Introduction to Band- Breaking Blasphemy

Initial Ideas for House Style

Aims of Mag

·         Aims of the magazine: the aims of the magazine are simple; connect the reader to the artists. We are doing this in numerous ways; these include informing the reader of “what’s new with the artist” which embraces ‘personal interviews’ with them, feature articles about them, information about gigs and new music (singles and albums) etc. We want to connect the reader to new artists and promote new sounds to keep the magazine fresh and current within the genre as well as still interacting with the old artists the audience love because they are the reason the audience are reading in the first place. We want to expand, not replace.

We want to give the audience opportunities to connect further with artists they love by presenting them a constant stream of information about gigs, festivals and appearances of the artists. This will be done throughout the magazine as well as specific pages dedicated to this purpose. However the other main program of the magazine is to promote the artists, as this will earn us a large profit as well as helping us to make connections, which will in turn enable us to expand our magazine and business. 

Character profile of target reader

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   The interests of the reader should be:

o    A regular or keen festival goer- someone who wants to be closer to the artist than just listening to their CD, they wish to experience it in person and live it.

o    They must enjoy the music genre or have a willingness to experience the genre/ have an open mind to the sound.

o    An interest to interact, read about or  with the artists presented and featured in VINYL 

o    They must have an open mind for new and upcoming artists

o    They must want to support the artists they are passionate about 

·         Character profile:

o    Darius is a 17 year old student at a public sixth form, he is a confident, socially active and fairly popular student whom has a fairly influential position in the social circle, so his fashion sense and music tastes etc. are respected and passed on. Henry is employed in a pub kitchen during the week and so his work is done at school so he has free time at the weekends to relax and socialise. He has an interest in music and spends a small proportion of his free time alone listening to it, either aloud in his room or on his MP3 player/ IPod, or he also enjoys playing it on his chosen instruments (drums and guitar). Whenever he can he also enjoys socialising; either with his close friends or at parties with all his friends. His preferred music genre is rock/ punk/ metal and this is because he has grown up with his older siblings listening to this and it has influenced his taste today. When an opportunity arises to listen/ experience to live music, he jumps at it along with his friends; they live for music and love the artists.   

Music Mag Target Audience

·         The target audience is: 15 to 22 years, this is similar to the readership profile of the famous ‘KERRANG!’ magazine which focuses on the same genre of music and generally has a similar house style and aim as we do (this was found through market research, we also found that magazines like ‘Rock Sound’ have similar adaptations) and so imitating these features would be advised, however we don’t want to be exactly the same as we would then have to compete for the market. We have also found that this is the age at which people experiment with their music tastes the most so aiming our magazine at this age range only makes sense as opposed to aiming it at a slightly younger or older audience which are fairly stubborn and insular with their music tastes so our sales would be lower and profit would be minimal. Also the people of younger age would not have experienced the generation in which rock music was more popular, with such bands as Sum 41 and Blink 182 being incredibly current, and so we would not need to spend time introducing our audience to the genre; we could just start as we mean to continue in relation to our content, we could also use this to our advantage by introducing new artists as our audience would be open to new sounds and names within the genre. We are also more aimed at a male audience as typically the majority of people whom are into this genre are males, we deduced this from both research and the fact that the majority of music magazines in this genre (KERRANG, Q, RockSound) are also aimed at a male audience, however we are not insular to a male audience and so we are not very gender specific in text, images and other features.  

 

Character profile image representation

Purpose of a Music Magazine

Purpose of a music magazine  

In a condensed summary, the purpose of a music magazine is to promote music. Music magazines have numerous functions and purposes though; they focus in on a genre of music (closing their market and allowing them to go into further detail on the genre they feature) and then keep the reader up to date with all the newest information from within that genre. This includes: promoting new artists/ bands, interviewing influential figures from within the genre, offering the reader sales opportunities, giving the reader information about artists/bands, gigs etc., giving the reader a sense of connection to the artists and numerous others. The music magazines are also used by the artists, within the featured genre, as a means of advertisement and promotion.