Music Magazine Proposal

For my magazine I am planning to base it on an indie genre, this would mean the magazine, if it went to market, would compete with other magazines such as NME and Q magazine, these magazines in particular because they will feature similar artists and have a similar sort of style about them, through the research I have done previously to starting this task I have found out that NME is a more casual magazine, something that you pick up every week and read, whereas Q magazine is a more formal affair, being a less frequent magazine, something that is special and you read as a special occasion.

I feel that there are gaps in this market, but ignoring the process of what there has already been and what hasn't been I am planning on making mine more formal and more modern than NME, but less formal and less serious than Q magazine, I feel that my own style will mean I can create something that is visually appealing but gets the message across.

I have played around with a few names for the music magazine, one of them being 'Cardinal Music Magazine' which I may shorten to 'CRDNL', that is the strongest idea as far as a name goes, and the colour scheme will be similar to something I did with my college magazine (look to a previous post on my blogger page), so I'm going to use colours like orange, teal and other in-betweeny colours, rather than the traditional, and overused reds and blues, I also think using Cardinal Red the colour is fairly cliche, as the colour isn't the only meaning for the word cardinal, and using that colour scheme would rather limit the magazine as far as my creativity would go.

The most obvious problems I can see so far would be fonts, this will be something I will have to look and search for until I find the perfect one, one I would like to use that has been previously use is the 'Albion Didot' font used in the BMX magazine, the Albion, it is used during the feature articles and some of the article titles/headlines, I feel I can use something similar for my masthead of the front cover of my magazine.

Music Magazine Research Task Four: Representation Of My Target Audience

In this research task I will discuss the representation of both musicians and the target audience for my magazine. For my magazine, focusing mainly on an 'indie' fan base and mainly indie musicians, this is because at college and in my friendship groups there isn't really any defining 'type' of person other than the people that fit the indie genre, also because indie music is some of my favorite type of music, favorite musicians being Bombay Bicycle Club, and more underground bands such as Little Comets and General Fiasco.

In the music magazine industry and in the media in general these types of people that I will be aiming my magazine at are not really represented well. There are very few music magazines and few publications out there at the moment that target this audience, so I think it will be a fairly unique magazine that I will be creating, I want to make it so anyone who I'm aiming it at, being mainly 16-30 year olds can just pick up the magazine and understand what the content is trying to explain, as with many of these specialist magazines, and more genre specific magazines, for music an example would be Kerrang, the audience will have to know the genre previously very well before they can just pick the magazine up, read it and understand it.

I want to make the magazine look aesthetically pleasing, and an alternative look on an already fairly samey music magazine industry, one of my favourite magazines as far as the style goes is 'The Albion' a free BMX magazine that makes it's money from advertising so it can pay for the printing costs, a relatively good idea, especially as they can charge more as more people pick it up and read it, because at the end of the day it is free, but I find that the design of the magazine is more formal than other BMX magazines, more wordy rather than pictures, but the pictures are still very serious and formal, I like the alternative thinking that goes into things like the front cover, logo, how articles are layed out, the thought process that went into the font which they use in the main articles (Albion Didot), so this magazine could be a sort of inspiration.

I also like the way that NME magazine is set out, after being influenced by many different genres of music and many years of different influences it has reached a sort of indie layout, with the pop influence from the 60's,70's,80's and 90's. Before they took the indie route for their magazine they used to mainly pop, covering all of the big bands from the above era's, such as The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Nirvana etc.

I never regarded Rolling Stone as a real music magazine because it is very different to what I am planning to do for my magazine in the sense that I think Rolling Stone's covers and layout aren't very good, I'm planning on spending the time to make my magazine look legitimate, make it seem like an actual magazine, because after all that is the task.

Music Magazine Research Task Three: Genres Of Music

The genre of a magazine is very important to the way it is set out, so below are lists of popular genres and what genres music magazines are, I will also look at music I listen to, after looking at all of these I will make a decision as to what genre my magazine will fit into, it is very important that I don't pick something that has been overused, or that is present in today's media.

Popular music genres, with magazines that fit these genres next to them:

• Indie - NME
• Pop - Q, Mojo
• Rock - Kerrang
• Hip-Hop - Hip Hop Connection (American Magazine)
• Grime - Flavourmag (Urban London Music and Arts Magazine)
• Hip-Hop/R&B - Vibe Magazine
• Music in General - Rolling Stone Magazine (varies from month to month as to which artist they focus on, the magazine isn't devoted to 

all of these magazines have a layout and a design that mirrors what they are trying to represent, so for example NME has quite an indie feel to it, one that would match today's culture, with the clothing people wear, the people that feature in the magazine and other things such as the features they run and the way the codes and conventions are presented.

Music that I listen to:

• Indie - Bombay Bicycle Club, Little Comets, General Fiasco
• Grime - Skepta, JME, P Money
• Hip-Hop - Kanye West
• Rock - The Rolling Stones, The Beatles

 I think that I will make my magazine more of an indie theme, this is because I feel that there is a slight gap in the market, because although the content of NME is seen to be indie, the design wasn't originally to suit indie music, because when it was created it was more to do with popular music than anything else, and has recently changed. Whereas my magazine will be completely indie orientated, with a modern design that fits the genre, rather than optimized like NME's design has been.