A music magazine is a magazine dedicated to music and music cultures. They typically include music news, interviews, photo shoots, essays, record and concert reviews. Most companies that make mainstream music magazines are part of a conglomerate company.
Dominating Conglomerates
- Bauer - German multinational cross media company.
- IPC Media - part of the American Time Warner Group.
- BBC Magazine - a subsidiary of BBC Worldwide, produces some music magazines in UK whilst cross promoting radio shows and old TV brands (Top of the Pops).
Indies
- Future PLC is a large transnational media company, it is not owned by a media conglomerate. Main business is in computing and computer game magazines however owns some of the UK's better known titles and successfully cross promotes them.
Fanzines
- A valid form of Indie/alt magazine. They are put together by music fans/budding journalists. Tend to be quite cheap or free. An example being 'Sandman', a magazine created in Sheffield about local musical talent.
Magazines serve as a tool to bring advertisers to audiences. Everything in a magazine is an advert.
Ien Ang (1991) discussed the theory of 'imaginary entity' in which media producers imagine their target audience whilst creating their media text.
Audience Targeting - Demographic Variables
- Gender
- Age
- Class
- Sexuality
- Occupation
- Hobbies
- Where they live
- Wealth
Media Packs
These are created to sell their audiences to advertisers, music magazine companies provide detailed information about what their target audience likes.
Circulation - how many copies of each issue are sold
Readership - how many people actually ready the magazine.
Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) is a non-profit circulation auditing organization. National Readership survey. Both these companies collect and provide the information for circulation and readership figures.
Dennis McQuail (1972) described audience as a 'temporary collective'. Readership number of a magazine against circulation.