Research,

Year 12 Media Coursework.

The brief for my coursework is to create a music magazine front cover with a contents page and also a double page spread using all original images and text.

I started looking at different music magazines with already a faint idea of what I wanted my final product to be like. I understand that there are many different types of music, and many sub types of music, for example there are larger genres such as rock, but then genres underneath this such as rock pop. Different music magazines usually have a slant on a type of music to appeal to people who enjoy that type of music, who will then, therefore also most likley enjoy the sub genres. In recent years "indie" music has gone from a transition from being a sub genre of rock, to a large music genre of its own. So now indie has its sub genres.
I am particularly interested in smaller, less well know acts that are of the indie/electro genre. So I would like to focus my magazine on these sort of artists.


I am particularly interested in "Indie" music. It was once a sub genre below Rock, but has now become a genre in itself due to many bands and artists being labeled indie. I am also interested in this genre as it has increasingly become more popular with events and fashion. For example music festivals have become alot more popular with this type of music, and the artists are very closely linked to fashion trends.



So to further my research on this, I looked into the sort of magazines that promote this kind of music. I found the following;



This is the front cover of NME. NME is a British music magazine which in its early days was very closely linked to Punk Rock, but through the years has widened itself and it now features a veriety of artists and genres which are all related closely to the Rock Genre. And particularly features British acts.

All of the NME magazines follow a similar patturn in the ways in which they are presented. The masthead is always in the left hand corner, which is unique as for a lot of magazines the masthead fills the top of the page. It is large and bold, and is in the vibrant colour of red. This way it can be seen above other magazines and it stands out to the eye. The colour red also gives connotations of strength which could be linked to the heaviness of the "rockier" music that the magazine supports. The magazine looks asif it is aimed more so at teenagers interested in the "indie" scene. I think this as the boys in the band featured "The Automatic" are quite young, (early 20's) this is the sort of age range the magazine will be aimed at, but also a slightly younger audience who would look up to them.

The front cover always has a solo artist or a band on it. The picture always has a feature interview which follows this, and this will be the main article within the issue. This is often done when a band are starting to get big, or realeasing a new album and deals are often made with record companies to do this as a way of promotion. This way it attracts fans of the coverstar or stars but could also give them a new fanbase by appealing to the sterotype that have bought other issues of the magazine. The picture of the band or artist in a way depicts their style and gives the reader an insight to personality. The bands name is edited so it is in front of the band in big bold letters so it is readable. The colour yellow is also a strong colour, giving the magazine quite a male vibe, but could easily be read by women. Another feature that brings me to this sterotype is the fact that the band featured are all male.

Around the edge of the page, other bands are mentioned. This is also a selling point to the magazine as people will see the featured artists and want to read about them. But as the font is smaller, this surrgests that the articles wont be as large as the main one. The magazine is evidently a music magazine as the main focus is on bands.



This is the front cover of quite a recent "Q" magazine. It is different from the NME cover as before. This cover seems more grown up in the fact that there is less going on and its seems to be a little simpler, as the one before seemed pretty loud. This looks like it is aimed at an older audience as the bands featured are "older" sort of bands, such as U2, which would probably be aimed at 20-30 year olds. The front cover also surrgests that it is aimed at a male audience as the colour scheme is mainly masculine colours, for example strong colours like red,blue and grey. Another element that leads me to believed this is aimed at men is that the cover star (Lily Allen) is pictured topless surrounded by two panthers. Her name is featured across the centre of the page and above it it states, "sexy beast". The genre of music it is promoting will be very well known bands that have possibly been around for a good few years, for example the ones featured are Oasis, U2 and The Stone Roses, which are all well known bands from the genre of "Rock". However the cover star (Lily Allen) is still quite young at the age of 22, and fits more into the "Pop" genre. The layout of the magazine is well known, with the trademark "Q" in the red box in the top left hand corner.

I know that I wanted to create a magazine based on Indie Music, but slanted towards the genre of "Electro Pop" which is quite new on the music scene. It comes from the genre of Electronica, and originates from New wave, Synth pop, pop music, disco,new rave, Kautrock and post punk. There are many new musicians that come under this catorgory, they include La Roux, Ladytron, Lady Hawke, Hot Chip, The Ting Tings, Little Boots, New Young Pony Club, Frankmusik and many more. Below are some pictures of these artists, to brainstorm their styles;