Textual analysis of Billboard magazine

Textual analysis of Vibe magazine

The four F's

When making magazines I have to consider 'The Four F's'

Format- Design choices, the visual style of the magazine, the logo, cover lines, the size of the magazine.
Formula- Magazines approach to editorial content, the feature type and length, the departments in the front and back of the book, the photographic style, and illustrations.
Frame- Margins and gutters
Function- What is the job? Sum it up in a sentence/slogan.

Also when making my magazine I will have to make sure that it is consistent this is key in magazines. The magazine should be very similar from month to month. It has to have unity it needs to again be consistent within an edition. eg font, colours, mode of address (how does it speak to the reader).
When making my magazine I will also have to look at the post-modern era. When using this you will question if it has all been done before? For example fashion items that were around in the 70's have now come back, so it has been done before. Therefore I will look at my magazine and compare it to other styles of my magazine and see if it has already been done.

Active vs Passive Theory

Active audience theory argues that media audiences dont just receive information passively but are actively engaged, often unconsciously, in making sense of the message within their personal and social contexts. Decoding of a media message may therefore be influenced by such things as family background, values, beliefs, culture, education, interests and experiences.

Reading 

Preferred reading/dominant ready

The 'intended' reading of the text

Oppositional reader

your dislike/disagree with the preferred reading

Negotiated reading

you dislike and like different aspects

Aberrant reading

you don't understand/misinterpret 

Encoding/decoding model

Contemporary semioticians refer to the creation and interpretation of texts as 'encoding' and 'decoding' respectively. 

In 1973, Stuart Hall published a paper entitled 'Encoding/decoding'. This had a major influence on cultural studies, the essay takes up and challenges long held assumptions on how media messages are produced, circulated and consumed proposing a new theory of communication.

Uses and gratification theory

Uses and gratifications theory (UGT) is an approach to understanding why and how people actively seek out specific media to satisfy specific needs. UGT is an audience-centered approach to understanding mass communication.
Diverging from other media effect theories that question "what do media do to people?", UGT focuses on "what do people do with media?"

Genres

Media Mood board

Media mood board from rhiannashley

Technology

David Carson and Ray Gun magazine

Print media terms

To make my music magazine I will have to use some print media terms.
These terms will help me put together my magazine and will allow me to make it look more professional.

Bleed 
Bleed is a printing term that refers to printing that goes beyond the edge of the sheet before trimming.The bleed is the area to be trimmed off the bleed is the part on the side of a document that gives the printer a small amount of space to account for movement of the paper. 
1= trim is where the product will be cut
2= bleed is the safe zone outside the trim area
3= margin is the safe zone inside the trim area
It will help me to construct the magazine and when I'm printing off my final product it will allow me to see if anything will be lost.

MIRA
M= media forms (who is it? newsletter? magazine?etc)
I= insitution (who made it?)
R= Representation (what does the magazine show?)
A= Audience (who the magazine is for)

This will help me to build my magazine as it is all the question I will have to ask whilst constructing it. 

Pass audience
Is people who do not buy the magazine however read it, for example if you went to the doctors and picked up a magazine then you are classed as a pass audience. My magazine might be on show therefore people who walk past and read it will also be a pass audience. 

Gutter
The gutter is the margins or the blank space between two pages. The gutter space is the extra space used to accommodate the binding. Also alleys can be used which is the space between the columns of text, it allows us to read it clearly and makes it look more professional. As I will be making a double page spread I will have to include a gutter and some alleys this is because my double page spread will have to be attached to a contents page and a front page, so I will need some sort of binding. Also the text that I will write will have to be spread out by alleys.

Copy
Is a reproduction of an original, I will use some parts of this as I will be looking at what music magazines sell well and why. If there are specific things that make them sell well then I will try to interpret these into my magazine.

Strapline
A strapline is a slogan or subheading in which we can identify brands, or magazines. I will try to include a strapline in my front cover because then it will become easy to identify. For example KERRANG!'s slogan is Life is loud.

Tagline
Is an amusing memorable phrase which is designed to catch attention in an advertisement. I will defiantly use this as once I have chosen my genre I can make a tagline memorable to the reader.

Pug
A pug is short bits of text that you find around the masthead. It can either be about the history of the magazine/newspaper or something to do with the articles inside. I will try to use this in my front cover as it will add more depth and also to add extra information to my cover.

Pull quote/Call out
Are the key words in an article that are pulled out and enlarged then placed inside the writing. They tell us the key things in the article and also what they might be talking about, sometimes they are humerous or very serious. I will defiantly add this as it makes the magazine look professional and also catches the readers eye to make them want to read the article.

History of music magazines

Investigte a music magazine currently on sale in Britain

KERRANG! is a UK based magazine piblished by Bauer Media Group. It was first published on 6th of June 1981 as a one of supplement in the sounds newspaper. KERRANG! is named after the onomatopoeic word made when playing a power chord on a electric guitar. In the 2000s it became the best-selling British music magazine. On the first front cover Angus Young of AC/DC  was photographed, then it went from a monthly magazine to a weekly in 1987. The typical content inside is usually musical information on the up coming bands in this genre or new albums by the band featured on the front of the magazine. As you can see by the front cover there is a lot of information and KERRANG! have to have this in their magazine otherwise it is false advertising. KERRANG! has an average of 294,000 sales of their magazine a week. With most sales, 222,000, being between the age of 15-35,it leaves KERRANG! having a lower aged audience. When looking at nrs.co.uk we can see that most buyers are from the C2DE category, although this is the lower class the majority of readers come from the C2DE category. KERRANG!'s housestyle is consistent throughout from the cracked black masthead, to the specific fonts we can see how their audience will buy their magazine weekly. KERRANG! uses many images and sell lines that connote danger, mainly because the specific audience must like this as it is selling very well. It is good to keep the same houstyle every week as the reader can find it easily on the shelf. Bauer media produces KERRANG! along with 300 other magazines including closer and Grazia. It is the biggest uk production company and focuses on radio and magazines. so the main stereotypical social group who reads KERRANG! would be goths or emos. Although other audiences may read this, KERRANG! makes these particular audiences shown through the font and images of famous bands.
 

History Of Music Magazines

Investigate a music magazine currently on sale in Britain

NME is a famous music magazine created by Theodore Symthson. It stands for The New Musical Express and it has been published weekly since March 1952. NME started as a music newspaper until the 80's when they moved towards a magazine format. It was the first British paper to include a singles chart and NME covers things like Festivals, exciting brand new music, tips and advice to new bands from industry experts. In the 1970s it became the best-selling British music newspaper. An online version of NME was launched in 996, and is now the world'd biggest standalone music site with over 7 million users per month. 

The most recent editor is Mike Williams with Luke Lewis editing NME.com. 

NME was particularly associated with gonzo journalism (a style of journalism that is written without claims of objectivity normally a first- person narrative). Then it became closely associated with punk rock. They

have a double spread on the person on the front cover. Online you can view 13 pages of the current magazine that is on sale www.nme.com/magazine

NME like any other music magazine has a specific audience which they try to persuade to buy their magazine. From the website www.nrs.co.uk we can find out who buys the magazine, where they are from and their age. NME has more male readers than female and they are normally between the age 15-34. People who have an average - to a less than average pay are in the category C2DE, most people buy NME who are in the C2DE category. 

		Adults										Men		Women
		Total		ABC1		C2DE		15-34		35+		Total		Total
UNWEIGHTED SAMPLE		36242		21779		14463		8803		27439		16152		20090
EST.POPULATION 15+ (000s)		51037		27495		23542		16393		34644		24934		26103
		(000s)	%	(000s)	%	(000s)	%	(000s)	%	(000s)	%	(000s)	%	(000s)
NME/New Musical Exp	T	261	0.5	129	0.5	132	0.6	170	1.0	91	0.3	173	0.7	88	0.3

The housestyle of a magazine is how the design elements are consistant throughout the magazine. In NME the logo is always in uppercase letters, bright red and located in the top left hand corner this has made the logo very recognisable. On most of their front covers the sell lines are located around the edge of the image and they use very chatty language to engage the reader. The page numbers are always in bold and they have the date of the magazine issue next to it, therefore we can see that NME has a consistant housestyle.
NME is produced and distributed by ICP media this is the UK's leading consumer magazine publisher they also publish now, woman and Tvtimes to name a few. 

NME's target audience
Gender - Mostly male by the red, black and white writing on the front page and the language that is used inside the magazine. Also most of the music stars have more of a male fan base than female.
Age - Between late teens to late 30s
class - Lower class 
Ethnicity - Mainly british as it is a british magazine with british bands and artists