Looking back at your preliminary task (the school magazine task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

Music Magazine Evaluation Task 7 from ievaasnina

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

How did you attract/address your audience?

(front cover)

(contents page)

(double page spread)

Who would be the audience for your media product?

I have looked at a series of music magazine reader profiles. From this I have gained the knowledge that music magazines in the industry know their audience inside out. I looked at the reader profiles for NME. They have included information such as the percentage of the readers that are male and female, the average reader age, average income, percentage of readers that are married/living with a partner, how much the audience spend on music a year – in different forms, what technology readers have access to, what the reader relies on the magazine for, whether the readers have a passion for music, films etc and I tried to follow the same form of it in order to get an accurate reader profile. 

The Ideal Reader.

My ideal reader would therefore posses these qualities:

• enjoys reading.
• hard-working.
• outgoing.
• independent.
• shops at forever21 and topshop.
• music plays a huge role in their life.
• likes movies.
• believes its important to be informed about new things; whether that be in the music industry or not.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Although I have based some of my layout that is similar to Billboard, I don’t think that I would be able to distribute my magazine under their media institution (Prometheus Global Media) because it is an American company based in New York. I would first like to distribute my magazine to only British readers and therefore that company would not best suited for me.  Also, the magazines that they do publish are very much linked with one another and therefore my magazine would appear out of place.  

Due to the fact that PGM is out of the question, I had to look for other magazine institutions which I think could cater my needs in order to make a successful magazine. I then had to look for a distributing company which would be easy to access and based in the UK.

I came across IPC | MEDIA which distributes a variety of magazine genres, and has experience in targeting both the male and female demographic. I noticed that it published NME and is the only music magazine that they seem to publish, it also caters more for the male demographic, though there are plenty of other magazines that do this too, NME is the only male music magazine by IPC, (66% of NMEs readers are male) which makes it stand out from the other magazines.

With this in mind, I think my magazine would make a good addition to the company because its a music magazine, which is different from most of their content, and its leaning more towards the female demographic which is, by what I see, their primary demographic to cater for.
When it comes to my demographic, I think that its more like 'Look' magazine's and since IPC have experience in catering for that specific target readership, I think they could handle Louder magazine too.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

As mention in the video, one of my main aims was to challenge the way music magazines represent women in their front cover, which is usually of them posing provocatively, as shown in my collage below which is a selection of music magazines portraying women in that way.

The reason I think that it is a common 'convention' to have women pose in such a way in music magazines is because "sex sells," meaning that the more provocative they look, the more issues the magazine firm is going to sell, which is obviously what they're aiming for.

However, I decided to take a different approach to my magazine: rather making my model dress provocatively or making her have a seductive pose and look a lot more "grown up" than she actually is, I opted for the complete opposite. I find that women in the music industry are more known for what they wear/look like rather than what they do with their music career and I tried my best to portray women as hard-working and youthful in my photos, as shown below.

I believe that it is important to challenge that stereotype of women to prove that they aren't all the same and a "sexualised prop" to society, but rather that some actually take their job seriously, while at the same time allowing themselves act their own age. 

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (cont.)

It was quite hard to find a double page spread of Billboard magazine, I think that this was because it is an American brand and the people there rarely put up feature articles online. I then had to opt for other music magazines. I looked at some feature article in NME and found some of them to look really good while others looked a bit messy and not as appealing to the idea. I then stumbled across a Q double page spread of Lady Gaga. I liked the idea of having one big picture on the left hand side and the other to be filled with text and therefore followed that convention.

1. Image: The reason why I decided to have a black and white image is because of a quote I read online which said that in a coloured image, you focus on the clothes ect and the mise en scene in general, but in a black and white image, you see emotion. Although she is not looking at the camera, the high angle shot gives off an intimate feeling between her and music, and therefore the use of a black and white image is effective in that sense. I chose to have a violin and music sheets in the mise en scene because it suggested a more musical vibe to it rather than the image of Lady Gaga in Q. I wanted their to be a focus on the music in the image rather than the model because I wanted to represent young women as hard working rather than the way that they represented Lady Gaga. I used a high angle shot  because it challenged the common conventions of  close ups or long shots in double page spreads that you see in magazine, such as the above of Q.

2. Image #2: I thought it would be interesting if I had a cinema strip of images on the side because you could  see the personality of the model and that would make the reader warm to her and perhaps want to read the interview to see what she is really like.

3. "The Making of Ava: I Haven't Made It Yet": I didn't realise this before, but on the front cover and contents page, the title of this article is "The Making of Ava" and the puff taken out of the body text is "I haven't made it yet." I therefore unintentionally added continuity through the three pages.

4. Body Text: I was originally going to have the body set out more like a story rather than an interview because I think having questions and then answers makes it look uncomfortable in my opinion because not all the questions are in line with the text underneath it. Due to that, I think it is probably the weakest point out of all three pages. 

5. The last line: A convention that is commonly used to show the reader that the article is finished is by either  having a ‘by-line’  or promote the interviewee, I have chosen the latter option and decide to promote her.