Wednesday, 29 September 2010

Brand Identity

" Why is it important to create a Brand Identity in a music magazine?"

With a Brand identity you automatically begin to build up a reputation. Added to that, there is an expectation as a company from your targeted audience to be recognised. Another reason why the brand identity of a magazine is important that it reassures the audience that they know what to expect, if they didnt then the magazine as a company would suffer.

Music Magazine Institutions

Some examples of music institutions are;
BBC: Television media who aim to offer entertainment and information.

AXAR: Part of the Disney co-operation for films who offer entertainment

AARDMAN: Owned by Nick Park. This company specialises in Stop-Frame Animation

SKY: A conglomorate, T.V, Films, Internet Service Provider (isp)

TIME WARNER: A conglomorate- Music, Films. A subsidery of Warner Brothers

GINGER: Making television and Radio  programmes.

SONY: Electronic & Digital Media- creates music, film, t.v , cameras, laptops, phones, mp3's.

02: Phones, Music (events)

Here are some music magazine, with additional research into the companies, what their target audiences are, when they were founded, why they are so successful.

Alternative Press: This is an American magazine founded in 1985 by Mike Shea which provides the readers with band interviews, photos, information on upcoming releases and so on.
The target audience for this magazine is teenagers and young male adults aged 18 to 30 years.
The Genre of this magazine is alternative, Rock/Pop. Magazines use a range of different forms and conventions to appeal to it's targeted audience, for example the house colours for this magazine appeal to the male audience as they are quite plain and usually, and stereotypically apply to men.

Billboard: This is a weekly american magazine devoted to the music industry since 1894. This particular magazine is very popular, around 4 million people visit their website.
There are many different audiences for this magazine ranging between 15 to 30 year olds this is so there is'nt a niche or a mass audience. The magazine covers advertise a wide variety of music so anyone can read it. The audiences can be either passive or active depending on how they collect the magazine.

Q:  This is the UK's best selling music magazine monthly, originally it was named "cue" as in "cue a record" however a single letter made the masthead far more recognisable and prominent.
In June 2007 it had a circulation of around 130,179. Q was first published in 1986 by it's founders Mark Ellen and David Hepworth for it's high quality photos and printing. The targeted audience for this magazine is for the older generation and features artists from around their era. Q offers a range of different resources for people to keep up to date with what the magazine has to offer, for example, A radio station, T.v programme, youtube, awards show and hosts this at it's own venue.

NME: This stands for New Musical Express which is a UK magazine weekly since march 1952. In 1970's it was the best selling magazine around, and in 1978 it gained a political voice - Neil Spencer. This magazine has a mass audience, and appeals to everyone, it does this by selling the magazine at a reasonable price, but also having it's own award show, radio station and t.v show.
In 2004, Conor Nicholas became the editor of NME which meant that magazine because glossy again, which may have been the cause of a 5% boost later on that year, with around 73,640 sales per week. However, in 2007 sales fell by 12.3 % to 64,033 but in 2008 they held the largest awards gig at the 02 arena which put them straight back on top.

Kerrang: This is a Rock magazine published Bauer consumer media, this was first published on the 7th june 1981, on this particular AC/DC featured on the front cover. Kerrang is published weekly and in 2007 it reached to around 43, 253 sales and is aimed at 16-25 year olds, specifically rock fans.

Tuesday, 21 September 2010

Case Study : Smash Hits Magazine

Our task was to represent one media institution connected with music magazines. We needed to do some intensive and detailed research and present our findings to the rest of the class. Within our research, we needed to include : The history and success of the magazine.
                              Who it's target audience is and how you know.
                              What it can offer to media consumers.
                              What are it's plans for the future.

Not only did this help us to understand how the media industry works, but also it gaves us an insight into how popular music magazines really are.
We presented our findings using a powerpoint presentation,  because we were in different groups it helped us to analyse a number of different magazines rather than just one.

Why the Blog?

The reason for this blog is to post my research for AS level Media. For our first piece of coursework, we are going to create a cover page and a double page spread of a Music magazine. Therefore, this blog is going to contain all of my research and any other work I do in preparation for this project.