Evaluation Of My Music Magazine

EVALUATION OF MY MUSIC

MAGAZINE

1.) In what ways does your music magazine use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of existing music magazines?

• I feel that my magazine is conventional by the way it uses similar colours and fonts as other existing music magazines. For example, the fonts and colours used on my front cover are also like those used on the front cover of ‘Kerrang!’ magazine.

• However, my magazine has some unconventional features, such as borders on my front cover. Many existing magazines do not usually have borders.I also have some unconventional photos that I have used on my double page spread – the ones which have 3 images surrounded by one border.

These are all unconventional photos.

2.) How does your music magazine represent particular social groups?

My music magazine has been aimed at a particular social group. These are known as ‘scene kids.’

My magazine represents this social group as:• People who enjoy music and celebrity gossip – used features are about music and ‘rock star’ celebrities.• People who go on social networking sites i.e. ‘Facebook’ – mentioned on my front cover.• People who are fashion conscious and interested in the way they look – models used are wearing the typical clothing for the social group.

I think my music magazine has a realistic portrait of this social group and therefore I think this will help in attracting them into buying the magazine. Another magazine known for attracting this social group is ‘Bubblegum Slut’ magazine.

There may also be some negative representation as not all teenagers act and dress in the ways my magazine portrays them.

3.) Who would be the audience for your music magazine?

The target audience for my product is 16-25 year old males and females who are interested in alternative music and are part of the social group mentioned in the last question. This is because some articles in my magazine may not be suitable or interesting for younger or older people.

The target audience would also most likely be interested in such magazines as:

4.) How did you attract/address your target audience?

•The audience are first attracted by the magazine’s appearance. The red title with the white background, jumps out at the audience and the fonts used suggest the genre of the magazine.

•The audience is then attracted to the photographs used on the front cover. With a big photo of the main article the reader will know whether to pick up the magazine and read it or put it back on the shelf.

•Once the audience has been caught by the magazines features, they are drawn in to the articles. The cover acts as a teaser with only a few articles and the audience is then attracted by the competition opportunity.

5.) What kind of media institution might distribute your music magazine and why?

I think that my magazine would sell best with Bauer Media because:

• This company is a publishing company which operates in 15 countries worldwide.

• It produces and distributes many popular magazines and has stakes in television and radio.

• The worldwide circulation of Bauer Media Group's magazine titles amount to 38 million magazines a week.

• They own ‘Q’ and ‘Kerrang!’ which means that they have expertise in selling to the target market of my magazine.

• The company also own many TV music channels, such as 4Music. Therefore this would be a great opportunity to advertise my magazine or even create a new music channel for it, like ‘Kerrang! TV.’

6.) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing your music magazine?

Throughout the process of making my magazine, I have used many software programs:

• Desktop Publisher: I used this to create the layout for my magazine front cover, double page spread and contents page.

• Photoshop: I used this program to edit photographs to be placed into my magazine. It had features such as; crop and resize and I was also able to delete the background of photos so they would fit well within the magazine.

• Paint: this was also used in the process of editing my photographs for the magazine.

• The Internet: This was very useful when doing the research into magazines and the magazine industry. With the use of sites such as Google and Wikipedia, it was simple to find information which was needed in my research.

Luckily I had used most of these programs before and so the features were all familiar. Although I hadn’t used Photoshop before, but soon got to grips with the facilities of the software.

7.) What do you feel you have learnt in the progression from creating the school magazine (preliminary task), to creating your music magazine?

In the progression from creating my school magazine to creating my music magazine, I have learnt:

• More about the magazine industry and the ways in which they are represented.

• About the conventions of existing music magazines and what my target audience are wanting from the genre of magazine I have created.

• About the technologies used to create the media behind the magazine i.e. Photo editing.

• The conventional language used in producing a music magazine.

• About the ways in which a front cover, double page spread and a contents page can be represented with various fonts, colours and sizes.