What genre will my magazine be?

My magazine will relate more to the theme and genre of NME than Smash Hits or We Love Pop. This means that I will include articles on up and coming artists that may not be as widely reconised as in the other more pop-like magazines which feature people who are already very famous. So my magazine will have articles regarding these new artists, also of the same type of genre as the artists featured in NME. So it will be of an alternative rock type genre with an occasional use of pop and fairly famous artists. I think I may want to use a question and answer structure to an article because they have proven very effective in NME and the other magazines. I also think that doing it like this mean that I get real questions from people about the artist so the correct target audience of my magazine. This is because I will ask people of my age group about what they will want to ask a specific artist because people my age group and above to about 21 will be my target audience.

Smash Hits and We Love Pop Magazines

Smash Hits

Basic Facts

Pop genre magazine

·      Ran from 1978 to 2006

·      Founded by Nick Logan who previously edited NME.

·      Was originally monthly starting in November 1978 but switched to fortnightly after 3 issues.

·      The USP of the original magazines were that they featured the Top 20 song lyrics in each issue.

·      Owned by Egmont.

The magazine hit its peak in the 80’s when it started the careers of many journalists including Mark Frith who now edits Heat. In the 1990’s magazines like Big! took most of Smash Hits readers because they featured more about other celebrities as well as TV shows not just music. This made it more of a general entertainment magazine, which offered more than just a music magazine. It has a TV and website spin off which has survived the demise of the magazine.

We Love Pop

Basic Facts

·      Launched on 20^th July 2011 costing £1 (Usual price £2.99)

·      Main target audience of 13-15 year old girls

·      Edited by Malcolm Mackenzie, former editor of free newspaper TheLondonPaper.

·      Includes a rolling news blog on it’s website, a Twitter page, a Facebook page and YouTube channel.

·      Also owned by Egmont.

With pop music being the dominant genre of music for the present teen girl Egmont saw a gap for a new magazine which features all the aspects of teenage life for a girl with all the new technological breakthroughs added making the magazine more accessible because of the online aspects. Publisher Siobhan Galvin said ‘The focus that We Love Pop placed on launching a brand that utilises multi-platforms, along with our in-depth research, allows us to give the readers a truly integrated experience’ Strong traffic has been recorded since the launch of We Love Pop on their Twitter and Facebook pages as well as their YouTube channel. 

Different aspects of NME

Different aspects of NME

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Case Study: NME

Basic Facts

·      First Published 14 November 1952

·      Published the first UK singles chart

·      Aimed at a much youthful audience than other magazines of that period.

·      Always seemed to be aimed at Indie/ Rock ‘n’ Roll type genres.

·      Published weekly giving the latest news and newest bands every single week.

·      Stands for New Musical Express.

History:

Started on 14^th November 1952 taking on the idea of the US Billboard magazine and published the singles chart for the UK based on 52 stores. It started as a newspaper format in the size and the paper it was made from and was not until the 1980’s it changed to the glossy style we know today. In the 1960’s NME magazine followed up and coming artists such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.  Between 1963 and 1972 artists like these appeared in NME Poll Winners Concerts where the bands or artists who were most popular with the readers would perform and collect prizes or rewards. These were filmed by the BBC. During this time another music magazine appeared on the scene, Melody Maker. But it didn’t really affect the sales of NME which still reached 200,000 sales a week.

In the early 70’s NME found itself loosing readers to Melody Maker and nearly got shut down by it’s owner IPC Media. They changed the editors and sold 300,000 copies a week in 1973.

            In 1981 released the C81 cassette tape, which was available to buy through the magazine. It featured up and coming bands and was very influential in the selling of the magazine. The second cassette tape was released 5 years later in 1986.  The writers now seemed to write about artists unrelated to music as well as war and politics and the magazine was the verge of closure again.  Three high-end members of staff were fired and a new editor was brought in to keep the magazine going.

            1993 was the year that saw the magazine sponsor the ‘NME Stage’ at Glastonbury Festival. In 1994 the magazines sales increased because of the popularity of Brit Pop which was included in the magazines at that time. The NME website was launched in 1996. The website very regularly offered free music downloads and made the first live webcast in 1999. From 1998 the magazine started to print on tabloid size not the size of newspapers.

            In the year 2000 NME’s main rival Melody Maker closed down but instead of falling completely out of the picture instead they joined with NME to create the magazine we have today.  In the next 5 years the magazine tried out different types of genres for articles dipping into hip-hop, R&B and electronic music but these were found to be unpopular and were dropped.  In October 2006 NME Ireland was launched but proved very unpopular and was dropped in November of that year. That same year club NME was opened in Dublin which also proved unpopular. The first Club NME was opened in 2004 in London and there are now seven open across Europe.

            In 2008 the magazine wend through a redesign and targeted an older audience with a less poppy feel which has since decreased sales. In 2010 the figure was 33,875, which is 53% down on 2003 when the figure was 72,442. 

Music Magazine History

Brief history of first few magazines:

Billboard

The first ever music magazine was Billboard magazine, which is still going today. 

·      It started in 1894 but only really became famous in 1936.

·      It was and still is aimed at music professionals but still available to the general public

Melody Maker

·      Began in 1926

·      Jazz genre, which was popular then.

New Musical Express (NME)

·      14 November 1952

·      Published the first UK singles chart

·      Aimed at a much youthful audience than the other two.

Music Magazine general aspects

·      The genres of the music magazines have changed throughout the years.

·      They always tended to go with the most common genre of music of that time period.

·      An example of this is in the 90’s the ‘club scene’ brought out magazines like Mixmag, Ministry and Muzik but when the ‘scene’ seemed to fall in popularity in 2003 it took out two of these magazines.

·      Nowadays there are a variety of different genres of music magazines ranging from pop (Top of the Pops) to heavy metal (Blistering), jazz (Downbeat) and hip-hop (VIBE).

·      Generally consist of articles about musical professionals, new singles, tours and sometimes even their private lives if something particularly interesting happens.