Conventions of Music Magazines- RESEARCH

Conventions of Music Magazines

A music magazine is dedicated to music and music culture. Music magazines typically include music news, photo shoots, record views, concert views, interviews and occasionally have a covermount with recorded music. Other conventions of music magazines include bold front covers, a double page spread of a contents page and feature articles focusing on a particular band/solo artist.  

Typical conventions of music magazines front covers: 

---A short, memorable magazine title (masthead) – keeping the masthead short will allow it to be a lot more memorable because of its simplicity. The process of making it memorable however is a lot more challenging, the masthead in itself will need to be striking and appealing to it’s target audience

---Large, dominant icon, making clear the title of the magazine this not only emphasises the name of the magazine but also contributes to its significance and individuality in comparison to other magazines, magazines aim to appeal to as big a target audience as possible and want to stand out as being the ‘best’

---The subjects face can be easily and clearly seen, with eye contact – music magazines are well known for having an image of band members or even a solo artist on their front page. These individuals are looking directly at the camera which turns out to be looking directly at the audience – this eye contact conveys a positive message to readers who may feel aspired by celebrities on the front cover. This feature also contributes to the sale of the magazine because it shows clearly the band or artist being the main feature article within the magazine. Fans will easily be able to identify this and will want to buy the magazine even more if their favourite, or even bands they just enjoy listening to, are featured within a large amount of content within the magazine

---Large, dominant, full page image of one of the main articles in the magazine (with a band or even solo artist displayed) – this not only makes a direct link between the front covers cover line but would satisfy readers as they receive plenty of detailed and interesting content on what the main feature article is about

---A fairly bright colour scheme, with colourful clothing – bands are recognised to be quite loud with big personalities as it is, but using vibrant colour within the magazine palette would attract more readers visually; as opposed to magazines with a monochrome palette which can be recognised as rather dull and therefore take away the appeal

---Thumbnails of other important articles – this allows other articles to be advertised and will also create a greater amount of appeal towards the magazine due to its varied content

---Language techniques used to anchor articles – these techniques can include similar, metaphor, personification, hyperbole, etc. which are specifically designed to attract readers

---The price of the magazine – this enables readers/potential customers to have a clear idea of the price of the magazine.

---Competitions, prices and free gifts – this feature could assist with the sale of the magazine as the chance of winning a prize, competition or free gift would prove appealing to some readers who would purchase the magazine purely for competition purposes but may also find the content interesting.

---Multiple images to attract attention – this would draw visual attention from readers/potential customers as they get an obvious fee of what the content of the magazine holds

---Eye catching fonts – a variation of bold, appealing fonts will increase the chances of recognition towards a cover line or advertisement, readers need to be intrigued in the design of fonts/cover lines to take a genuine interest.

 

A double page spread of contents pages

Typically, a double page spread contains the page title at the top left of the page, indicating what the page contains within it's content, i n a close location to the page title is the date of issue.
There is also some text that drags over the page which makes a link between the two pages and also enables the scale of the text to have impact. In addition to this a double page spread often contains 'extra information' columns, which give the contents page varied content which broadens the appeal. Many pictures of the band are also featured/included over both of the pages. Some text is highlighted with large, bold and colourful font. Pull quotes are commonly highlighted to entice the reader and give them a strong idea of the content of the articles. Another convention of a contents page is contact details, to get in touch with the editor etc. A fairly straight forward convention is the article itself, written in columns in a clear font; within this there's an introduction to the article and the name of the artist in large, clear font for a big impact amongst other articles. Lastly, there is a continuous colour scheme used over the two pages.

 

 

Feature Articles

A music magazine feature could have several purposes for the artist:

---Launching/promoting

---An image change

---Repairing a reputation after a scandal

---Introducing a new artist

---Introducing an existing artist to a new audience

Within feature articles there is a ratio of text to images, use of columns, a ‘drop cap’ at the start, a title, subtitle, text wrapping, pull quotes to entice the readers, picture positioning and framing and either interview question’s in a Q and Q displayed style or imbedded questioning. Feature articles are also captured in certain locations or backgrounds to link to the artist or the story behind the article's content.