Pre-production survey

Brief for a Music Magazine

My magazine will focus on a rock music, and the sub-genre will be Alternative.

The target audience is people from 16 to 25 years old and it mainly will be focused for males which are pretty unstressed in what is popular in terms of rock music. My magazine will always contain new information about rock songs that are in trend. People at this age are really into technology, because half of the target audience is in the teenage years still. As my magazine will probably have an app, then it’s important in some way for a costumer to have a smartphone, in case they will want to download to know more about trends & rock music.

Speaking of that, socio-economic status is not fundamental for this type of magazine as well as the education. People can be either rich or poor, but still can read it. Rock music is mainly about finding “themselves”, thinking about things, when you’re sad or happy.

16-25 year old hobbies include socializing, going to the clubs and checking all the social media on a daily basis – Twitter, Instagram & Facebook. Aspirations possibly can be such as becoming a person who will want to create their own band, or want to become a musician. This magazine can also be interesting for people who are listening to the music on a daily basis, watching  TV channels such as MTV Rocks or visiting sites like YouTube, services like Spotify or iTunes just to listen to rock genre of music.

One of the main examples I was thinking of is NME Magazine. It is defined as a “magazine that largely associated with rock, alternative and indie music”. Coldplay was one of the celebrities that have appeared on a front cover of the NME magazine. They was portrayed as a serious, cool guys. No smiles. They represented as a mature band.

My magazine could feature artists like The Neighborhood, Lana Del Rey, Coldplay because they are well known in the rock alternative music culture.

My artist will be probably inspired by The Neighbourhood & Lana Del Rey.

I am planning to put a lot of new album promotions onto my magazine of the artists I listed earlier. For example, Coldplay is pretty popular for age 16 to 25 and if people see that their new album is about to come out really soon, then they will probably have a look at it and then they will buy it. Also, my magazine will contain a lot of rock-alternative bands, artists interviews about their music – basically “what are they working on”, “when is it going to be released”. I am not going to focus on one artist. Near the end of my magazine I am planning to make a rubric about new (breakthrough) artists in a rock music industry, which world should now about. That could give some of them a huge promotion in terms of fans. An enormous amount of rock albums, EP’s & singles are released each year, so reviews from my magazine are definitely going to be there! In addition, I was thinking about putting interesting stories from bands about their music, but it’s not going to be like interview, but just true facts, that no one has seen anywhere. That could be really interesting for fans to read.

Fonts that are shown above – are the fonts I am going to focus on, when I am going to make my magazine. First picture looks formal & informal at the same time, what connotes that it won’t look like a “99p style” of magazine. Also my magazine will include fonts like on the 2nd picture – classy and understandable. I was also thinking about the third one.

The style of my artist will be dark, serious & artistic, what will follow the codes & conventions of a rock/alternative artist. I’m thinking of putting a female on a cover – she might have a black hair color or unatural color as well – probably red. The background is going to be a probably grey or white color, so the photoshoot is not going to be somewhere outside, with flowers or specific things in the background and it will also follow the codes & conventions of a rock music magazine as majority of them has white-grey background. But also there’s an option of a photo to appear “live”, like it was taken on a concert with a stage and lights in the backgorund.

Possible names of my magazine are:

• Rhythmic
• Rockside
• High Rock
• ARTROCK

Let’s get back to promotion and think about where my magazine is going to be experienced and marketed. I would place my magazine advert somewhere in the evening during the weekdays and noon during the weekends on the music channel (like MTV Rocks), because evening is the most watchable TV period by the age 16-25 from Monday to Friday, because they have school, university, work during the day & in the evening they almost all at home. Good time for weekend is afternoon – this is probably when 16-25 are waking up after a party night. My advert will rotate between chart reports & music videos. My magazine will be associated with Leeds or Glastonbury festival, one of the most popular rock music festivals. This can be also useful to create competition on our website where the main prize would be a ticket to this kind of festival.

I intend to produce a magazine that offers the reader entertainment and art in terms of rock music. Inspires the reader to possibly create a rock band & just to be creative and to continue buying my magazine, inform, educate the reader to a basics of rock music culture to complete against the NME magazine focusing more on music reviews.