Commercial Media Structural Triangle

Most Media producers of magazines rely on advertising revenue as the majority of their profit. Some have subscriptions available which are a minor income. All magazines, including music, would not be able to continue without advertising.

There are three factors that make the business for Media Producers are advertisers, circulation and readership.
Advertisers- companies and features that advertise themselves in your magazine
Circulation- the number of copies distributed based on an average of each issue
Readership- an estimate of how many readers an issue has

Q is a leading music magazine with a circulation of 61,485. Their target audience is an average of 32 year old men in an ABC1 class, this means they would be in a good job so they can afford to pay for the magazine and high quality brands that may want to advertise inside. For this reason, Q's advertising prices are high, for example, it costs £10,072 for a full page FH display. Furthermore, they have a readership of 377,000 meaning a lot of people would be picking up and reading the magazine, this encourages companies to advertise and are prepared to pay their prices.

Target audience review

After designing my magazine cover I needed to ask my target audience for their opinions. I asked each person for positives and negatives so I know what to improve and what to keep. I wanted them to mention conventions such as images, pugs, cover lines, price and most importantly; whether they would buy it.

From this survey, I found there are some small changes I need to make to cover but overall, they all liked the magazine in general which is positive.

First design of my front cover

The following image shows my first design of my magazine cover. I will get my target audience to review it to see what I can improve on.

Cover Image

When I imported my cover image onto my magazine cover I found his face was covered by the cover lines. To stop this from happening I flipped the image so his face was on the other side. I also found it difficult when the original image background was grey, rather than black, to fit it into the cover without looking a separate image. To make it blend in with the rest of the magazine I darkened it slightly so it was black.



                          New                                                  Original

Photoshoot

After taking the photos for central image I chose these four as the best ones. I wanted the wall as the background and his t-shirt to be black as I found, from my survey, black is the best colour for a rock magazine. I made he images black and white so him, the guitar and design on his t-shirt contrast to the black. The props I used was the guitar and war paint make up.

Planning of my photo shoot for my music magazine

When I create my final magazine cover I will be using my own photos that I have taken. I have looked at many rock magazines and seen what is included in their central image, often it is the lead singer of a band. Using this to influence my photo shoot, I will use one person who will be a lead singer of a band I create.
They follow stereotypes of rock music through angry expressions, black clothing, electric guitars and sometimes face paint. I can use all or some of these ideas to create an ideal rock star for my central image.
My cover model will have an angry expression, wearing war paint and holding a guitar because this is how I imagine a rock star to be.
For my photo shoot I will need my fully charged camera which is a Nikon D3200. In case my camera runs out of charge I will use batteries, and my phone camera as a back up. The props that I will need is the make up, clothes and my electric guitar.
For my contents page I will shoot with three other bands in various locations. One of these will be a live photo from a concert I have been to recently called Pierce The Veil.
I may edit my photos in ways such as black and white to improve the aesthetics.

Music magazine mock up



This is my mock up of what I plan my music magazine to look like. After analysing the results of my survey, I found people thought the best colours for a rock magazine were black and red. I then used white writing to contrast against the black and the bright yellow pug to stand out. I chose the competition to be yellow to make it stand out and attract a bigger audience.
I used this particular image to get a feel of how mine with look as I am planning to also just use the lead singer of a band.
I also featured a tagline to inform the reader what will be included inside. I places it at the top under the mast head so it can be seen easily on the shelf.
From my survey, I also found that the most popular genres were rock, metal and alternative. I listen to all of these so for my secondary images I chose the most popular bands from each genre to include, this is to attract the fans of these artists.
I included certain language and puffs such as "exclusive!" and "20+ pages" and "latest" so it would seem like the reader is getting more for their money and will find certain things in only this magazine. This will encourage them to want to read on and buy it.
When I make my final magazine I may need to resize or move other text and images around top make it fit.