Initial Magazine Analysis.

NME
NME “New Music Express” – immediately tells the reader what type of music is featured in the magazine.


The magazine contains fairly quirky artists, so it’s mainly an indie magazine.

The ideal audience would include radicals, aspirers and underachievers; mainly people who want to enjoy themselves and have unusual ideas. Their social values would be hedonistic or post-modernistic.

The cover appeals to the target audience by featuring quirky celebrities who readers would aspire to be like. They have short, snappy headlines featuring indie bands who would appeal to their ideal audience, encouraging them to open the magazine and read it. It follows a red, white and black colour scheme so the text stands out on the page.

Mixmag
Mixmag – the title indicates that the magazine contains dance music by including the shortened word for 'remix'.

The genre is dance music.

The ideal audience would be people who share the view “to play, or enjoy life now”. Readers would most likely be underachievers, hedonists or post-modernists.

The cover features a typically attractive woman, wearing (little) brightly coloured clothing. This would immediately attract a male audience, and also others who are interested in clubbing and going to parties. It features words and phrases such as “disco” and “the worlds biggest dance music magazine” which tells the reader what sort of music is featured in the magazine.

BBC Music
BBC Music – the title doesn’t inform the reader exactly what type of music the magazine contains, but it’s fairly formal and doesn’t contain any quirky play-on-words which tells the reader that it’s quite a sophisticated magazine.

The image on the front is of a famous musician holding a violin, telling the reader that the genre is classical music.

The audience would differ to the magazines mentioned above. Stereotypical readers would be succeeders, aspirers, achievers, traditionalists and possibly carers.

The cover appeals to the target audience by coming across as fairly sophisticated; the reader is not bombarded with multiple images, the simple image in the center is sufficient. There is not as much text featured on the cover as aposed to the other magazines, it's reasonably simple and plain. The woman featured on the front cover looks classy and sophistiated. This is achieved by the formal clothing and make-up she is wearing, conveying an image of expertise and 'upper class'.