research into real music magazines

Next i had to research a range of real music magazines. I wanted to research a wide range of music magazines that all had different genres and had different target audiences. I began to print of from the computer real music magazine front covers. I stared with “Top of the Pops” magazine and i began to analyse around the edge. I thought about the target audience for each of the magazines and i highlighted the language and vocabulary that was used. “Top of the Pops” magazine was clearly aimed at young girls aged 9-15. I could see this because of the colours that were used, which were pastel pink, blue and yellow. The features of the magazine included a boy-band called, ‘the jonas brothers’. This pop band are owned by Disney and there is heart shapes decorating the outside of the coverlines, to symbolize how much young girls love them. Thee was also clues as to the target audience for this magazine through the anchorage text which was “24 hours with Zac!” This would appeal to young girls because ”Zac Efron” is a teenage boy who was in the film “high school musical” and is a well known heartthrob for young girls. There was also lots of buzz words and exclamation marks like, ‘exclusive pics!!’ This exaggerates features even more making young girls feel really excited and want to buy the magazine. The genre for this magazine was clearly pop music because all the featured artists on the front cover were that genre of music too. After analyzing this magazine in detail, it made me think about my own music magazine, and i decided that i wouldn’t want to make my own magazine this genre and have the same target audience. This is because i wanted to have a more mature target audience and also to have a magazine that includes a variety of music genres which would therefore appeal to a wider range of target audience, and more people would want to buy the magazine. It was interesting to then look at the front cover of another genre of music magazine such as”NME”. It had a completely different target audience to “Top of the Pops” magazine. I could see this because after analysing around the front cover, i made notes about the colour scheme,mode of address, mise-en-scene, layout, language, features etc so that i could decided what target audience the magazine was designed for. I decided that my own music magazine would be a bit more like an “NME” styled one. This is because i felt that it had a wider range of target audience because it showed lots of genres of music which would appeal to more people.
After researching a number of different music magazine covers and making detailed analysis of them, i came to a conclusion about what target audience each of them had. It made me start to think in depth about my own target audience, and how my magazine should look if i want to attract a certain target audience.