Audience research for the music magazine.

For my audience research I had lots of conversations, group and one on one and here is some screen shots from some conversations.

Mood Board

Here is my mood board in which i have put some stuff i think my audience will be intrested in and represent.

There is a big feel of live music and how they dress. Also rebilous films and programmes such as south park and the warriors which connote the same feeling as rock music likes to do.

Bauer Publishing group

The Bauer publishing group was founded in 1875 and had been run by the Bauer family for four generations, it is now a media empire with over 250 magazines in 15 different countries which are: Austria, China, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, United Kingdom and USA where its worldwide offices are located. They produce and distribute many popular magazines and had a turn over of 1.79 billion Euros in 2007.

I will be looking at Bauer media, Europe’s largest private owned publishing group. It is based in Hamburg, Germany. It works a lot in the UK mainly in magazine and radio. It is a business that has brought about the biggest Magazines of today with its large and diverse range of magazines including. angling times (1953), FHM (1994) which is a very big selling international magazine, closer (2002) and Grazia (2005).

Bauer Media provide the best magazines you could ask for and will target all types of audiences. They provide for Men, Women and even the youth.

The Bauer Media Group’s men’s portfolio produces magazine titles which have obtained a 33% share of the sector. Magazines such as ‘FHM’ which is the leading men’s lifestyle magazine that is currently in print, online and abroad. ‘Zoo’ is the men’s weekly magazine. These are their reader’s statistics.

Men 15+: 5,272,000 - 23.4% of population
Men 15-34: 2,679,000 - 21.9% of population
Men ABC1: 3,128,000 - 33.7% of population

The Bauer Media Group’s women’s portfolio is made to cover a large range of topics to appeal to the audience. ‘Heat’ and ‘Closer’ deliver celebrity news and gossip. ‘Grazia’ delivers designer fashion and glamour to its audience. ‘More!’ delivers interesting stories about life. ‘Top Sante’ is the market leader in celebrity health and beauty. ‘Yours’ delivers lifestyle topics for women aged 50+ every fortnight. Also, Bauer Media publishes titles such as ‘Mother & Baby’ and ‘Pregnancy and Birth’ for parenting advice for women. These are their reader’s statistics.

Women 15+: 4,994,000 - 34.7% of population
Women 15-34: 2,673,000 - 19.6% of population
Women ABC1: 2,774,000 - 20% of population

Their youth magazines consists of ‘match’ a young persons football update magazine and ‘heat’ which goes well with teenagers, in particular girls.

Bauer Media is a sister company of H Bauer UK, publisher of the UK's biggest TV listings, Take a Break and Bella.

Bauer media also bring the leading music magazines in the UK, titles such as ‘KERRANG’ the popular weekly rock magazine,  ‘MOJO’ which is very well known and keeps undying music live on, ‘empire’ which is massive, leading movie magazine that is known for it’s amazing front cover. ‘Q’ which connects lifestyles and movies with music. ‘Q’ is very popular in the UK and one of the leading selling magazines.

The simple reason for Bauer Media publishing such a wide range of titles is to make sure and have a wider range of audience. Of course not only does this bring in more money by selling different magazines, but the publisher also makes money from advertisers advertising in the different magazines, which is their main source of income because the high cost to printing all of the magazine to that sold to the people. To get advertising spaces picked for different companies they make statistics through data they collect on what sort of people are reading their magazines. Then they can decide what magazine should advertise what.

They do this so it makes sense to what advert should go in what Magazine. So if you were to have a magazine such as ‘empire’ which is a big magazine so they most probably use a one of the big companies that want to use their advertising space such as Sony who own a lot of new tech. And is one of the leading tech industries. Big industries = the big magazines Or it would also make sense if a cinema was advertised in ‘empire’ because of what ‘empire’ promote.

Beacause they targeting so many different audiences, in age groups, social classes, and gender, because they have so many specicific audiences also, Bauer Media can benefit from more income from an even bigger variety of advertisers building a strong rep in lots of different areas. Also try not to compete with itself and try to instead just to cover the whole weekend. 

Textual analysis of double page spread

Denotation of this shows a double page spread with the background being three men, with guitars looking like they are playing a live show it is a wide angle shot, stretching over the two pages. In the top left hand of the left page there is a title which says "Anything Could Happen" this is written in a bold, upper case, sans serif font. The biggest word is the first, "Anything" which is half red and half white which looks a bit like blood dripping down the word. Under this "could happen" is written in the same font, just slightly smaller and all white. This title is in quote marks, therefore suggesting that someone had said it. There is then a subtitle below which says "Exclusive: Fall Out Boy to Play intimate K!-sponsored show" this is written in a slightly unusual font, it is quite jagged along the edges which looks like it is moving, giving the impression of music and sound. The word "exclusive" is written in red and the rest is written in white, therefore "exclusive" stands out, grabbing your attention, making it look special.

Other than the traditional Kerrang yellow which is only used stated the section of the magazine. The only colour they use is red which denotes anger, love, energy etc. This is appropriate for rock as opposed to a calm blue. There is also a box in the bottom right saying ‘Win a pair of Fall Out Boy tickets’, it is the only writing on this side of the page so stands out the word win is bigger than the rest of the writing so stands out and catches your eye and people always like to win things.

The background picture is of Fall Out Boy in concert. It is not a posed shot; they are not looking at the camera or even seem to be aware of it being there, they are just showing them looking at their instruments showing that they care about the music they are playing, giving a good impression of the band. It looks quite personal and close as though the reader is at the concert front row which kind of makes you want to be in that position for real.

Kerrang have used their colour well on this spread it is all in black and white. And the picture is in grey scale it looks very cool and personal which is the impression they wanted to give with Fall Out Boy, but also they use bits of colour to draw eyes to different things but are still very subtle about it, to keep the background the main focus point.

Content page anaylsis.

The content page here is for Kerrang magazine it is on a single page with a colour scheme of black, white and pink which I think contrast well. You can clearly notice it is a contents page with it stated in the masthead at the top in capitals.

There are for four images on the page with a reference to what page they are related to. There is an editor’s letter to introduce the magazine and at the bottom of the page there is information on subscriptions with images and example of other magazines from Kerrang.

There are 79 pages and each section is headed then have sub headings to guide you to what is what.

You see the sort of rebellion and rock your going to read about with the man with the guitar and the naked tattooed women.

The whole background is of live music so again emphasises on rock being aboout live music, the rough look of the page gives a good feel that your reading a rock magazine.    

Textual anaylsis

Denotation: The magazine cover consists of a colour photograph of a man looking directly at the camera it is a medium close up showing his head, half of his body and his arms being lifted up above the waist. The background is a light grey. The photograph of the man covers the page but with also little pictures of other people around the sides in different places.

In front of his hair is the KERRANG masthead and there is a main cover line in front of the man in red stating his band. There is lots of cover lines put into different sections keeping to the white, red and black colour scheme.

There is a barcode in the bottom right of the page.

The masthead is very prominent on the page its colours are bright or exciting is just white writing on a black backdrop with black lines going through the letters like a smash. It is in a san serif font and I fell it makes it look strong and Morden, having implications that it keeps up to date with the latest music and is strongest at doing that as a magazine. ‘KERRANG!’ is onomatopoeic for a power chord on an electric guitar, which would refer to rock usually metal or any other heavy rock. There is also a radio station and TV channel linked to the magazine with the same music so you might see it for the first time and link it to them. Also the ‘!’ makes it sound load and so you link to load music, it has lines going through the letters making it look like the word had been smashed, making it look more hardcore and of course with heavy rock bands you see that a lot of them like to smash things on stage and so you know from the masthead if you like rock you will want to pick up this magazine.

The colour photograph is of Jared Leto the lead singer of 30 seconds to mars, (a rock band). He is in a black leather jacket looking at the camera in a sinister way, he also has his fist clenched in is other hand it makes him look dark and bad which Jared isn’t usually known for as a person, the coverline that relates to the photograph then says “I could be your worst enemy” as a quote of his and ‘Jared Leto’s dark side exposed’ this could then appeal to women as they might find this bad boy image ‘sexy’ and want to see more about him. But then again could appeal to guys just wanting to know more about what he is talking about especially fans of the band which is a very large fan base. The big ’30 seconds to mars’ can attract people as having a very popular band as the main image and headline is always good to draw eyes.

The red/black colour scheme reminds me a lot of the emo/punk genre which Kerrang would not necessarily come on in their past but as the magazine got bigger it widened from just heavy metal to more different types of rock. But still more deep and dark colours would relate more to rock than bright colours usually relating to pop.

All the bands mentioned in the coverlines are rock bands like: 30 seconds to mars, HIM, Paramore, AFI, Enter Shikari and a few more all being in the rock Genre whatever sub-genres they may be. This is clearly stating that is a rock magazines made for fans of rock. There a puff in the shape of a star top left saying inside it ‘Meet Alice in chains’ empathising on the ‘meet’ letting people know they have a chance to win something which would be very exciting for a fan of the band, also it doesn’t say have the chance or anything that would put doubt it simply is telling the audience they are going to meet them which makes it even more appealing. Another give away is shown at the bottom as a poster special for black metal, a lot of people love to collect posters and sometimes get magazines simply for the magazines inside, which is why Kerrang have promoted that there is posters inside.

In conclusion the sans serif font connotes a modern feel and is also very bold and strong, making it known to have the latest news on the rock scene and to be confidant about it as well. I would say that the target audience is both male and female aged between 16 and 30, people with a good knowledge of rock and a love for it. I believe Kerrang take great thought into their audience and are very confident in their magazine, they also look like they are still trying to get more popular with people and collect more readers.

word count:812

Introduction to music magazine

In this project i'm creating a music magazine cover page, contents page and a double page spread.
I will also have textual anaylis of a cover page and double page, with a audience research and profiling.