Market research into an existing Music magazine front cover.

Magazine header bar – ‘2011 Line-Up’ ‘READING’ ‘LEEDS’ – a magazine header bar attracts the audience  and make them wonder what the ‘…line-up’ is.

Masthead – ‘NME’ – the masthead is the name of the magazine and stands for New Musical Express. NME is a world-wide known music magazine and with the text being big, bold and in capital letters is very noticeable. NME text is placed on the left hand side so as the magazine are stacked on shelves in stores it can be seen instantly by the public. ‘NME’ is specially designed typeface to be very recognisable and unique. Also NME is short and memorable.

The main image – Matthew Bellamy (lead singer of Muse) – by using someone who is very famous and is a musical artist of a particular genre that the magazine is presenting appeals more to the target audience.

The main cover line – ‘MUSE’ ‘’THIS WILL BE THE LAST CHANCE TO HEAR A LOT OF OUR SONGS’’ – this cover line in particular will attract the audience the most as it will touch a lot of Muse fans. The word ‘LAST’ is in a white colour. This stands out against the red colour behind it and draws a reader in and is like gossip. All magazine readers love gossip.

The magazine includes a barcode, website, dateline and price. These are usually on the bottom left of the magazine. A barcode is read electronically and decoded into usable information.

Small images – The Strokes, Friendly Fires and Beady Eye – These small images placed next to the text, ‘PLUS MORE ... EXCLUSIVES’ ‘…NEW ACTS REVEILED’, enhance and interest the reader on the latest bands. Also not having many images force the reader to look inside the magazine for more.

The whole colour scheme of the magazine is mixed very well as the black, white and red,  go together really well and  instants attracts the eye of the target audience for this magazine. The magazine will not attract the eyes of ‘girly’ girls who love the colour pink and love pop music.

NME is distributed by the media institution IPC. IPC are highly successful and makes many different magazines and they know from reader research that NME readers are completely obsessed by music and rely on the NME magazine to keep them up to date with new music. This knowledge then makes them the authority in music in their peer group. Males are the dominant gender who read this magazine with the median age of 23.

The message that NME portrays to the audience is that is a rock, indie, rebellious message by the magazine having information about latest gossip in the rock and roll world. NME conveys positive values towards the selected music genre as the image and text are all relevant.

The audience that the NME have are male dominated with their being 74% of them with the median age of 23.

Matthew Bellamy, lead singer of Muse, is the featured artist on this NME magazine and his music genre is part of the wide range that NME magazine include. The main head line of this issue is about Muse so having Bellamy on links together really well. You wouldn’t find acts such as Justin Bieber or Chris Brown on or in NME as they are pop/R&B artists.