Audience Research

Influence for my magazine
I have been doing research on two magazines in particular, Kerrang! and Q.
I don't really read Q, however I am a big fan of Kerrang! and buy it often. The style and genre of the magazines are similar, however I find the bands I am most interested in are regularly featured in Kerrang!

The main influence for my magazine is Kerrang! as it is suited to my age range, music interests and style. For example, Kerrang! is well known for its pop-punk/rock/metal influences from bands such as Metallica, You Me At Six and Bullet For My Valentine.

The audience for Kerrang! is as follows:

Age: 16-24
Gender:     Female - 45.3%   Male - 54.7%
Music genres: lots of different types of rock/metal, e.g thrash metal to punk rock

Typical Conventions

Typical Conventions of a music magazine

Masthead -  A masthead is the name or logo of the magazines, here are some examples:

Main Coverline -  The main coverline is usually the main topic of the magazine article, placed in the centre, header or footer of the magazine in a larger text. Here are some examples: 

Here are some typical conventions used on magazines, I am looking at music magazines in particular. However, some magazines do not follow these norms. In the post below you can see some examples of magazines that don't follow the trend.

Not following the trend...

Above I have added a few of the magazine covers that defy the generic conventions of music magazines. Each of these magazines are purposely missing out some of the key conventions of a music magazine such as coverlines, banners etc. Some don't even include the barcode on the front cover like most magazines.

The reason that this is done is so that the magazine can be identified as a special or limited edition. Most publishers will make a completely different cover just relating to main topic and nothing else within the magazine, this is often done for special occasions or just because a band/artist is popular at the time and everyone is interested. By doing a special edition, the publishers are targeting the more demographic audience as they are more likely to pay more for a special, limited edition magazine on one of their favourite artists etc.

My Powerpoint

Here is the link for my powerpoint that I uploaded onto slideshare:

http://www.slideshare.net/FreeMeAtSix/music-magazine-conventi

Music Magazine Conventions Research Source

http://www.trcmediastudies.co.uk/How%20To%20Research%20Music%20Magazines%20Web%20Resource.pdf


Above is the website I used for my research. The website is extremely helpful to my work as it identifies and explains the conventions I have highlighted in my work.

I used this list to help me create my powerpoint. Below is my smaller version of this, plus the other slides identifying each convention including examples.

My Magazine Comparison

Above is my comparison of the two music magazines, Kerrang and Q Magazine. I used arrows to indicate where on the magazine each convention is. These conventions are underlined in the text boxes.

Music Magazine Conventions Research

Here is one of the slides from my powerpoint on the generic conventions of music magazines. I have listed some of the typical conventions on the magazines that I researched.

Here is one of the magazines that I used for my research. This is a very popular music magazine, featuring the majority of the conventions I listed above.