Overview of the Magazine Industry

From researching the top selling magazines, I have found a results table so far of the top 10 selling magazines in 2015 so far. The top magazine from analysing this information table is TV Choice, which have sold 1,276,045 copies since the start of 2015 till now. The magazine company has earned so far £18 million, however their year-on-year change has dropped by 2.1% since 2014. Compared to Slimming World Magazine which they have only sold 496,308 this year, the company has made so far £6.1 million but their year-on-year rate has gone up by 15.0% since last year compared to TV Choice. This means that the public are now becoming more interested in what they are eating and how they can change their eating lifestyle compared to TV Choice which are dropping. In 2014 the Magazine Industry launched 210 new magazines and in 2015 £282m worth of magazine were sold to the public. 73% of Great British adults (15+) consume magazines across print and online, 43% adults over the age of 15 consume women’s monthly magazines. On average mobile adds a 50% audience reach to individual magazine brand prints and 27% of the public consume general magazine monthly magazine according to the National Readership Survey.

The top 10 music magazines for pop music fans are ‘Q’ Magazine, this magazine is quoted by many of the public ‘the world’s greatest music magazine’ this magazine is based in the UK, however there is plenty information in Q for an American pop fan to keep coming back for more as well. Also the ‘Entertainment Weekly’, they release 52 issues each year, and their weekly publications provide the latest news on celebrities, television and films, including sections that recommend the best shows airing on a specific week, and in-depth information about it. ‘Rolling Stones’ is also in the top 10 music magazines at number 2, realising 26 issues per week. This magazine focuses on music, pop-culture, and celebrity. This particular magazine is a well-known source for controversial interviews and also articles. Many more magazines are also listed for instance Billboard, Variety, NME, Sound On Sound, Alternative Press, Premier Guitar, Mixmag and finally DJ.

Music Magazine Analysis

College magazine analysis

I have chosen to analysis this specific college magazine, which is clearly set in the USA due to the cost sign underneath the barcode being $4.99. On the front of this magazine, they have shown a positive attitude of a respectable black student, who seems to be studying law, business and society due to the books he is holding in his hands. Also from what I can see, he seems to come across as religion because of the cross symbolled necklace he is wearing. This college magazine has decided to use 3-4 colours on the front page, green, white, black and pink. These colours represent to me maturity and definitely goes with the target audience that they’re aiming at, which is college students ages 16+. The college magazine has also included a variety of fonts and font sizes to make the magazine seem more fun yet serious about education. From what I can see they have included technology in their magazine, this implies that perhaps technology plays a big part of college life as students regularly check their emails and phones. I feel that the main headline on this magazine is the ‘Dancehall’s Bright Future’ which infers the quality of education at that specific college.

The barcode of the magazine is placed someone where clear and barely interferes with the main image, it also is somewhere which is easy access for shop assistants and doesn’t look like it’s just been randomly placed there. I can also see that above the masthead is the date of this magazine, I feel the sizing of the font for that is at a reasonable size although I don’t think the three different colours used for it works. This is because the background of the magazine is black and they have also decided to put part of the date in a dark grey which makes it hard to read unless you are close to magazine. Like most magazines, this college magazine has also decided to use the style of having the main image cover part of the masthead. I feel that this does in fact work with this magazine, as you’re able to make out what the name of the magazine is because of the type of image they have decided to use on the front cover and also the cover lines give away what the main purpose of this magazine is. The cover lines, I feel are at a respectable font and don’t cover the main image too much which most magazines fail to prevent.  

Analysis of Q magazine

The magazine that I have decided to look into more depth about its history of the magazine is ‘Q magazine’, the magazine has been around since 1986 when they published their first issue. The founders of Q magazine were Mark Ellen and David Hepworth, the reasons why they decided to create Q magazine was due to the fact that they felt media were ignoring a generation of older music buyers. Q was firstly published by EMAP (a British media group) in October 1986, this magazine made sure that they set itself apart from other regular music magazine. By publishing monthly, making photography and printing standards considerably higher for the audience. In the early years of Q magazine, it was sub-titled as ‘The modern guide to music and more’. The magazine was originally meant to be called ‘Cue’ as it means cueing a record ready to play, which made more sense at the time due to what the magazine was mainly focused on being music. However, the name was changed so that the public wouldn’t mistake the magazine for being a snooker magazine. They then resolved into a single lettered magazine, due to it looking more prominent of newsstands.

In 2008, Q launch a radio station called ‘Q radio’ Coldplay were involved with the launching of this radio station. Which consisted of an exclusive interview of them, the station was based in Birmingham alongside the Kerrang, which is now closed. The magazine includes a review section, featuring a new releases page for music, reissues for music, music compilations, film and live concert reviews and lastly radio and television reviews. The magazine also includes star rating (from one to five) of an album and television advertising for the album in the UK. According to previous research, the majority of Q’s reader are male being 66.2%, however the statistics also show that the 83.8% of the readers are from the ages of 15-44 years. This means that the magazine reaches a wider target audience range, than they possible would have perhaps meant to aim for. The pricing of the magazine is £4.20, due to how frequent they release the magazine being a month. Due to how often it is released, makes it easier for the audience to purchase the magazine as £4.20 isn’t much per month.

The styling of the magazine is different from others, due to them only having a one lettered masthead for their magazine. The colours that they normally use in their magazine is red, white and also black. For the masthead, they have decided to use a bold font yet has an unserious feel to it. The masthead being ‘Q’, is normally positioned in the top left hand corner with a bold squared red background to make the font colour stand out substantially more. Normally, the magazine includes their main feature person on the front cover of their magazine. The picture usually takes us the whole of the front cover, however they change how they angle the image for instance the sizing of the image and also how closely they shoot the image whether that being a full body image or just a top section images. I would also say from observing the magazine, that they don’t have much of a variety of fonts due to them being extremely similar to one another on the front page.

‘Q’ magazine also has a Facebook page, for their fans to be able to keep up with their post and releases, they have 104,416 likes on their page. On twitter Q has 116K followers and on Instagram they have 5,117 followers. This means that the magazine also reaches many people on social media websites, such as the ones above.

Questionnaire

Questionnaire

Do you read the college magazine?

Yes	No

How much would you pay for a college magazine?

Nothing	50p	£1	£2

How often would you like the magazine to be published?

Weekly	Every Fortnight	Monthly	Every Half Term

Would freebies encourage you to buy the magazine?

Yes	No

What would you like in the magazine? *top three

Student tips/ Advice	Subject Advice	Problem Page	Gig Guide	Local Events
Technology	Fashion	Film/ DVD Reviews	College Events	Sports News

What image would you like on the front cover?

Student	Teacher	Student Work	Technology	Nature

  

What would you like to call the magazine?

What Colours would attract you to the magazine? *choose three colours

What fonts would you use for the front cover?

Would you like to see adverts in the magazine?

Yes	No

Would you subscribe to an online version?

Yes	No

Would you like a jobs page?

Yes	No

Questionnaire Analysis Results

Questionnaire Analysis

Before collecting my results, I had to design a questionnaire suitable for the topic being a college magazine. After collecting these results I have found out that 90% of the students at East Norfolk said that they do not read the college magazine, this could mean that the product doesn’t work as well with their chosen target audience than they hoped or the product costs a bit of money. From this I asked the students how much they would pay for a college magazine, 85% said between nothing and 50p, this implies to me that the magazine either has to say ‘FREE’ on it at first or the cost of this has to be below 50p. We then asked the public how often they would like the magazine to be published, the results did come out fairly even. However the two top percentages were 35% and 25% for monthly and fortnight. This gives me a clear awareness of how often my magazine would need to be published, which isn’t very often.

Thinking back to my target audience, we had to think what topics would work well with a college magazine and gave the students a wide variety of different topics. The top 5 which had the highest votes were student tips, college events, gig guide, fashion and finally local events, this shows to me that these are the most popular topics to include in my college magazine which will hopefully encourage more students to then read it. I also wanted to know what colours the students would like to have on the magazine, as the colour is the bit which attracts the audience to the magazine. The 5 main colours which the students chose were black, white, blue, pink and purple, this demonstrates to me that these colours is what would attract to the students, hopefully by me including these colours in the magazine it will attract and hopefully convince more students to read the magazine.

Another article I thought would work exceedingly well in a college magazine is a jobs page, for students who are either looking for a job or are just interested at what jobs are going. 95% of the students said that they would like to see a jobs page featured in a college magazine, this could also attract students more to read the magazine. The main image on any magazine is very important, as this also attracts the viewers to look at the magazine and perhaps purchase the magazine. We gave the students a variety of options to choose from, however 75% said that they would like either a student or student(s) work featuring on the front cover of the magazine. The font didn’t have a conclusive answer, so I thought that I would use a more modern font to suit the target audience, being college students. Lastly, we asked the students what masthead of the magazine should be. Most of the students answered with ‘EN..’ then something else with it. This suggests to me that the masthead should include EN in it with something else to go with it. 

Front cover college magazine and contents page