task and mostly ensured me that I had targeted the right audience as the three people who analysed my front cover identified the right target audience I had wanted and said that the colour scheme and other aspects of it would attract the audience.

"Highlight" - Preliminary Task - School Magazine

'Highlight'

Here is my front page of my school magazine.


Our preliminary task was to make a School College/Sixth Form Magazine and as I go to Folkestone School For Girls Sixth Form it only made sense to aim my magazine at sixth form girls between the ages of 16 and 18. I based my audience research on the pupils that attend my school to see what they would want to read. My questionnaire:







And from this questionnaire I gathered the following info (along with some qualitative research which I cannot present in a graph format):


Therefore I knew that in my magazine I needed to include:

• Interviews with Teachers (15%)
• Games (13%)
• Agony Aunts (11%)
• Career Help (10%)
• Local Information (10%)

And as you can see on my front cover it details that the above content will be present in the magazine.

While I carried out my audience research I drafted the basic structures of my contents page and my front cover. Here are the original sketches:

At this point I chose to have a green/pink/white/blue colour scheme as these colours compliment each other but also define the audience, particularly the pink (though stereotypical, it is effective). Choosing the name of the magazine was quite a difficult part for me as I struggled to think of original names but then I thought of 'Highlight', I used it because 1) Highlighters are used in school for notes (especially in sixth form) and 2) it also implies that the magazine is a highlight of the school. I then went on to recreate my contents plan on the computer, which is here: (NB: The page is scanned in so the colours are duller, but in real life they are brighter and the same as on the front cover).

These are some of my final images that I took (unedited).I used several models to see what would work best for the front cover. Here are just a few (i took about 40 in total!):


I decided on using the one below, as I think it shows the optimistic attitude people should have in our sixth form, also as the model is smiling and laughing it makes the magazine look more attractive. I thought it was important to have an image of the typical reader that I had aimed for on the front cover, so the right target audience would be attracted. I also quite liked the positioning in the below picture, despite the fact the model is not placed centrally.
The girl in the picture is called Lucy. I was really happy with this photo as it portrayed the positivity from most students in the school, but is also a fun image and it suited my colour scheme well. The fact it was taken by one of the school signs also means that the magazine is instantly recognisable for the school from which its come. However for my music magazine my image will have to be a lot different because of the purpose of a music magazine.

.When we did our 'Analysis of Similar Media Texts' we decided that the image on this magazine:
worked well and expressed the positive feelings of the girls in the image towards the school and towards education. So I wanted to get a similar effect. Also, as you can see I used a similar colour scheme, however I only noticed this after evaluation which suggests that both magazines have thought to target the audience by using the blue/green/pink/white colour scheme.

Overall I am glad that my school magazine looks good and works well, and the task has helped me develop my ideas for my music magazine but also realize that it needs to be quite the opposite of this task as I intend to aim for a Pop/Rock genred magazine. Some other aspects that have prepared me for the main task are:

• My audience research needs to be more specific and ask questions that will help me to give me required knowledge rather than useless information as I wasn't going to really create a whole magazine
• I need to do more research into music magazines, to help me construct my magazine
• I must plan more for my images and decide what the images effect is going to be
  

Hi :)

My names is Sarah and I'm doing Media Studies at FSFG Sixth Form, here's a picture of me:



This is a new blog of mine for my AS Level Media Coursework. We have up until Christmas to:
- Create a School Magazine's Front Cover & Mock-Up Contents Page
- Create a Music Magazine's Front Cover, Double Page Spread & Contents Page

As of yet I'm not too sure what style of music magazine I am aiming for but as I love Pop/Rock music, it is most likely to be focused and stylised for that music genre.

Fingers crossed the whole project will go to plan!

If you ever have any comments about the work I post then please do comment on the blog posts.