Kerrang! Magazine Research

Kerrang magazine has been established for over 30 years with a long line of heritage which has led to it becoming the biggest music weekly in the world.

This magazine reaches the most young reader audience compared to other music magazine which is a big advantage for them as this age group is difficult to reach meaning they gain more profit as they specialise in reaching them with optimum effect. Being able to reach this audience allows for not only music releases to be featured in the magazine but film, games and mobile technology to be featured and advertised, which helps Kerrang! to gain profits from advertisements.

Kerrrang! Loves music, especially rock which has become an iconic part of the magazine to it audience and is considered to be an essential part of the magazine.

Kerrang! readers are statistically the heaviest music consumers purchasing over 6 albums per month on average (53% more than the national average) and are 8 times more likely to spend over £200 a year on albums. The readers are also 5.5 times more likely to attend a rock gig.

The magazine audience in 2012 was researched with the results that it has a circulation of 38,566 people with a readership of 345,000 people, 48% in the ABC1 profile, with a mean age of 25 and a solus readership of 74%.

Below is a graph showing the advertising rates for all the different types of advertisements business can pay for to be featured in one of Kerrang!’s issues. The prices are cheaper than other magazines as Kerrang! Has a smaller audience readership than others.

Mock Up Magazine Front Cover

The use of colour

Understanding audience profile

Target audience profile refers to a detailed appraisal of one's customers' characteristics, behaviors and attitude.

Enables the supplier to reach audience with best effect.

Demographics Profile: quantifiable statistics of a given population. Most frequently used demographic variable is age, gender, job, location, marital status, educational level, income and nationality.

Psycho-graphic Profile: reflect common activities, interest and opinions as well as attitudes and values of those people.

Questionnaire and Results

This is the layout for my magazine questionnaire I am going to post on the social media Facebook using survey monkey.

 

Imaginary Entity

For my magazine I am going to aim it at males and females in the age demographic of 16-24 years old. I have chosen this age group for my magazine because two very popular rock magazines –Rock Sound and Kerrang! – appeal to this similar age bracket and it has worked very well (15-24). 

Rock Sound demographics    

The imaginary entity enjoys listening to rock music especially in their spare time, and loves to catch up on all the latest news in the music industry and finds themselves buying music on a regular basis. With them being a student, money can be a bit tricky to handle so anything reasonably cheap is ideal. The student is studying music trying to achieve their dream on being the next rock star so music is definitely a big part of their life.

As they are a student they would class themselves in the buyer category of C/D which would mean cost of magazines aimed at that target audience have a more informal style language with cost being relatively cheap as to appeal to the audience.

Semiotic analysis of 3 music magazines

Here I have analysed 3 music magazines, Rock sound, Q and Kerrang. This will help me to make my own music magazine cover later on in the course.

 

School magazine contents page mock up

Here I have designed a mock up of what I believe that the contents age would look like for my school magazine.

School Magazine Front Cover

Here is the final product of my school magazine I have worked on, the cover follows my plan and includes many of the key features a magazine should consist of; Puff, Masthead, Central image, Cover lines, Tagline, Strap line, Barcode, Edition number and Price. 

In my front cover i have used one of the photos I took in the photo shoot  previously and have edited it to make it more appealing.

This is a before and after showing of the photo I had taken and have used in my school magazine cover.

Here you can see that before the picture was bigger and after is smaller as it has been cropped down to size of A4 and has gotten rid off unnecessary parts of the border such as the ceiling and part pd their legs. 

I have also edited  the photo so that it is now brighter so that you can see the photo clearer as before the setting was a bit too dark and not as clear to see the people and setting.

Furthermore, I have also edited to have the effect of the page curling in the top right corner to reveal the schools logo to make the image more intriguing.

Stereotypes

Representation of women – male gaze, fashion advertising and the pose

There are many pieces of literature and studies which show the representation of women in the media and western art.

• John Berger’s book ways of seeing provides an accessible introduction.
• Laura Mulvey’s famous essay on the male gaze launched an important literature in the field of cinema.
• Bechelel test – pass have one scene where 2 women (no men) were talking to each other about something other than men.
• Erving Goffman’s somewhat lesser- known study called Gender Advertisements is useful here because he focused on, among other things.

Commercial photographs involved carefully performed poses presented in a style of only natural.

Women are pictured often than men in what Goffman calls the ‘recumbent position’. Goffman points out that omen often pose bending their head at an angle or their bodies, which gives a submissive role as they are positioned lower.


‘Cant’ is often combined with putting a finger in the mouth or otherwise touching the face in a childlike way.

Male gaze

Berger says “women watch themselves being looked at”

Women learn to look at themselves through the eyes of an imaginary man because the ideal spectator is always assumed to be male.

As a result, “female models in ads addressed to women ‘treat the lens as a substitute for the eye of an imaginary male onlooker”.

Cameras always linger on the curves if the female body in media especially films.

Representations of gender

In media the way in which males and females are represented is quite contrasting with a continuous pattern always being shown.

The understanding of gender and sex can be often confused;

“Gender” refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities and attributed that a given society considers appropriate for men and women

Whereas, “Sex” refers to the biological and physical characteristics that define men and women.

Representation of women

Across all Medias the representation of women tends to highlight:

• Beauty
• Size/physique
• Sexuality
• Emotional
• Relationships

The female representation often shows them as being part of a contest which family and friends, for example on who is prettier, or showing a working characteristics – thinking and working as part of a team passive rather  than active.

        Beauty                                               Size                                        Sexuality      
        Emotional                                          Relationships

Representation of males

Masculinity is a concept that is made up of more rigid stereotypes than femininity.

Across all Medias representation of men tend to focus on:

• Strength
• Power
• Attractiveness
• Independence
• Physique 

The male characteristics are often represented as isolated, not reliant on others with the male physique becoming more important and dominant on media.

  Strength                                        Power                           Attractiveness

   Independent                                  Physique

With the representation of males and females it can cause misogyny and misandry.

Misogyny – the hatred or dislike of girls and/or women – sexual discrimination, denigration of women, violence against women and sexual objectification of women.

Misandry - the hatred or dislike of boys and/or men – sexual discrimination, denigration of men, violence against men and sexual objectification of men.