Research and planning:Distribution

Big named distributor companies like frontline, can distributed over 160 magazine titles and get a lot from them, in terms of profit. Because there such a huge mainstream company, they can afford to distribute and sell their magazines wherever they want. So like from small corner stores to the big retailers such as WHS, Asda, Tesco’s and 55,000 other retailers around the world. Bauer, who is one of the major UK publishers and is the largest privately owned publisher in Europe, is joined with frontline to help publish some of the magazines which are out in many stores today e.g. Bella, Take a Break, TVQuick and many more. One example of their music magazines that they publish is Q, which is the UK best selling music monthly magazine. It has a wide amount of big mainstream artist including Oasis, U2 and this is how they have attracted such a huge global audience. Because they know a little bit more about the music industry and how it works compared to some other companies.
Independent Distributors have their own distributing network and have to think about other ways of how to distribute their music out there, because they don’t have the money to distribute their music out there like many big mainstream distributors. They only really sell their magazines online or either many independent, down to earth retailers, for example urban outfitters and Studio 4. Vice is an example of a small company with a small niche audience. There much more upmarket than other mainstream companies and quite dominant about there magazine being the coolest magazine because it’s more interesting like getting a magazine from them than like taking the boring easy step and getting it from a big store like Tesco’s and Asda etc…

Detail Research into forms and conventions

For my magazine, Iam going to focus on selling my magazine to teenagers and also the younger adulthood generation, because many of the magazines which you can buy today target that general genre. So this magazine is going to be for people who like rock and pop music and who want to be aspirers.

In some ways the magazines that I looked at, they all have some similar patterns to try and appeal their audiences ti buy their magazine. But then in other ways they have used other forms and conventions to try and make it different. The three magazines that I have looked at, NME, Q and Kerrang, title and style wise for these mags are reletivly the same. All three of them use quite dark, bland colouring for the lettering of the coverlines and the sidelines, thenn also for the background. The only thing which is different about the front covers of these three magazines is the layout of them. The audiences are different in all of the magazines, Kerrang are more like based at a teenage generation, just getting into the adult stages, aged around 14-21. In the jicnar scale, I believe that they would be classed around a c2, because I dont think they have much of an understanding of how the music industry works compared to the likes of NME and Q magazine. Kerrang have more of a lombard attitude towards music, so they dont really care what people think about them as long as theie still enoying themselves in the music industry. An example of this would be Hayley Williams on the front cover of Kerrang magazine punching her fist out towards the audience and her slogans around her saying words like "I know who Iam". So Kerrang and their bands give sort of a domineering approach towards their audience, which some people in the UK like and thats why Kerrang is one of the most popular music magazines.

NME and Q magazines audience are based on also teenagers but also the adult generation. They are quite simple in what they do aswell, which what I mean by that is they act like lombards, their more mature in what they do in the music industry. In their magazines and on the front cover, its quite bland and simple.

I believed I had to research into these magazines to give me a better understanding of how different magazines act towards different audiences, So I know what people like in a magazine and so I can find it easier to produce my magazine.

Initial Research into forms and conventions

Before we go into deciding on what magazine we do. We had to find a bit of research into different genres and audiences of other magazine, to give us an idea of whats in the market and how to produce our own magazine.

Title: Wonkavision Magazine.

The Audience: Teenage audience, just getting into adulthood


Main Contents: Many interviews with the band

Brand Identity: A independant magazine for independant music. Down to earth kind of bands.






Title: Q Magazine


The Audience: Teenage an a adult audience

Main Contents: Reviews of albums, Q awards, Exclusive interviews with many bands like U2 and Oasis, Competitions to win tickets for access all areas in gigs. Also bands views on other eachother, e.g. what Arctic Monkeys frontman, Alex Turner thinks of band Take That.

Brand Identitys: Big major label Magazine,






Title: Classic FM

The Audience: Mostly the older adult generation. Maybe a tiny amount of youth people.

Main Contents: Live Music Guides, Free CDs, Interviews on debut albums and talks about the passion of music.

Brand Identitys: Very Upmarket, Sophisticated Magazine. For the older adult generation who know a little bit more about how the music industry works, take classical music seriously.

What I need to do next is to make my final decision on what genre im doing for my magazine. To help me do this, I will be looking at more magazines that are in the market today in more detail. So ive got an idea on what I want to do and to see what the public like to have when buying a magazine.

Main Task:Magazines

The main task is create a front cover and a contents on a double page spread for a new music magazine. It must be an individual piece of work and all text and images used, must be original and not taken from the internet etc... We have been given a list of dates which will be important to follow to complete the task successfully. The most important deadlines I would need to remember is the deadlines. So for the deadlines for the research and planning, the 8th of January, the production deadline, 15th January, so thats the taking photos doing the layout for the magazine etc... Then the Post production deadline on 12th February. The next of the deadlines I will need to remember next is the evaluation deadlines, from the 15th of February to the 5th of March.