This is the final peice of analysis i did for XXL
Wednesday, 13 January 2010
XXL Magazine
Before i learned about Drum & Bass, listened to a lot of Rap & Hip-Hop. The first rappers i listened to when i was younger were Eminem and 50 Cent (50 Cent remains to this day one of my favourite music artists ever). In time i started to listen to others such as Jay-Z, Kanye West, Young Jeezy and Akon, and i really got into it.
Rapping is the father of MCing, MCing is just much faster and primarily British. Most of the older MCs in Drum & Bass rap, but the newest ones are primarily the styles shown by MCs such as Skibadee. In addition, the music in Rap is mostly slow and simple, whereas Drum & Bass is very high energy. Rap has been going a lot longer than Drum & Bass, so there are a lot more magazines to find and analyse, the most prominent of which being XXL.
XXL magazine was founded in 1997 by a writer from another magazine, who thought that Rap & Hip-Hop was being ignored by the magazine indusrty, and wanted to try his luck with it. It proved majorly sucessful, and stars many of the biggest rappers in the buisiness. In addition, the front covers are mostly full of meaning, and are a lot more open to analysis than that seen on ATM magazine.
Rapping is the father of MCing, MCing is just much faster and primarily British. Most of the older MCs in Drum & Bass rap, but the newest ones are primarily the styles shown by MCs such as Skibadee. In addition, the music in Rap is mostly slow and simple, whereas Drum & Bass is very high energy. Rap has been going a lot longer than Drum & Bass, so there are a lot more magazines to find and analyse, the most prominent of which being XXL.
XXL magazine was founded in 1997 by a writer from another magazine, who thought that Rap & Hip-Hop was being ignored by the magazine indusrty, and wanted to try his luck with it. It proved majorly sucessful, and stars many of the biggest rappers in the buisiness. In addition, the front covers are mostly full of meaning, and are a lot more open to analysis than that seen on ATM magazine.
ATM Magazine
The only well known Drum & Bass magazine i could find was called ATM Magazine. ATM describes itself as the "longest running Drum & Bass magazine," yet i am unable to find any extra information on wikipedia, or even their own website. However, it is clear that it is quite established, as all of the big acts such as Chase & Status and High Contrast appear on the front covers. I comes out once every two months, which makes it even harder to acquire a copy, of which i still have yet to spot in any shops where i live, or even in larger towns. I did, however, find a lot of front covers to analyse. These were of very poor quality though, and payed no attention to the normal music magazines, and were all repetitive and featureless. In response, i found three other magazines that i managed to accquire copies of, which were near enough the same genre, i will upload my analysis of ATM anyway.
Analysis inroduction.
During the time of writing this, i have already completed my analysis of my competitor magazines, i have just taken them off and put them back on due to the fact that i got the order of the posting wrong. Due to how new Drum & Bass is, there is little in the way of any issues in the shops, so i searched online. I could only find one true magazine, ATM magazine. Others, such as RWD, used to be magazines and have converted into website only magazines. Others, such as Lexicon magazine are relatively new and unheard of.
Question 15
15. Who are your favourite artists?
I tries to vary the choices of this song, and so i got varied answers. MC SKibadee is the best known MC, so he is very likely to be recognised, as is Andy C, who is one of the most popular DJs. Sub Focus's music is very good, but he is very new, and still unheard of by many people. Pendulum are probably the best liked overall, as they are the favourites of people who don't even like Drum & Bass, due to their wavering style of music.
Question 14 answer
14. Would you appreciate a few pages of the magazine dedicated to letters sent in by readers?
Some magazines have pages in which they publish letters or e-mails sent in by readers, and answer any questions asked, or respond to statements. Some people find them funny to read, whereas others hate them and skip the page, as shown in the results above.
Question 13 answer
13. How often would you purchase this magazine?
Not everyone who buys a magazine buys it every issue. Some people only buy it if they walk past and see an artist on the front they like and want to buy it. When a cover catches someones eye, some people think, "i haven't bought that in a while," and purchase it. Others simply buy it when they have some spare cash. Due to these factors, the answer to this question is fairly varied, but the most popular answer was, "every issue".
Student magazine front cover and contents page
I decided to put these into my blog, as i relate to them in my analysis for question 12, and decided to add them for reference to my analysis.
Question 12 answer
12. Do you expect to see impressive photoshop effects on the front cover?
This answer suprised me at first. As seen in my student magazine, i felt that good photoshop effects on the front cover would instantly make the cover look amazing. After analysing other front covers, i have realised that this is not the case. The results of this question also tie on with that idea, as it appears readers would prefer to have a straightforward cover that explains the main articles of the magazine and catches their eye.
Question 11 answer
11. Would you expect the magazine the feature new or otherwise unheard of acts, or well known ones?
The majority of people said that they would want a mixture of both, which is perfectly understandable, as they could explore and learn about new acts, and catch up on their current favourite ones. However, people do not want to listen to nothing but new artists, as there would be no recognition when they are reading the magazine, and it could get boring. However, some people would be perfectlyt ok with famous artists only.
Question 10 answer
10. How long do you expect the magazine to be?
The average answer for this question is a magazine that consists of 75 pages or above (not including adverts). This is the conventional size for music magazines, so it is only logical that people should choose that size. It would be very strange for people to choose to have a small amount of pages, as this question ties in with question 1 (how much would you pay), and as the majority of people answered with the more expensive magaizne, it would be quite contradicting to choose a magazine with a low amount of pages.
Question 9 answer
9. In what tone do you think you would prefer this magazine to write in?
A mixture of a cool and friendly tone was the most popular option in this question. This question is fairly predictable, as Drum & Bass is not a particularly serious style of music. Most of the artist's main aims are simply to have fun and show off their music making skills to others, so it makes sense for readers to want to be adressed in a clam, laid back manner, and many people would lose interest if it was written in an authritative way, or feel patroised if is was written in a chatty, gossipy manner.
Question 8 answer
8. What do you expect the masthead to be?
The most popular answer was B4ss Lin3. The bass line is one of the most important elements of Drum & Bass, so it is unsuprising that it would be a popular chioce for most people. It is also my personal favourtie masthead, which will be explained later on in a later post. Looking back, Hypermaniac was perhaps not a very good name, as it sounds quite childsih and unprofessional, the same could be said for B00m Shaker. DnB Monthly would have been the most convententional and predictable choie, but perhaps people prefered B4ss Lin3 when they saw it.
Question 7 answers
7. What sorts of fonts will you expect to see in this magazine?
The Most voted for result was the font "Rockwell". This could be due to the fact that it is bold, and not too complicated, and could easily be slightly modded on photoshop to look very good and varied. The font "blade runner," which is not available on the computer i am currently using, is also very bold, and looks almost like graffiti, which could be the reason that it was picked. This is interesting as many of the fonts in my competitor magazines included grafitti. The other fonts were in the main run of the mill, boring computer fonts, so it is not suprising that not many people picked them
Question 6 answer
6. If so, what content do you expect to see?
The large majority of answers to this question were for the "free CD" category. This is mainly due to the fact that all people generally like free things, especially things they can use on a regular basis, such as free Cds. It is not suprising, however, that scratch cards did not receive any votes, as they are commonly considered a nuisance and are generally discarded. It is also unsuprising that a free pullout and information package received few votes, as this is the sort of content people expect to find inside the magazine.
Question 5 answer
5. Would you be prompted to buy this magazine if there was any free content such as CDs?
The results are quite varied on this question. Free content means a lot to some, but to others it is all about the magazine and reading about the music, not receiving free tunes. For some people, even the inclusion of free content is not enough for them to buy content
Wednesday, 6 January 2010
Question 4 Answer
4. Would you be prepared to pay more for a higher quality of content?
The majority of the participants in this question would probably be prepared to pay more for a higher quality of content. This shows that people always want to have a higher quality, and many people are prepared to pay for it, no one who took the survey would let the matter drop straight away without givin it thought.
Question 3 Answer
3. What content would you expect to see in this magazine?
The most popular cotnent that was voted for was a mixture between interviews with current artists, or reviews of CDs out at the time, followed closely by upcoming live events. This clearly shows that people still want to see the most useful, conventional sort of content in a Drum & Bass magazine, just like in other genres such as rock.
Question 2 Answer
2. What colours would you like to see used in this magazine?
This would be the question that would actually be used to decide what (base) colours i would use for my final magazine cover. The most popular colour was red and black, indicating that Drum & Bass fans prefer, darker, yet still fairly colourful tones to be used. These sorts of colours could also be used to create impressive looking photoshop effects on the front of the magazine.
Question 1 answer
The most popular result by far for the question 1- How much would you be willing to pay for this magazine, was £4-£5, indicating that people would still be willing to pay a fair amount of money for a Drum & Bass magazine, and means that the content of the magazine could indeed be upgraded to a higher quality.
Survey
This is the survey that i created for my magazine. Due to the fact that the website is not allowing me to easily transfer my results across, i have had to turn the word documents in JPEG images, and post them on like so. To make them bigger, simply click on them and they will enlarge.
Audience survey
In order to find out some of the key features in my magaizne such as the artists included, the features on the front cover, the style of the magazine, and even the name of the magazine, i must create and hand out a survey and give it to my 20 people in my target audience in order to better understand what i must include in my magazine.
Target Audience
Due to the fact that Drum & Bass has only been out since the mids 90s, most of the fans would be around 30-15 years old. Drum & Bass is one of the most popular music genres for the youth in the 21st century, and is listened to widely across the countries, especialy in very urban, perhaps rough areas. Many of the more avid listeners of Drum & Bass are very interested in DJing or amateur MCing, meaning that a magazine about the latest artists and new Dj decs would interest them greatly. People over the age of 30 would possibly be parents who had listened to their children's music and got in to it for themselves.
Due to the original, underground nature of the music, the lyrics of the MCs and the general nature of the music is such that there is a glum moral outlook of it, and is considered scummy and unskilled by older members of the public, and very rarely appears in the national charts, with the exception of more well known artists such as Pendulum and Chase & Status, who vary their music to become more accepted by people with different musical tastes.
The places where Drum & Bass is most popular is usually in the central parts of major cities, and in other urban areas such as old towns and villages. Due to the fact that the target audience would not be as interested in buying a magazine about their music than people who listen to other genres of musci, so sales would not be so high, and the features or length of the magazine would have to be shortened untill a time when it became more popular.
Due to the original, underground nature of the music, the lyrics of the MCs and the general nature of the music is such that there is a glum moral outlook of it, and is considered scummy and unskilled by older members of the public, and very rarely appears in the national charts, with the exception of more well known artists such as Pendulum and Chase & Status, who vary their music to become more accepted by people with different musical tastes.
The places where Drum & Bass is most popular is usually in the central parts of major cities, and in other urban areas such as old towns and villages. Due to the fact that the target audience would not be as interested in buying a magazine about their music than people who listen to other genres of musci, so sales would not be so high, and the features or length of the magazine would have to be shortened untill a time when it became more popular.
Sunday, 3 January 2010
Music genre of the magazine
My magazine will focus on the genre of Drum & Bass, due to the fact that this is my favourite genre of music, and i feel i know the most about it and the artists to write a successful and long article in my magazine about them.
Drum & Bass emerged in the mid 90s in the 20th century, it began in the UK as a variation of Rave music in the 90s and includes consistent synthesised drum beats and a heavy bassline.
In older tracks, the songs are produced solely by a DJ, but newer variants of the genre include MCs, who rap increadibly fast to the beat of the music. This style of Drum and Bass is taking over mainstream popularity across the country, but i personally prefer the instrumental tracks.
One of the most standout Drum & Bass artists around are the "band" Pendulum. Consisting of many members, the band follows the conventions of Drum & Bass, but uses real drums and guitars, ect, to produce the sounds. They have been also known to produce more Rock and Metal influenced songs and are my personal favourite music artists in the world.
Other artists include the duo Chase & Status, who have produced instrumental songs and worked with MCs to provide vocals. High Contrast and Sub Focus are other examples of DJs who tend to stick to instrumental songs rather than rely on MCs. Perhaps the most well known DJ is Andy C, who usually works with many MCs, and is considered the best of his trade. Famous MCs include MC Skibadee, MC Spyder and MC Eskman.
Drum & Bass emerged in the mid 90s in the 20th century, it began in the UK as a variation of Rave music in the 90s and includes consistent synthesised drum beats and a heavy bassline.
In older tracks, the songs are produced solely by a DJ, but newer variants of the genre include MCs, who rap increadibly fast to the beat of the music. This style of Drum and Bass is taking over mainstream popularity across the country, but i personally prefer the instrumental tracks.
One of the most standout Drum & Bass artists around are the "band" Pendulum. Consisting of many members, the band follows the conventions of Drum & Bass, but uses real drums and guitars, ect, to produce the sounds. They have been also known to produce more Rock and Metal influenced songs and are my personal favourite music artists in the world.
Other artists include the duo Chase & Status, who have produced instrumental songs and worked with MCs to provide vocals. High Contrast and Sub Focus are other examples of DJs who tend to stick to instrumental songs rather than rely on MCs. Perhaps the most well known DJ is Andy C, who usually works with many MCs, and is considered the best of his trade. Famous MCs include MC Skibadee, MC Spyder and MC Eskman.
Original Brief
The task that has been set is to create a music magazine front cover, contents page and feature article using the usual conventions. I will complete this using various methods such as research into rival magazines, analysis on how the work and attract their target audience, planning the magazine using questionnaires and design breifs, and creating the magazine, which will be completed using various methods such as Adobe Photoshop and photos taken from my personal Samsung Digimax A400 Digital Camera.
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