Zeitgeist: What's hot and what's not?

Music magazines go through different stages of being 'hot' or 'not' and this is purely based on genre. One year a certain genre of music such as 'rock' can be in fashion and another year it'll change to 'indie' or 'rap' and this has a direct effect on the popularity of a magazine.

I think that music magazines will always be doomed to suffer lulls in popularity depending entirely on the 'hot' music genre of that year for example, you will have people that buy NME religiously every week without fail and you will have others that buy it every now and then depending on the genres prominence in todays society.

I think that my magazine will do well in todays society because it will cover indie music as a sub-culture. As it stands, in 2010, indie music is extremely popular and has been for several years. Bands and solo artists such as Mumford & Sons, The Kooks and Florence & the machine have experienced booms in popularity due to the increasing interest in the indie fashion, style and culture.

My magazines target audience is both males and females ranging between the ages of 16 and 25. The type of people that will read my magazine will be a part of the indie culture: wearing vintage clothing, festival goers etc

Main Coursework Task

The main coursework task is to produce the front page, contents page and double paged spread of a new music magazine.

I wanted to produce an indie magazine.

These are the kinds of words and ideas i had, they bring together the overall theme i was hoping to produce within my magazine:

- Polaroids

- Lp's

- Mixed Tapes/Playlists

- Teacups

- Denim jackets
- Vintage clothing

- Awkward People

- Babyshambles, The Smiths, The Maccabees etc

Market Research: NME Magazine

I recently brought a copy of NME (New Musical Express) Magazine to analyse the qualities that go into making a rock/indie music magazine.

NME Facts:
- The magazine costs a very reasonable £2.30
- NME focuses upon popular rock/indie music and tends to be for a target audience of (stereotypically) males in their late teens, Male: 73% and Female: 27%, Target Market: 17-30
- It has been on sale every week since the 7th of March, 1952
- ABC1: 73%

- Circulation: 56,284 and Readership: 411,000

On first appearances, i like the way that this magazine is formated. The front cover is simple, it has an extremely plain colour scheme and simplistic masthead. NME uses one large image to attract its audiences attention and surrounds this main image with several smaller images, all of which show some of the main features within the magazine.

This particular issue claims to be the 'massive review issue' for Reading and Leeds festival, as i attended Reading festival i found it extremely interesting to see how this particular magazine reviewed large scale events and how accurate their accounts were.

Although all of the articles and interview questions were written by different journalists, the magazine has a language continuity which means that NME appears to have been completely written by one or several similar styled writers. The writing style especially appeals to the magazines target audience (late teens), it uses a very laid-back, simplistic and sometimes very explicit style of writing making it extremely easy to just pick up and read. An article within the magazine, named 'Paradise Shi**y' about a memorable Axl Rose performance at Reading Festival epitomises the style of writing 'and of course they're late. F**king late. There's boos. People Leave. More boos. People in G N' R shirts start leaving', it is a very relaxed and somewhat male response to a music magazine, the writing almost seems conversational, as if it has been unplanned.

NME includes features such as reviews, interviews with bands and solo artists, numerous adverts for bands, gig guides and fan mail.
Its made me realise that the kind of magazine i wish to produce is a laided back easy to read magazine but i want to make sure that the language is not as explicit as NME and includes relatively intelligent thought waves in relation to music.