KEY CONCEPTS IN A MUSIC MAGAZINEMegan Cohen

AUDIENCE In each of the music magazines, publishers will decide on who

they wish to be their target audience, with this, they must then focus most of the magazine around them, for example, the music featured, headlines as well as celebrities on the cover, colours and even font.

The audience is usually a very specific age, gender and often, tier of class, for each magazine, therefore, it is crucial for the magazine creators to absolutely nail their magazine in order to perfectly suit and entice their specific target reader.

In this ‘TOP OF THE POPS’ magazine, we can clearly see that this is aimed at young girls aged from around 8-12, due to the bright pink and purple, stereotypically ‘girly’ colours, as well as the childish fonts used. To add to this, the headlines and photos clearly suggest a more female audience, lastly the price of £2.99 is significantly cheaper than other music magazines such as ‘Mojo’, costing £5.50, again showing that this is aimed at a much younger audience.

REPRESENTATION Each music magazine will feature artists and celebrities

in their magazines, and it is therefore important that publishers, writers and editors make sure that the content about each person/ group is appropriate for the target audience, as well as making sure that no false information about the person/ group is release, as it could get them into legal altercations. As well as this, it is key that the artists featured, are appropriate for the sub genre of magazine, for example, The Rolling Stones would not be on a pop magazine, nor would Katy Perry be featured on a rock magazine.

For example, on this rock magazine, Green Day, a rock band is the cover photo, along with no offensive or incorrect statements below the photo.

INSTITUTION Institution is all about the making of money within the industry. In this,

publishers may own more than one magazine in order to make more money, as well as have lots of advertisements and sponsored articles throughout the magazines, as advertisers pay a lot of money to be featured in big magazines.

For example, Q Magazine is owned by Bauer Media Group, who own over 600 magazine companies world wide, so they make huge sums of money, as each magazine alone, is bringing in a profit.

GENRE Genre is perhaps the most important part

of a music magazine, as although the main genre is obviously music itself, sub genres allow for creative freedom, and is what really narrows down what the reader wants to see, for example, sub genres of music magazines may include; Indie, Pop, Rock, Metal and R&B- each very different to one and other.

As we can tell from the magazine below, this is clearly a rock magazine, due to the people featured on it, as well as the name- therefore this magazine would be very appealing to those who enjoy rock music and want to know more.