Magazine Industry Key Terms and Theory (A04)
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.
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.