Music Magazine Advertisement

AT2 Research: Music Magazines

There is many different music magazines for the different genres. Music magazines have fallen in popularity over the last 5 years. This is because music has gone more digital. This means that people are not as interested in the magazines. This is provided by some companies that have just decided to stay online and not produce a magazine. A typical convention of a music magazine is that they will give away a free gift. This can include a free cd or a free poster. This magazine offers a free cd to the people who buy the cd. Normally the cd would be a taster of an upcoming album for a band or the featured band in the magazine. This means the fans of that group or the individual cam get a taster of the band and the new album and this means they can listen to it and decide if they will want to buy the full album or not.

The artist i choose was Jack Garrett. The magazine he is most likely to be in is Q. This is because this magazine talks about a wide range of music types. They also cover all different types of music artists from upcoming to established artists. This would be a good because he would get more interest as people will buy the magazine for the more established artists. This means he could get noticed by them people and they could take an interest in him.

In our initial research stage into creating a music magazine advertisement, we first had to find out some existing music magazines. The task was set out into three stages. First we had to name any music magazines that we knew of already. This first task was very short for me as we do not read, nor know of any magazines other that Q. The majority of the group did not know many, which instantly told us that us as a demographic were not a good selection to aim music magazines at. 

The next stage was to do a brief search on the net of any UK music magazines that were currently in circulation. This had to be print magazines and not online versions. We were allowed 5 minutes to do this in. From this small amount of time, we was able to find 21 magazine titles in the UK that are currently in circulation. These were either multi genre magazines, or of specific genres. The ones that we found were very widespread in their particular genre of music from Pop to heavy metal, folk to classical. 

The final task was to research the phrase 'UK music magazine sales 2014' and see what we could learn from this. The over-all judgement from this was that all the magazines were on the decline of circulation. Even the free magazine, The Fly was dropping in sales and has recently folded due to the complete loss of sales. The main reason that we could find for these huge falls in profits in print magazines was that a lot of magazines have now for online versions. This has made the need or want of a print magazine drop significantly as new music lovers are able to access the magazines more conveniently online. 

Below is the table that we created that goes through each step that I completed when looking at music magazines in the UK:

AT2 Research: Music Magazine Genres

After researching into music magazines into the UK, we wanted to research the genres that specific magazines use within their printed magazine. Below are a few magazine titles with their specific genres that they include, or if they are a multi-genre magazine:

• Q - Multi-genre
• Kerrang - Rock
• Big Cheese - Metal, punk, heavy rock
• fRoots - Folk and roots
• We (heart) Pop - Pop
• Blues and Soul - Blues and Soul
• Metal Hammer - Metal
• Top Of The Pops - Pop

These magazines, as you can see, have a very wide variety of genres that they dedicate their magazines to. This means that for my promotional advert for my artist who is a folk artist, fRoots will be a much better choice of magazine than Metal Hammer. If fRoots was not an option however, Q would be a good choice in it's replacement as it is Multi-genre, meaning that it includes all genres. 

AT2 Research: Music Magazines 2

When creating my magazine advertisement, we must first establish what music magazine will be suitable to accommodate my advert. When deciding this, we must look at the above list of magazines, and more if need be, to decide where my advert wold be best suited based on the genre of the magazine, the target audience of the magazine and if that matches with my artist.

The first magazine we would like to look at is on that will not be suitable. This is because we am interested to know the properties of a magazine that does not match my artist, and we can avoid magazines with similar characteristics thereafter. A magazine that is not suitable for my artist is Big Cheese. To see their website click here. The main reason that this magazine would not be suitable is because it's specialist genre does not match my artist. Ben Howard is a folk artist, whereas Big Cheese specialises in punk, rock and metal music. From this first detail, we can see that this magazine is not suitable to place my music ad. 

The latest issue of Big Cheese is the October edition. we have found the front page of this issue and can instantly conclude that the bands included in the magazines to not correspond with my artist.

From looking at the image on the left, we can see that the band on the front do not perform music of the folk genre. This band, from how they are dressed and they way that they are posed, are a punk-like band. On further research of Black Veil Brides we have found that they are indeed a heavy rock band inspired by Kiss. 

Further research into this issue of Big Cheese shows that they have posters to give away. These include Paramore, Sleeping With Sirens and Of Mice And Men. These bands, again, fall in to the category of Rock and Metal. In this magazine, there is no allowance for non rock or metal music. This magazine is for hardcore fans of these specific genres of music, and to keep selling copies, they must please their target audience. If we was to  try and put and advert in their magazine it would not be published as it does not appeal to their audience, in addition to the fact that my target audience would not be seeing the advert that will be designed to appeal to them.

The next magazine that we want to look at is another unsuitable magazine for my artist. This one is of a different genre category. we would like to look at Top Of The Pops. This magazine, as you can probably guess from the title, is a magazine based around pop music. To visit their website click here.  

On the right hand side is the latest version of Top Of The Pops. As you can see, it is very different to Big Cheese. TOTP is very colourful for a start. This is because the target audience for this magazine are people who are generally quite young, upbeat and colourful in themselves. The images on the front are of bands or artists and they all come under the pop genre such as 5 Second Of Summer and One Direction. These artist have a target audience of teenage girls, and so that's who this magazine is aimed towards. This is illustrated with the bright pink and blue colours and the childish writing. My artist does not share these qualities so would not suit this magazine. 

We have now chosen to look at  magazine that is suitable for my artist to appear in. As my artist is a folk artist, a magazine that specialises in that genre of music would be ideal, and in my research we have found the music magazine fRoots. To visit their website click here.

The image on the left hand side is of the front cover of one of their issues of the magazine. As you can see, the colours are quite brown. The reason that this colour scheme is appropriate is because it is earthy colours, linked with the outdoors and country etc. This is completely different to the colourful and childish look TOTP magazine and the dark, black Big Cheese magazine. The bands look to fit the image of a folk group, with the loose shirts and trousers. My artist, although he is more indie than those on the cover, with definitely fit this magazine and would appeal to the readers of fRoots magazine.



AT2 Research: Media Pack

When looking at my music magazine advert, we need to look at the facts of the magazine that I wish to use. To do this, we have found the media pack for fRoots magazine. The media pack is a document that contains all the facts we need to know when creating my magazine advert for this magazine. This includes pricing, sizes and statistics of target audience.

AT2 Research: Music Advertisement 

Now that we have found a magazine that would be appropriate for my artist, we need to look at the actual advert itself. Below is an advert from Mumford and Sons, a band that also fall into the folk-contry genre, like Ben Howard. We have annotated this magazine advert to look for codes and conventions of the advert.

In this magazine advert there are the obvious conventions with the artists name and the album name. Further to this, we can see a review from a magazine, images of the band members, the record company logo and singles that are included in the album.

The design of the magazine is also quite straight forward. The name of the band is right at the top and in the biggest writing, with the album name just below. These are written in a white-cream colour, to stand out from the black background. Below this, in the centre of the magazine advert are the images. These have been created to look like polaroid images that have been stuck down to the page. These are of the band members with their instruments. Further down we can see the review from NME magazine, a very well-known and established music magazine. Towards the bottom in a box are a list of three singles that are included in the album. This box helps to make this piece of information prominent as many people will have heard these songs with out being aware of the band name. AT the very bottom sits the logo of the record label. This is only very small as the advert is not promoting them, it is promoting the band. 

The writing is kept consistent throughout the advert. There are two types not fonts used in this. There is the curvy, posh handwriting style and the straight typed font. Although these two are used alternatively throughout, it is only these two sets of handwriting used.

Below is a second magazine advert:

This advert is similar to the one for Mumford and Sons for a few reasons. The first big similarity is the black background with white writing on top. This allows the names of both the artists and their albums to stand out to the viewer. This is looking to be a convention of folk artists advertisements at the current moment which I will need to consider. 

Another common feature of both albums is the images of the artists. On this advert for Vance Joy we can see half of his face on the right hand side of the page. This is a large image, and as a more unknown artist, it is probably to promote the artist to the public. 

Other obvious codes that we expect to see are also present in this advert. For example, the artist's name is at the top of the page in the biggest writing, followed by the album name. These are very common in all music adverts, not just ones for the folk genre. 

Vance Joy's advert includes a song list underneath the album name. This is a less common feature of music adverts across all genres. The Mumford and Son's advert includes a line with a few popular singles that are included within the album. This feature seems to be one at the producers descretion, however, I should not discount it too early.

AT2 Research: Photoshop

When creating my music magazine advertisement, we both must learn how to use photoshop. in the past we have both have used Photoshop a few times for basic things that include importing images ad remove backgrounds from them to a very amateur standard. Due to this, we have looked a little further into photoshop to learn the basic requirements for Photoshop that we will use when creating a music magazine advert and CD Digipack. 

When practicing to use photoshop we watched videos to further my knowledge further on how to use photoshop. This was a quick and easy way to learn new skills that we didn't know how to do before. To start of with we added an image of an artist and added text which we already knew how to do. Then we wanted to learn how to change the colour of the text to a specific colour that was already on the picture. we was both unaware on how to do this so we watched a video that explained it and we practised that skill within photoshop to make sure we both know how to do it. 

 

we then wanted to change the way the text looked on the screen in relation to the angle and the way it sits on the screen. We also watched a video on how to make the text a different angle and shape on the screen. We made the text arc on the screen after following the video by guidance. however we bot thought that this wasn't the look we are tying to create as it made the text to hard to read and didn't suit the picture.  

Research Into Exiting Music Magazines.

When me and Ryan looked into exciting music magazine adverts we found some running themes throughout the adverts we looked at. these are that all the adverts have the artists name and album title. They all have a picture of some description them. however a picture of the artist is more common. Also 2 of the 3 adverts we looked at had reviews on them about the album. we both believed that this was a good idea as it shows that people think the album is good quality. 

Planning

 

After making 2 basic designs for my MMA, we asked some people on there thoughts on which one would be best. They both received positive feedback however we decided to use the top one for our MMA.
Construction: Music Magazine Advert







when creating our MMA we made sure that we used the same font and the same colour text as we did on the CDD. By doing this it meant that the theme stayed consistent and it looked professional. it also made it easy to see the consistent theme throughout the products.

The Final Product