Music MagazineJOE JACKSON

Masthead As seen on the front cover of the magazine, the masthead stands out above anything else. It is big, bold and written in capital letters to emphasise its superiority. It is located right at the top of the magazine to ensure that it is one of the first things the consumer sees to ensure they know who made the magazine. To add effect for the reader, part of the artist’s heads cover a part of the masthead; this is a famous selling point to the public. Also the fact that the artist’s heads cover the front of the magazine also portrays that they have a very dominant role in the magazine. The publisher also assumes that the consumer knows what the magazine is due to its assumed popularity that they are actually willing to cover a majority of the front cover. In most Vibe magazines I have previously analysed, the masthead is usually in red, which represents domination and potential danger. However in this masthead it is represented in yellow; yellow is considered the complete opposite to red, it is associated with joy, happiness and intellect. This potentially portrayed in the magazine by stating that the reader must be intellectual to read this type of magazine and joy and happiness will be given when read. It also states that the colour yellow stimulates mental activity and generates muscle energy; this magazine may be just intending to this due to its colour.

Text, Style and Content On the front cover of this magazine there is six cover stories for the reader to view. Some are bolder than others and written in bigger fonts to emphasise that it is the more important story. Some of the stories are written in lower case but some are written in capital letters. If the headline is big then it is written in lower caps, however if it is written smaller then it’ll be written in capital letters to emphasise it despite its size. Most writing is all written in the same font with often different colours, mainly just yellow and white. The size of the text varies depending on the importance of the story. For example the main story which reads ‘Soul Brothers; Mick Wilds, August Alsina, Ed Sheeran’ is one of the main stories on the cover as the pictures of the artists are represented at the front, the text of the story is the biggest and emphasised the most as it is considered the most interesting and important story.

Cover Price On the front of this magazine it doesn’t actually clearly portray that there is a fixed price. However on the proper magazine sold in shops there will assumable have a barcode and a fixed price. Baring in my mind it looks as though it is an a sort of average magazine, I am assuming the price will average around £3-£5 as this is the average price for a type of music magazine such as this. However, due to my research I have discovered that the Vibe magazine averages from the price of around £6; this may be because of the general thickness and the content of the magazine or maybe due to the free gifts included.

Cover Stories The cover stories are slightly different to some you may expect but many are normal for a music magazine. For example there is no rhetorical question on the front cover. However they state many different stories about many musical artists such as Mack Wilds, August Alsina, Ed Sheeran, Michael Jackson, Nick young, T-pain, Shepard, Fairey, Chadwick and Boseman. So as you can see they emphasise a lot of famous musical names to entice the reader to purchase the magazine. There is a banner at the top of the cover stating ‘Exclusive: Michael Jackson’s sneaker obsession’ written to entice the reader to read more about the story. The stories involved in the front cover is also portrayed as very male dominant due to the headline ‘Soul Brothers’, this implies that the reader may feel integrated into the artist’s lifestyles as they are considered brothers. Also due to the fact it says ‘is cooler that your girl’, this is intended for a male audience as it argues that this specific artist is ‘cooler that your girlfriend’, aimed completely at the male gender.

Exclusives As stated before there is only one main exclusive story that is emphasised on the front cover and that is a story about pop artist Michael Jackson. This story is written in bold written, fully with capital letters. Also reads ‘EXCLUSIVE’ to ensure that it is a one off story. Despite the fact that the main exclusive story is emphasised at the top, it may be portrayed that most of the stories portrayed at the front cover may be exclusive due to the fact the story will be unique to that specific issue of magazine; for example stories about the soul brothers, Micky Wilds, August Alsina and Ed Sheeran.

Audience Due to the fact that the artists emphasised on the front cover create music for a more younger generation the target audience will automatically be assumed for the ages of around 14-28 roughly. The teenage fan base would certainly favour this type of music magazine. I know this because it has Ed Sheeran on the front cover who is very famous and popular towards the teenage generation. However perhaps the older generation may consider purchasing this magazine as it contains a story about Michael Jackson, who was a very famous singer in the 60’s onwards. They type of genre intended is mainly rap, and rap, stereotyped in today’s society is most certainly specified for the younger, teenage generation of music lovers. Rap has always been considered a very sexist genre of music and is usually targeted for the male audience. The headlines portrayed emulate a male audience due to the picture which is shown, portraying three male artists; with the headline reading ‘Soul Brothers’, implying it is a completely aimed at males. The picture at the front of the magazine depicts three male musical artists looking chilled out and cool. The caption reads ‘Soul Brothers’ which implies it is aimed at a male audience as the headlines portray male dominance.

Language The article I am analysing as part of this music magazine in an article referring to rappers coming from the United Kingdom. It opens the article with an instant rhetorical question in order to entice the reader to read the article further. It constantly refers to the title of the article, mentioning the influence in which UK artists have upon the music industry. There is no slang or abbreviated words included, it is all perfect grammar and punctuation. The article, after mentioning many of Britain’s most successful artists such as The Beatles, Ed Sheeran, Pink Floyd… etc. They eventually get to their point in the third paragraph where they begin to speculate whether there is an unknown artist ready to encapsulate the world of music. In this article they tend to use a lot of punctuation to link sentences, they don’t use full stops as frequently as necessary; they use semi colons, hyphens, colons and ellipsis's, all of these are portrayed together in merely one paragraph. A they did on the first line, they use many rhetorical questions ‘would Iggy be enjoying the same commercial success if she were rapping with her native Australian accent?’. They also often use connectives in order to encourage the reader to read on as they wish to know what happens next. Also the article is written to its audience assuming that they know a great deal about music; they mention a lot about musicians and very rarely explain about musical content which implies they are assuming that the consumer has a brief knowledge of the genre.

Writing Style I will be analysing the same story as I previously analysed when talking about the language. As I previously discussed the writing style contains no grammar or punctuation errors (no intentional ones either) and also have no abbreviated words. They use many connective words in each sentence; these they tend to include are colons, semi colons, hyphens and ellipsis’s. They writing style is good, easy to read and very informative. It applies many rhetorical questions and informs the reader about the topic very well. The style of writing they use easily informs the reader what the topic is and what the topic is about; it mentions many musical artist that have succeeded in the United Kingdom and that they also succeed in the United States.

Planning of my Music Magazine Style and tone: The style of my magazine will be concentrating on a sort of rap and R&B type of music magazine. I believe these two genres of music will assimilate well together and portray a sufficient music magazine. I will integrate some ideas from the ‘VIBE’ magazine I have previously analysed to ensure my magazine is at the highest standard.

How will it fit alongside existing publications?: As I have discussed before, I will be integrating my ideas of the type of magazine I wish to create with the magazine ‘VIBE’ as this is a good example of the type of magazine genre I wish to portray.

Who is in your target audience/market?: I believe the target audience for my magazine is definitely teenagers and perhaps people in their 20’s. My type if music will fit in well with the type of music teenagers like.

Planning of my Music Magazine How will you appeal to your target audience?: Portraying musicians that my type of target audience will like will automatically appeal to them. Showing stories that would appeal to my audience will also encourage them to purchase my magazine.

Which magazine has the most relevance to your own?: As I have analysed the music magazine ‘VIBE’, I believe this magazine emulates my magazine best as it targets the same genres and audience as I intend.

My typical audience