Music Magazine: Proposal

1. I am aiming my magazine at a specific audience of indie/alternative music fans aged 15-25 years old or 15+, a similar target audience to NME

2. My magazine will be about new bands and the latest news in the indie/alternative music industry. It will feature interviews, reviews, competitions and other interesting stories which will appeal to the target market.

3. My ideas for cover lines need to appeal to the audience of young adult music fans, so far I have come up with:

• 'Brits: Undercover Scandal'
• '20 Best Music Videos of the Year So Far'
• 'Win Your Chance to Meet The Stone Roses'
• 'Catch up on the latest news from:...'

I will also include a main cover-line featuring a band or artist being interviewed or reviewed as this will appeal to the taste of the target audience.

4. I struggled for a while to think of a suitable title for my music magazine. I wanted something simple yet different as to catch the attention of the target market. I wanted something relevant to indie/alternative music so I came up with a short list of names:

• Vinyl
• Record
• Cassette
• Reel
• Platinum

I liked all of these names as they were relevant yet different to anything I had seen before. But I decided to go for 'Platinum' as it connotes success, when an album reaches over 300,000 sales and for a single selling over 600,000 in the UK, the record is given the Platinum award, which is the highest available in the UK, therefore my magazine will be named after this in the hope that artists involved become successful, reflecting on the magazine.

5. As the name of my magazine is Platinum, I need a metallic looking font for the masthead to keep up a theme and make the title/logo iconic and as recognizable as possible. I have researched a few font styles I like the idea of:

I decided to reject the Arial Unicode MS and AR JULIAN fonts as I feel they are not metallic, realistic or relevant enough for my magazine. I really like the Tejaratchi but I find it difficult to read, therefore I decided to choose Cambria with the effects listed as it is simple but carries my theme on well.

6. I have decided not to use a tagline as I feel it is not needed, the title of my magazine is self explanatory and requires shared knowledge from the target audience of music terminology which they will understand without the use of a tagline. I want to keep my magazine as simple as possible.

7. The magazine will be released all year round, I am not going to create a seasonal special as the images I will use for the magazine will not have any relevance to the time of year, but the coverlines I have chosen will be about events that have happened in the first few months of 2013 such as The Brit Awards and 'Top 20 Music Videos of the Year So Far', so I will probably make the magazine cover I am creating a May issue as it will reflect on the year so far.

8. The image that I want on the front cover needs to be simple yet effective and interesting. It must appeal to the target market and reflect an indie/alternative look. I want the model I am going to use to have a retro appearance as to appeal to the target audience, I will therefore need to plan the mise-en-scene of the photo and costume, hair and make-up. I want the background to be simple but unique, something that no one has done before. 

9. This music magazine will be published once a month like NME and Q. It will include enough information to cover all vital events and news that has happened in the previous month to keep readers up to date.

10. My music magazine will be of a tabloid size, so approximately 16.9 inches by 11 inches, the same as NME magazine. This will allow for more information to be printed on the pages and it is still easy to carry around and read comfortably, which will appeal to my target audience.

11. The magazine will have a theme of metallic and navy blue, with hints of red to highlight key points that will interest the reader, as red is the colour that the human eye first recognizes. I will use an image of the same model used for the front cover as to signify that their interview/review will be the main story featured in my magazine.

For more details on images that are used in my music magazine please see my 'Photoshoot Planning and Analyzing' post.

From my research I have learnt that my target audience aged 15-25 or 15+ like the styles of both NME and Q magazine. Therefore I will base the style of my magazine on these. My research tells me that my target audience want more of a chance to get involved and have more chances to win competitions and claim free items. So for my music magazine I have decided to include competitions and as my magazine will be called 'Platinum', making reference to a vinyl record, I have chosen to include a 'free' gift of a vinyl with every months issue. Therefore my magazine will need to be priced at a more expensive value of £3.99, in comparison to NME's £2.80. The magazine will also be approximately 50 pages long as to make it a light yet information packed read.

Music Magazine: Initial Ideas

- Include a free gift such as a CD or Vinyl record, so price will be more expensive than most other music magazines, (approx. £4)

- Competitions featured, gets reader involved more

- Main story will be either an interview on a new band or a review on a new band's album/gig

- Colour theme will be different to usual red

- Simple layout and format, easy to navigate and flick through, not too chaotic so that it puts reader off but enough to attract their attention

- Approximately 50 pages, similar to NME's length

- Tabloid size, good size to carry around and read, standard size of music magazine

Research: Target Audience Interview

Music Magazine Research: Annotated Examples and Comparison

I have compared two well known music magazines that are currently out on the market; NME and Q. I have annotated examples of each of their front covers, contents pages and double page spreads, I have also compared them to show differences between the two and also to highlight any ideas I can select from the examples for my own music magazine.

 The front covers of both NME and Q are similar, this is possibly due to the fact that both of their target audience are interested in the same genre of music, which is indie/alternative. Both magazines place their mastheads in the top left corner and they are both coloured red as to attract the eye of the consumer, as red is the colour that is first seen by the human eye. Both magazines use puffs/plugs, different sizes, styles and colours of font, smaller images and a large main image of a musician. These all attract the reader and appeal to them as they will want to read about music and be enticed to purchase the magazine. I will use these strategies on my own music magazine to make the product suitable and appealing for my target audience.

The contents pages of both NME and Q magazine differ. NME (above:left) displays more images to go alongside cover-lines, thus interesting the reader as it gives them something visual to look at that is relevant to their taste. Each main cover-line that is featured in the magazine has a short explanation to give the audience a taster of what they will be reading about. This is also similar in the contents page of Q (above:right). Q also displays their logo again at the top left and bottom left of the page, this is to show the iconic theme of the magazine. All of the cover-lines are displayed along the left side of the page as to keep the information on the focussed side where the audience will read first. On the right side of the page there is a large image to highlight the main story featured in the magazine. I like the idea of selecting the main story and making it stand out, therefore I will try to incorporate this to my own music magazine contents page. Overall I prefer the layout of Q's contents page as it is kept simple yet effective with the use of borders and columns to make it easier for the reader to navigate around the pages, although NME's front cover is interesting and appeals to the target audience due to the chaotic layout, I feel that just by simply highlighting important key stories and points in my magazine with the use of colours, fonts and borders, it is more effective and eye-catching for the audience.

Both NME's and Q's double page spreads are very similar. Both use a large image on the right side of the page, with the information on the left, this allows the readers eyes to move from the left to the right. Both use a drop capital to introduce the audience to the text and pull out quotes to highlight important/interesting parts of the text. This is done as to draw attention from the reader which will probably be scanning through the magazine, if they see something that appeals to them displayed bigger, it may entice them to read more. Therefore I will use this idea in my own music magazine double page spread.

Target Audience Research: Kerrang!

 Kerrang! magazine is aimed more at music fans of the genre rock, with covers displaying well known bands such as 30 Seconds to Mars, Muse and You Me At Six. The magazine is named after the onomatopoeic word that derives from the sound made when playing an electric guitar, "Kerrang!". So on the basis of this, I need to create a music magazine title relevant to the genre I am basing it on, to make it appeal to the target market as much as possible.

The layout of the front cover seems hectic and busy, with use of darker colours such as black and grey. This somehow links to the heavier, louder and darker connotations that come with the genres of music displayed in the magazine.

The ideas used to attract the audience in Kerrang! magazine are similar to that displayed on the front covers of other magazines such as NME. The offers of free posters, studio reviews and festival headliners also appeals to the target market as they will take a vast interest in this. In this case I must make sure my music magazine uses these elements to attract the target audience.

Target Audience Research: NME Magazine

NME magazine is aimed at alternative and indie music enthusiasts. Covers including famous bands or artists such as Morrissey, Pete Doherty, Alex Turner and Miles Kane whose music falls under the ‘indie/alternative’ genre.


The logo of the magazine is bold and red, which is the colour that has been found to attract the most attention from an audience.

 ‘NME’ also stands for New Musical Express, which makes the point that the magazine is forever offering its readers new music, bands and news, this is evident on their website where one of the articles reads “2013- Five New Bands You’ll Love”. If I were to create a magazine similar to NME I would have to ensure I used the latest news and bands, as this is what appeals to the target audience.

           NME also offers the readers chances to win tickets to festivals, album reviews and free posters attached inside the magazine. To make my music magazine successful I must use ideas from NME to make my magazine as interesting and appealing to the target audience as possible.