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Questionnaire analysis

Questionnaire on music magazines

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Just finished all of my textual analysis's, it was a lot effort!

Codes and Conventions of Magazines

Codes and Conventions of Magazines

The common codes and conventions on the front cover of a magazine include:

·         A Masthead (name of the magazine)

·         Cover lines

·         Main image (usually covering majority of the page, normally relevant to the main article)

·         Some form of advertisement

·         A barcode

The masthead will normally be located at the top of the page. The magazine tag line is normally found just above or just below the masthead. The main image will normally be at the centre of the page as it will be the relevant to the main cover line. The cover lines are normally surrounding the main image although they can sometime be on top of the main image itself. There is normally some form of offer or advertisement promoting the magazine and trying to encourage subscriptions.

Much like the cover pages, contents pages follow a set of codes and conventions that they all try to use in their own unique way. The usual layout for a contents page is:

·         Columns of information or page numbers

·         The magazines name will be at the top of the page

·         Will normally have a similar colour scheme to the front cover

·         Information about the magazine, maybe an editors story

·         A main image usually related to the main article.

All magazines will have similar codes and conventions on the Front cover and their contents page. This is because they try to keep the theme of the magazine going through out. People will stereotype the magazine on the way it is laid out as well as what is in it. The different colours, text and images will affect the sorts of readers that read the magazine.

The three different categories for codes are; Technical, symbolic and written codes.

Technical Codes: Normally to do with the photographing of an image, this includes Framing, the depth of field, lighting and exposure.

Symbolic Codes: This is to do with what the objects within the magazines connote. For example colour, clothing and body language.

Written Codes: This is to do with the language that is used and the affect that it has upon the reader. 

Understanding Genre in Music Magazines

Understanding Genre in Music Magazines

In music magazine colour, image, language and font are all affected massively by the genre of the magazine. There a different genres of music; Emo, Punk, Indie, Rock, Heavy Metal and Goth are the ones we will be discussing. These genres each have their own stereotype about their music and the artists that produce it. These stereotypes represent how people assume the fans and musicians of these genres act and look like.

Emo is the genre with the strongest opinion on stereotype. They are typically seen as wearing all black and dark colours, along with having abstract hair styles. The musicians and fans are considered to be depressed. The image to the left is what the public consider most Emos to dress and look like. As you can see they are all wearing black shirts and all have unique hairstyles. This image is of “medium level Emos” as some are wearing lighter colours as well. There is some controversy between the likeness and similarities between Emos and Goths, however each have their separate genres despite this. The general expectation of the music produced by this genre is that the music will be sad and depressing. Lots of Emo styled music magazines play on this stereotype and use darker colours in their magazine. They will also use deep and meaning full language and will try to stick away from cheesy puns and jokes. The images used will be related to the artist’s music, their past or simply an image them now. This styling of the musicians, fans and magazines are what give the public the Emo stereotype.

Indie is another genre of music that has its own stereotypes attached to it. For example the unusual mix of jeans, a shirt and blazer contrast as jeans are seen as casual wear and the other two are seen as smart attire. Indie music is sometimes considered to sound electronic however it can also be seen as sounding almost like the genre country. This is down to the wide range of instruments used throughout the genre. This together causes the stereotype around the genre Indie to be weak and broad as there are different types of Indie. This genre focuses greatly on the fashion associated with the music, so when you say Indie the first thing some people think of is the look. Magazines will use this idea of Indie fashion and the model on the front cover will be an Indie artist dressed in this style. The colours on the magazine will be of a wide variety however they will not be too bright. The modernised rustic look the stereotypical Indie models is fitting to their music as the music can be described as modern country as well as country electric depending on what part of the Indie spectrum you look at.  

Heavy Metal in some ways has many similarities in stereotypes to Emo and Rock; they all focus on black clothing and tend to have long or unusual hairstyles. The reason Heavy Metal has many links to Rock is because it is actually considered to have sprouted from Rock. The common perception of the public is that Heavy metal music and fans are angry and trying to spur a musical revolution. There has been many different influential Heavy Metal bands over time that have changed the way it is perceived each making the Heavy metal scene different. Heavy Metal magazines tend to have a wide target audience as Heavy Metal is a genre that is recognised by people of all ages as it is one of the older genres we have looked at. The mastheads will tend to be jagged and may even take on the shape of the name of the main band this issue is looking at.  Much like the Emo genre magazines Heavy metal magazines focus on colours like black, red and white.

There are many stereotypes in the music industry; this is because of the hundreds of different genres within the music industry. Each genre has its individual stereotype because of the way the artists and fans behave, as well as the type of music they create. An iconic figure with in a genre can set a trend in not only music but fashion. Fashion is one of the main features of stereotypes.

Mix Mag analysis front cover

Mix mag magazine is a popular clubbing and dance music magazine. The articles within the magazine are written about a very small category of music/bands. This means that is has a very specific target audience.

The Masthead is written in lower case this is to make it seem as though it is flowing and make it seems as though it is one unified word. It is bold and the font is much larger than most of the cover lines on the page, this makes it stand out. The magazine includes a tag line above the main masthead, this tag line says, ’the world’s biggest dance music and clubbing magazine’. This is included on the front cover because the magazine wants to show off that it is considered better than other magazines of the same genre.  

The main cover line on this page is the name of a DJ, Sub focus, to people who do not know who this artist is will not have much idea what that cover line means. This is another example of how this magazine is aimed at a specific genre. However the cover line does have other smaller cover lines beneath it giving more information about the main cover line. These cover lines explain that it is a ten page special edition, about the artist. However the fact that these cover lines are much smaller than the main cover line shows us that they feel that this artist is quite famous within the target audience and his name will be enough to draw them into buying this magazine.

The main image is a picture of the artist in the cover lines, this emphasises the point I made earlier that the target audience will recognise the artist and be drawn in by this image. The image has been edited so it looks blurry this is because his is fitting to the genre of music he produces. The blurred image connotes being disorientated this in turn is seen as a feeling people can get whilst clubbing which is the genre of this magazine.

The magazine includes a free CD of the artists work; this is to encourage people to buy the magazine so they can get the CD. The CD increases the value of the magazine and will increase the readers want for this magazine. The CD also gives readers who have not heard any of Sub focus’ music a taste of the type of music he produces. So this is good publicity for the artist.

The colours used on this page are faded and could be considered dull. This is in order to make the cover lines stand out against the main image and the background. The cover lines are surrounded by a variety of bold colours, this makes very obvious against the background.

This magazine has a very unique style to many other music magazines, making it stand out above the other magazines even though it does not use many bright colours. The target audience of this magazine is older teenagers and young adults. This is obvious because of the genre and style of the magazine.