Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Questionnaire Results

Questionnaire Results

Q1. How often do you purchase music magazines?
I have considered and covered a range of how often someone purchases a music magazine. The majority of the people who completed my questionnaire purchase a music magazine either weekly or monthly. This means that my finished product will be biased towards this majority of people who took my questionnaire.

Q2. How much would you usually spend on a music magazine?
I have considered a range of prices in my questionnaire that could be spent on purchasing music magazines. The majority of people who answered my questionnaire spend between £1.50 and £2.50. These results suggest that I should price my magazine at £2.00


Q3. What are your top 3 favourite colours?
I asked for people to list their three favourite colours to help with the design of my magazine. The majority of the people that completed the questionnaire prefer the colours blue, red and green so the main colour scheme of my magazine will use those colours.


Q4. Who is your favourite Indie artist?
I asked the people who filled in my questionnaire who their favourite indie artist is to try and get an idea which bands I should feature in my own magazine. The most popular bands were Arctic Monkeys and Radiohead so these are the bands that I will feature in my magazine.


Q5. What three words would you associate with indie music?
I asked the people who filled in my questionnaire what three words they would associate with indie music. The words that were associated the most were independent and fresh so I will use one of these words in my magazine.


Q6. What features of current music magazines do you like?
I asked people what their favourite features of current music magazines to give me ideas of what features to use in my own magazine. The main features that were chosen were reviews and interviews so I will feature these in my magazine.


Q7. What features of current music magazines do you feel need improvement?
I asked the people who filled in my questionnaire what features of music magazines that they dislike. The main features that seemed to be disliked were Gig listings, free gifts and crosswords/quizzes. These results suggest that maybe I should not include these features in my magazine.

Publication Plan

TITLE: DELUXE

POSITIONING STATEMENT: Music That Matters

FREQUENCY OF PUBLICATION: Weekly

PRICE: £2.00

DISTRIBUTION: Newsagents, Supermarkets, Music Stores, Music Venues.

RATIONALE: The main focus of my magazine is to give music fans news and information about the latest bands. It will offer interesting reviews, interviews and articles that will appeal to the target audience of the magazine.

STYLE: Informal style of writing will be used that will directly address the readers of the magazine. The magazine is for all music fans so it will use simple vocabulary


Regular Content
Editorial
Fans Letters Section
Gig Reviews
Crossword section
Main feature article about cover image
New bands section
Top 10 tracks of the week
Album Reviews
Gig listings
My Influences – various artists talk about the music that matters to them
Quick fire – Q&A section with a different musician each week

Feature Articles
The Good Old Days – The Libertines on the verge of a reunion?
Wild beasts on tour
Friendly Fires’ US Invasion
Nick Cave on Bunny Munro
Hey Scenesters – The cribs talk about new album and recruiting ex-smith Johnny Marr
Interview with unsigned new band
Guitar Heroes – A to Z of worlds greatest guitarists
Stone Roses 20th anniversary interview
Seasick Steve- Rags to Riches
The Killers – Track by Track of new album
Not So Difficult Second Albums – The Horrors, the Maccabees, Jack Penate.
Bah Humbug – Christmas with the Arctic Monkeys
In the studio with Cold War Kids
Tribute to 30 years of the cure
Top 100 Indie Anthems
Rising Stars – Marina and the Diamonds
Elbow shoot to stardom – interview with the band
Worlds most famous music conspiracy’s
Competition to win tickets to reading festival
Are we human? – Into the mind of Brandon Flowers

House Style

Coverlines: Rockwell Extra Bold and Arial

Headlines: Elephant

Standfirst: Rockwell 14pt.

Captions: Rockwell 8pt

Features first paragraph: Drop capital Elephant 5 lines deep

News first paragraph: First Word in bold capitals

Body text: Times New Roman 11pt

Colour scheme: Blue, Red, Green

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Main Task: Research

Music Magazine Conventions

Cover

  • Small pictures usually feature artists performing

  • Serious expressions

  • List of bands

  • Features musical instruments/equipment

  • Very small number of colours

  • Photography is creative

Contents

  • Follow most normal conventions

  • Photography is creative

Double Page Spread

  • Brief introduction about the article - Standfirst

  • Usually one page is an image and one is writing/ Picture = half of article

  • Large first letter at the start of first paragraph - Drop capital

  • Writing in columns

  • Title for the article - Headline

  • Writing on pictures/Quotes

  • Artists name is made clear in standfirst - Different colour

  • Usually a smaller image in the article

  • Writer of the article and photographer featured - Byline

  • Images often bleed across from one page to the other

  • Strapline or border used
  • Bold text in first paragraph

  • More than one image - Smaller images are used to break up the text and make it more inviting

  • Standfirst always by headline and before start of article - introduces the article. Works with headline to tell the reader what the article is about. Larger font than article.

  • Headlines- creative, eye catching.

  • Limited use of colour

  • Creative Photography

  • Informal Style of Writing - Personality of artist comes through in article

Magazine Research



Title: Uncut

Price: £4.50

Frequency of publication: Monthly

Issue Size: 154 pages

Regular content: Reviews (Albums,Singles and Gigs), Editorial, Feedback (Readers letter section), First Cut (Monthly news section), Crossword

Feature articles: Cover story about main image, Articles about coverlines that appear on the cover.





Title: NME

Price: £2.20

Frequency of publication: Weekly

Issue size: 76 pages

Regular content: Reviews (Albums,Singles and Gigs), New band section, Editorial, Weekly news section, Crosswords

Feature content: Cover story about main image, Articles about coverlines that appear on the magazine cover.





Title: Mojo

Price: £4.10

Frequency of publication: Monthly

Issue size: 150

Regular content: Monthly news section, Reviews (Albums,singles and gigs), Editorial, Crosswords

Feature content: Article about main image, Articles about coverlines that appear on cover.