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.