Content of Music Magazines - Introduction

Double Page Spread

I am going to create a double page spread for my Media AS coursework. The content will be of a music nature, as it is for a music magazine. I will research what stories are in contemporary music magazines. I will do this by a content analysis, where I simply go through the magazine and put the content of each page into categories and then fill in a tally chart. I will see how many adverts there are, what sort of features each of the 5 magazines (of which I have been researching for the front and contents pages) include. I have a full understanding of what then decided what stories I will write and put into the double page spread. I will then see how the double page spread is exposed in contemporary magazines, such as how the writing is aligned, and how many pictures are used.

What is the content of Music Magazines?


I have read through an NME magazine, while categorizing each single A4 page into different sections; Adverts, Stories/Interviews, Features, Reviews and pictures. The results are as follows in pages;

Adverts
30
Stories/Interviews
24
Features
27
Reviews on Albums, Concerts and TV and Film.
24
Pictures
6

From these results, I have found that a large proportion of magazine content is adverts. I think that it is unnecessary to ask audiences what they think should be in a music magazine, because I will most likely end up with the same results as above. I have quite easily decided that I want my double page spread to be an interview of a musician, talking about musical issues such as the Internet, Censorship and X factor. I have decided rather than me writing out a made up interview, I will write some questions I want to ask, and then go and find some eccentric person in school (most likely our drama teacher) and conduct the interview – writing out everything they say, as they will be in role play.