Summary of Research into existing Magazines

This post is a summary of the research i undertook into different magazines of a similar genre to mine. For my music magazine, i have chosen to focus on the rock/metal genre of music as this is the one that i find interesting and have a lot of knowledge on. I have been reading music magazines since 2008 (specifically Kerrang! but i have read a variety also) so essentially i have been researching since before i started college, and i have gaine lot of insight into how these magazines engage the reader beforehand.

http://danbmedia.blogspot.com/2009/12/main-task-magazines-my-chosen-genre.html

Above is a link to my previous blog post with the research into magazines of a similar music genre to mine. In this blog, i have taken 3 rock/metal music magazines (Kerrang!, Metal Hammer, RockSound) and disected the contents and ways in which these magazine attract their audiences. This was useful because by looking at these magazines in a media perspective, it really helped me understand what these magazines do to manipulate their audiences into buying more copies. For instance, Kerang! uses simple layouts, lots of images, and colloquial language, so that their target audience feels more comfortable reading the magazine. Metal Hammer on the other hand uses aggressive images and a dark colour scheme, to attract its audience of more extreme radical teenagers, and RockSound includes new unsigned bands and stays very underground, which attracts its audience who challenge dominant ideology by listening to far less mainstream acts.

http://danbmedia.blogspot.com/2009/12/main-task-magazines_07.html

This link is to a previous blog on a spectrum of music magazines, not just my chosen genre specifically. This blog included segments on 3 music magazines (Music, Kerrang!, Mojo) By researching into magazines that focus on different genres of music, i could see how they use different techniques to engage their audiences. BBC Music magazine is a prime example because it focuses on the classical music genre, which is associated with older generation traditionalists. It uses a wider vocabulary range than other magazines and includes a select one or two prominant photos instead of a variety, as used in other magazines. This research helped me understand what not to use in my rock/metal magazine, because i know now that if i use big words like in Music i would alienate the target audience who are most definately not the same as Kerrang! or others.

From my research i have determined that my magazine, would not be as "chatty" as Kerrang! and not as aggressive as Metal Hammer, and not as plain as RockSound, it would combine these three magazines to form one magazine that would appeal to a wider target audience. It would include the underground level from RockSound, the uses of images from Kerrang! and the format of the text from Metal Hammer, these three features are the features i found most interesting in each magazine.