Proposal

Music Magazine Proposal

The type of magazine in which I have chosen to create will be of a mainstream indie pop genre. For inspiration, I have chosen to construct my magazine mainly around ‘Q’ due to being an extremely well known and successful magazine with an appealing housing style of a shocking red colour, in which I aspire to feature within my magazine, including similar fonts and pictures, in which will help me when taking pictures for my magazine, as I can see what has been successful within a well-established magazine. Styling my magazine similar to Q, I will include an incredibly eye catching, statement front cover including eye contact to the reader, an exclusive subscriber’s front cover, double contents page, and a main interview article. These simple codes and conventions are typically used within most music magazines, like ‘Q’, therefore, to make my magazine as successful as it can be, I will include these. However, to make my magazine to be different, and to stand out from ‘Q’, there will a different structure of my contents page e.g. having 2 rows of article descriptions on either side of the page. I will also include aspects of ‘Rolling Stone’, such as the type of people and music they advertise and print to readers. I will use both of these magazines to inspire my magazine making so it will equal to a broader audience to make it as successful as possible.

My USP, is that there will be a magazine feature to appear every month of upcoming talent, so where the reader can actually enter monthly competitions to start their aspiring singing career, there will be titles such as ‘Have you got the talent?’ which will appear to aspiring indie stars. Furthermore, audition details will be provided, so if the magazine no about any venues or agencies who require singers/instrument players or bands, then they can go straight to the page and see where and when the audition will take place. To gain loyalty from the readers, this feature will really keep the readers involved within the magazine, giving them support on their career and sharing the love of music. Also, there will be a monthly advise column for this written by a well-known iconic star to be more motivating. Moreover, from an artist’s point of view, the magazine will be loyal to them by not printing anything offensive or inappropriate, due to wanting the magazine to have good publicity and reviews from well established artists. Also for break through artists involved, by doing articles on them, this will increase loyalty by perhaps developing and enhancing their career by getting their names really out there to the world due to the magazine being popular. These USP’s are extremely different to magazines such as ‘Q’ and ‘VIBE’ due to them actually only focusing on well-known artists and also further, not supporting aspiring artists.

The purpose of my magazine is to inform, advise and entertain due to my magazine providing information to the reader within the articles about the forever evolving music industry, pacifically to indie, and information about artists and what their next music step is etc. To advise, this would appeal to aspiring artists, giving them detailed accounts of how to gain access to the industry and also advising them on what music to listen to and what is popular and successful at the moment, and whom. The reliable content within my magazine due to giving accurate detail and advise to build a loyal reader.

Values of my magazine will include, coming across as a magazine in which readers can rely on and really trust to have good and accurate content. Therefore, my magazine will include non-biased content perhaps from an audience’s point of view opposed to a magazine writer who will get into trouble for perhaps providing a brutally honest opinion, having accounts from the audience’s perspective will really be honest and innocent.  For example, my magazine will actually give readers the opportunity to send readers to concert, to report back to the magazine giving them their honest view of the concert, so the reader does not get an over exaggerated, almost glamorised account of it, so it is trust worthy and relatable. This may cause debate and communication by readers sending in different opinions.

Having honest, but not offensive, accounts of the latest albums and artists will further insure that my magazine is as trust worthy as possible  due to not wanting to give my reader false hope or false accounts of the features as this will consequence in them not wanting to read the magazine, claiming it is untruthful and ‘sugar coated’. Having the magazines opinions and the audience’s opinions will really form a trust bond, due to taking into account that the magazine has done a lot of research regarding the subject, meaning that we actually care.

My primary target audience will be both males and females within the 16 – 30 years age range within a social grade of ABC1. This has been chosen due to these candidates gaining disposable income in which they are able to spend on media such as magazines and music. Furthermore, within that particular age range, they would have had time to develop their love for the music genre and actually understand the music with a genuine interest in the given articles. Also I have chosen such a wide age range and unisex, so the target audience is broader. The audience will actually be mainstreamers and perhaps individualists due to the content including well established artists and further, upcoming, fresh new talent in which will have an extremely strong interest in popular artists such as Lana Del Rey and the arctic monkeys who are also very unique and individuals. With easy access to social networking websites such as Twitter and YouTube and media gadgets such as iPhone’s to access apps, the audience will be able to have access to further information and news about the magazine and Mp3 players to regularly listen to music. This will go well with the chosen style and colour scheme which will fit perfectly with the type of people I am aiming for due to, if the layout was fashionable and unnecessary, this would not relate at all to the genre and people will be demotivated to read it. The readers will want to know what is popular right now within the indie genre and also what the latest gigs are like.

If my magazine was released weekly, typically, there would be absolutely no content to talk about and would also have much less pages, due to a week being an extremely short period of time for the music industry to develop and introduce new albums and music. Due to this, I will release my magazine monthly, which will give time for the magazine to not only be perfected, but for information to develop for extremely detailed articles for the readers. Also this will give time for there to be various amounts of concerts and gigs to report back to the company.

My magazine will be associated with having honest content and a trust worthy brand content due to being confident with the information provided, knowing for sure that each time they will be getting truthful, full account of music information. Which will essentially, encourage my readers to subscribe where the readers will receive the magazine a few days early delivered straight to their door in which can also be connected to their digital devices. This subscription, will include a different, modern, neat version of the front cover, including no sell lines but just the picture due to, like I said, trusting what is inside. This will be mainly for collectors but also for people with a genuine love for the magazine and content.

My magazine will not only be advertised on shelves, but also be influenced through social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook. Also, it will further be advertised through YouTube adverts, including well known artists to actually be reading it. The successfulness of my magazine would also escalate to sponsor festivals and award ceremonies which would encourage people to buy the magazine due to the events it sponsors. Which would lead to typically noticing the masthead of ‘BORDERLINE’ and being able to identify it straight away.

The content of my magazine will obviously include the typical codes and conventions of a music magazine. Such as, an eye catching, mesmerising front cover, a contents page in which spreads over a double page and main interview article, which would typically be what the picture indicates on the front of the magazine. The contents page will clearly have a label saying ‘Features’ and ‘Regulars’ to convey what is exclusively on one article and what articles appear every month. So the ‘Features’ column will include the sell lines, with a sentence or two briefly explaining what each of them will contain, some typically with a cliff hanger. And the Regulars column will include what appears on the magazine monthly, so a review page and the audition page. It will also include social media accounts with a ‘#’ and what the issue number is so collectors can actually keep up to date.

My feature article will promote the artist through their images I will take and the article in which will be as if it is a story being tolled to the audience and not just a basic interview structure which will convey a lot of thought has been taken into consideration. Also, it will go across 3 double pages to have as much space for the artist as possible showing importance.