What is a music magazine?

A music magazine is a magazine that is completely dedicated to music and the music culture. Music magazines usually include photo shoots, concert reviews, and famous artist interviews they also sometimes include a cover mount which is a recorded CD on the front cover for the reader to enjoy. There are many different genres of music and typically one magazine will stick to one genre, for example, rock, metal, pop, classical or R&B.

Music magazines stick to one genre so they can target one specific audience, some people will only listen to one genre and only stick to that genre, and therefore if a reader only listened to metal they wouldn’t want to buy a magazine targeted at pop, classical and metal. Therefore the genre of a music magazine will determine the type of audience it will attract because everyone has different personal taste and style. Examples of two different genres of music magazines are Kerrang! And Billboard.

Genres -

Rock

Rock magazines generally use lots of dark colours such as blacks but also use grey and white this is because it connotes the serious and deep lyrics of many rocks songs. However rock music is also considered 'emo' or 'punk' and these stereotypes are associated with dark colours and sadness. For example Kerrang! is a rock magazine and has used black as a background and white for the masthead however the band name 'Bring me the horizon' is in yellow to attract the reader.









Pop 

Pop magazines usually are bright coloured and exciting which

pop music is like, its loud, happy and fun to listen to so pop magazines have followed that same approach in their magazines. Pop magazines usually use the artists most popular in the charts which appeals to the people that want to keep up with the latest celebrities music and gossip. This type of magazine is aimed at a wide audience because it features whoever is popular at the time which could attract a large range of people.

Indie

Indie magazines are considered to be cool and edgy unlike

any other magazine you have seen before because they are 'different'. Indie magazines usually have a chilled colour scheme such as black and white background, the artist wearing dark colours and the typography is red, yellow or white. NME have followed this typical indie magazine style therefore we know it is indie. Indie magazines attract people that enjoy finding new music or are interested on the artist on the front cover.

Rap/Hiphop

Rap magazines usually have a set colour scheme of red,

black, white and yellow however this can vary throughout different issues. There are usually only one main image on a rap magazine this is to focus on the one artist on the front cover, they are usually posed in a scary and intimidating way because rap music is usually associated with 'gangsters' which people are usually scared of. They typically have tattoos, listen to rap music and look scary which rap magazines try to recreate on their front covers to appeal to their audience.