Music Magazine Advertisement

AT2 Research: Music Magazines

In our initial research stage into creating a music magazine advertisement, we first had to find out some existing music magazines. The task was set out into three stages. First we had to name any music magazines that we knew of already. This first task was very short for me as I do not read, nor know of any magazines other that Q. The majority of the group did not know many, which instantly told us that us as a demographic were not a good selection to aim music magazines at. 

The next stage was to do a brief search on the net of any UK music magazines that were currently in circulation. This had to be print magazines and not online versions. We were allowed 5 minutes to do this in. From this small amount of time, I was able to find 21 magazine titles in the UK that are currently in circulation. These were either multi genre magazines, or of specific genres. The ones that I found were very widespread in their particular genre of music from Pop to heavy metal, folk to classical. 

The final task was to research the phrase 'UK music magazine sales 2014' and see what we could learn from this. The over-all judgement from this was that all the magazines were on the decline of circulation. Even the free magazine, The Fly was dropping in sales and has recently folded due to the complete loss of sales. The main reason that I could find for these huge falls in profits in print magazines was that a lot of magazines have now for online versions. This has made the need or want of a print magazine drop significantly as new music lovers are able to access the magazines more conveniently online. 

Below is the table that I created that goes through each step that I completed when looking at music magazines in the UK:

AT2 Research: Music Magazine Genres

After researching into music magazines into the UK, I wanted to research the genres that specific magazines use within their printed magazine. Below are a few magazine titles with their specific genres that they include, or if they are a multi-genre magazine:

• Q - Multi-genre
• Kerrang - Rock
• Big Cheese - Metal, punk, heavy rock
• fRoots - Folk and roots
• We (heart) Pop - Pop
• Blues and Soul - Blues and Soul
• Metal Hammer - Metal
• Top Of The Pops - Pop

These magazines, as you can see, have a very wide variety of genres that they dedicate their magazines to. This means that for my promotional advert for my artist who is a folk artist, fRoots will be a much better choice of magazine than Metal Hammer. If fRoots was not an option however, Q would be a good choice in it's replacement as it is Multi-genre, meaning that it includes all genres. 

AT2 Research: Music Magazines 2

When creating my magazine advertisement, I must first establish what music magazine will be suitable to accommodate my advert. When deciding this, I must look at the above list of magazines, and more if need be, to decide where my advert wold be best suited based on the genre of the magazine, the target audience of the magazine and if that matches with my artist.

The first magazine I would like to look at is on that will not be suitable. This is because I am interested to know the properties of a magazine that does not match my artist, and I can avoid magazines with similar characteristics thereafter. A magazine that is not suitable for my artist is Big Cheese. To see their website click here. The main reason that this magazine would not be suitable is because it's specialist genre does not match my artist. Ben Howard is a folk artist, whereas Big Cheese specialises in punk, rock and metal music. From this first detail, I can see that this magazine is not suitable to place my music ad. 

The latest issue of Big Cheese is the October edition. I have found the front page of this issue and can instantly conclude that the bands included in the magazines to not correspond with my artist.

From looking at the image on the left, I can see that the band on the front do not perform music of the folk genre. This band, from how they are dressed and they way that they are posed, are a punk-like band. On further research of Black Veil Brides I have found that they are indeed a heavy rock band inspired by Kiss. 

Further research into this issue of Big Cheese shows that they have posters to give away. These include Paramore, Sleeping With Sirens and Of Mice And Men. These bands, again, fall in to the category of Rock and Metal. In this magazine, there is no allowance for non rock or metal music. This magazine is for hardcore fans of these specific genres of music, and to keep selling copies, they must please their target audience. If I was to  try and put and advert in their magazine it would not be published as it does not appeal to their audience, in addition to the fact that my target audience would not be seeing the advert that will be designed to appeal to them.

The next magazine that I want to look at is another unsuitable magazine for my artist. This one is of a different genre category. I would like to look at Top Of The Pops. This magazine, as you can probably guess from the title, is a magazine based around pop music. To visit their website click here.  

On the right hand side is the latest version of Top Of The Pops. As you can see, it is very different to Big Cheese. TOTP is very colourful for a start. This is because the target audience for this magazine are people who are generally quite young, upbeat and colourful in themselves. The images on the front are of bands or artists and they all come under the pop genre such as 5 Second Of Summer and One Direction. These artist have a target audience of teenage girls, and so that's who this magazine is aimed towards. This is illustrated with the bright pink and blue colours and the childish writing. My artist does not share these qualities so would not suit this magazine. 

I have now chosen to look at  magazine that is suitable for my artist to appear in. As my artist is a folk artist, a magazine that specialises in that genre of music would be ideal, and in my research I have found the music magazine fRoots. To visit their website click here.

The image on the left hand side is of the front cover of one of their issues of the magazine. As you can see, the colours are quite brown. The reason that this colour scheme is appropriate is because it is earthy colours, linked with the outdoors and country etc. This is completely different to the colourful and childish look TOTP magazine and the dark, black Big Cheese magazine. The bands look to fit the image of a folk group, with the loose shirts and trousers. My artist, although he is more indie than those on the cover, with definitely fit this magazine and would appeal to the readers of fRoots magazine.



AT2 Research: Media Pack

When looking at my music magazine advert, I need to look at the facts of the magazine that I wish to use. To do this, I have found the media pack for fRoots magazine. The media pack is a document that contains all the facts I need to know when creating my magazine advert for this magazine. This includes pricing, sizes and statistics of target audience.

AT2 Research: Music Advertisement 

Now that I have found a magazine that would be appropriate for my artist, I need to look at the actual advert itself. Below is an advert from Mumford and Sons, a band that also fall into the folk-contry genre, like Ben Howard. I have annotated this magazine advert to look for codes and conventions of the advert.

In this magazine advert there are the obvious conventions with the artists name and the album name. Further to this, we can see a review from a magazine, images of the band members, the record company logo and singles that are included in the album.

The design of the magazine is also quite straight forward. The name of the band is right at the top and in the biggest writing, with the album name just below. These are written in a white-cream colour, to stand out from the black background. Below this, in the centre of the magazine advert are the images. These have been created to look like polaroid images that have been stuck down to the page. These are of the band members with their instruments. Further down we can see the review from NME magazine, a very well-known and established music magazine. Towards the bottom in a box are a list of three singles that are included in the album. This box helps to make this piece of information prominent as many people will have heard these songs with out being aware of the band name. AT the very bottom sits the logo of the record label. This is only very small as the advert is not promoting them, it is promoting the band. 

The writing is kept consistent throughout the advert. There are two types not fonts used in this. There is the curvy, posh handwriting style and the straight typed font. Although these two are used alternatively throughout, it is only these two sets of handwriting used.

Below is a second magazine advert:

This advert is similar to the one for Mumford and Sons for a few reasons. The first big similarity is the black background with white writing on top. This allows the names of both the artists and their albums to stand out to the viewer. This is looking to be a convention of folk artists advertisements at the current moment which I will need to consider. 

Another common feature of both albums is the images of the artists. On this advert for Vance Joy we can see half of his face on the right hand side of the page. This is a large image, and as a more unknown artist, it is probably to promote the artist to the public. 

Other obvious codes that we expect to see are also present in this advert. For example, the artist's name is at the top of the page in the biggest writing, followed by the album name. These are very common in all music adverts, not just ones for the folk genre. 

Vance Joy's advert includes a song list underneath the album name. This is a less common feature of music adverts across all genres. The Mumford and Son's advert includes a line with a few popular singles that are included within the album. This feature seems to be one at the producers descretion, however, I should not discount it too early.

AT2 Research: Photoshop

When creating my music magazine advertisement, I must learn how to use photoshop. I have used Photoshop a few times for basic things that include importing images ad remove backgrounds from them to a very amateur standard. Due to this, I have looked a little further into photoshop to learn the basic requirements for Photoshop that I will use when creating a music magazine advert and CD Digipack. 

Importing the images was rather simple, However I have found a better way to do this. Instead of importing the image, I was able to open it as a new document, and then cut the images size down to what I wanted. Below are some images on what to press to do this:

Using the menu bar at the top of my screen, I simply had to got to file, and then go to Open. Here, a window will appear to select your image that you want to import. 

It was important for me to ignore the import option further down the list as this will give me an image that will be harder to work with. 

Once my image was opened, I simply had to select the target area, then copy and paste it in a new window of the correct dimensions as you can see below.

To change the dimensions, I have chosen to use the units as centimetres as I know how large an A4 piece of paper is, and this is the size that I would like to use.

I also need to change the resolution to make the image easier to work with. I have changed this setting to 300 pixels/inch. I could have changed to pixels/centimetre but this would make the image to work with.

When this has been completed, I will have a new blank canvas to work with and I will just have paste the image onto this page. This is done by pressing cmd + V, as you would to paste in any other program. When this is done, we have a free image to work with on our canvas as you can see underneath. 

 When I have my image to play around with, I need to remove the background. At first I though of using the magic wand tool that erases things of the same colour. However, this seemed to prove unhelpful when the hair was getting cut out too. Instead, I used the rubber tool to try and get rid of the unwanted parts of the image.

 I first used the rubber to rub out the bigger parts of the background, being very careful not to get too close so that I rubbed out parts of the image (see above). I then zoomed in (right) so that I could use a smaller rubber to try and erase in more detail so that eventually I had no background showing as you can see below on the transparent background.

I was then able to add a background and text to my advert to play around with. Here I've just added a gradient to the background to make it look more interesting.

AT2 PRODUCTION: EDITING

Now that all my research into the basic use of photoshop I felt ready to go out and actually create my product. First of all I went out to get some shots for my magazine advertisement and digipak. I did this at the same time as filming my music video as we then had the same dress as in the video and also the weather was good when is was predicted to be poor the rest of the week. 

Once this was done I started to edit my piece together:

I first started by inserting the image that I wasted to use - this was done by just opening it up as a background as I new that I wasn't going to edit the original image, only place things over it.

I then added some text to my magazine advert. This is done using the 'T' icon on the tools bar which enables you to added the text in a selected area.

I opted to add two separate text pieces on the line instead of all of it on the one text box because I wanted to make the album name a different colour to the artist name.

I did the same with the words 'out now' and paced then directly underneath. This cohesive colour scheme is something that I found to be a factor in making a good advert.

After that, I just added a few images on the bottom including the record label logo, iTunes and Amazon. These were found to be common with many of my researched magazine adverts. 

I then simply added a quote and a star rating to the piece to finish it off. This was one that I found on the internet from The Telegraph. This was added in the same style as the previous text that I have added.







Below is my finished product;