Music Magazine Content Analysis & Findings

Here is some content analysis of 'real media' magazine examples.

Music Magazine Title	Vibe	Q	Billboard	Kerrang	XXL	Mixmag	DJ	NME	Clash	Spin
Formal Title	NO	NO	NO	NO	NO	NO	NO	NO	NO	NO
Colloquial Title	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
Image 1 person	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES	NO	YES	YES	YES
Image 2 person	NO	NO	NO	YES	NO	NO	YES	NO	NO	NO
Image 2+ person	NO	NO	NO	YES	NO	NO	NO	NO	NO	NO
Logo	NO	NO	NO	NO	NO	NO	NO	NO	NO	NO
Primary Colours	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
Secondary Colours	NO	YES	NO	NO	NO	NO	YES	NO	NO	NO
2+ Sub Headings	YES	YES	YES	NO	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
Quote Used	NO	NO	NO	NO	YES	NO	NO	YES	NO	NO

Findings

From this content analysis I have found that no music magazines have a formal title, which is not a suprise as no music genres are very formal. What did suprise me is that hardly any covers have used quotes considering almost all have interviews with artists, so there would be a posibility to have a quote. This means that it is not a feature that is used very much anymore.

The content analysis was useful as it helped me to find the conventions in music magazines. From the content analysis I noticed that all magazines tend to have a colloquial title. In terms of images, there tends to be a close up of one person on the cover instead of several people, unless a band is the focus. The photoshoot on the cover then tends to remian throughout on the double page spread and sometimes even the contents page. No magazines had a logo, unlike several school magazines I researched for the preliminary conetent analysis. Most magazines followed the convention of using mainly primary colours, "DJ" being the only example where secondary colours were used, even then it was only small gold font and was mainly dominated by primary colours. Finally, almost all magazines had 2+ subheadings. This gives an in-depth look into what is featured in the magazine, making readers more likely to buy it.

Overall, I have learnt that most magazines keep their covers simple, with primary colours and close-ups of one person and several subheadings to give readers more insight into whats in the magazine itself.

This means that my magazine will be kept 'clean' meaning not very cluttered and will have a picture of one person to keep it simple.