Media studies music magazine essay how music magazines use front covers and contents pages to attract readers

The magazine I will be analysing is the popular music magazine NME and will be researching how it uses its front cover for a bold effect and how its contents page gives information to the reader about inside articles.

Firstly the front cover of the magazine usually uses its most interesting and surprising story for its main cover to draw a wide range of audience in by using composition of a photo of the band or celebrity and by making the front as bright and attractive as possible without making it too vivid to put the buyers off, on the cover I was analysing there was a split picture of the lead singer of the killers showing three emotions on a white background whilst the title is in front of a black background making the title stand out and giving the magazine an overall non-overwhelming but effective contrast, this could also connote excitement and enthusiasm to the magazine with the red added to show their passion for the music industry .The contents page pictures are added to make the page look less heavy (because otherwise it’ll be nearly all writing) and hold in the magazines signature composition, this can be said for the overall layout aswell from the fonts used to the same colour background as the NME title itself. The framing of the pictures on the front is very important to give the cover the best effect it can give and giving it purpose this could range from not too big to not too colourful, the magazine producers would be careful to not just dump any picture of a band onto the front because the picture could have nothing to do with the articles inside the magazine and could give false information to the audience.
The national institution for this product would want to make it as appealing to as many audiences by including a range of music genres and types of news and NME magazine does this by including music from pop to light rock and even punk and news about festivals such as Glastonbury, this wide range of varying genres and information makes the magazine appeal to lots of people. My guess would be that the average NME reader would be from the age of 14-25 because of its use of newer music that would be in different genres and usually sound different from its competitors and this could put off the older generations but because of this the magazine tries to make up for it by including new music from all ranges of genres to counterbalance the effects of the way new music is recorded.

The magazines representation ranges from the artists to the audience, age to class and stereotypes to ideology, these help the magazine stand out and be its own aswell as its target audience because these give the magazine its own personality which some people can relate to and helps people relate it back to the magazine. Mostly in NME the messages put across are those trying to direct you to a certain thing like listening to a new band or going to the biggest upcoming festival, this can make it feel as if it’s saying you need to have the same taste in music as everyone else which is a bad thing as its ruling out individuality. But not all messages are bad, for example it could be praising you for your loyalty to the magazine by giving you free gifts if you’ve decided to subscribe to the magazine or by saying that your taste in music is excellent.

The layout of the text and pictures are quite neat and tidy but modern at the same time, the text isn’t fitted into a set box its more freely put onto were it looks the best the taglines for example are dotted around the front and contents page to make it stand out more aswell as special stamps which highlight a festival or a headline. The parts like the barcode and price however are placed to the side to not distract readers. In the contents it is more of a calming easy paced page without the shocking messages but with well thought and placed information to give the reader an ease whilst reading this can be said for the rest of the magazine aswell.

In conclusion NME is a very good all round developed magazine which is very popular and in demand, it has very well thought layouts of all magazines and good contents page and a look which people will recognise, it has a target audience which it strives to meet the demands of and it has a good overall feel of variety and all for an affordable price. All these factors makes NME one of the best selling music magazines of the time.