Music Magazine Case Study Based on Vibe Magazine
Music Magazine Case Study Based on Vibe Magazine Daniel Shadwell
Frequency : Quarterly Producer : Quincy Jones Circulation in 2011 : 301, 408 The magazine mainly consists of R&B and hip-hop music artists, actors and other entertainers.
Mission Statement Vibe is the ultimate curator of cool among 18 to 34 year olds. The brand is the leader in providing youth oriented entertainment and lifestyle content. While music’s genre walls have tumbled, vibe has expanded, and continues to serve culturally diverse music fans around the world.
House style & target audience Their isn't a distinctive house style within this magazine. The layouts are all fairly similar with the main image standing out on each issue but the colour schemes aren't similar, the colours fit the mood of the image in each one. The mastheads are always in the same font, a chunky bold font. Masculinity is represented here as the boldness represents strength and power which is what most men want. Each issue is action packed to create a busy vibe and let consumers feel as if they are getting their value on. The house style in my opinion is more appealing to males than females due to their audience statistics, 51% of vibe magazines were male and 49% were female. It appeals to adults more than children as that’s their target audience, the median aged reader is 34 years old. 91% of their audience are over 21 years old. This magazine appeals to a range of races as well, including blacks, whites, spanish people, asians and ranges across many other regions. The magazine's target audience is usually young, urban followers of hip-hop culture.
Articles and content This magazine specifically is mainly about keeping the audience up to date with their favourite music stars and celebrities lifestyles, stories about them and the work they are producing. Content covers topics such as: entertainment, fashion, lifestyle, events, digital covers, opinions of celebrities, music and they vaguely have a bit of national news. Vibe doesn’t contain useless information in the articles, they are all very formal containing relevant stories about famous celebrities which appeals to a wide audience. Their content relates to their target audience as their mission statement is that they aim the magazine towards 18 to 34 year olds. The articles are mostly lengthy and it also contain adverts which are music related.
Language At the same time, I would say that this magazine is informal and formal at the same time. To justify this point, the articles inside are lengthy and relevant to the celebrities situations, but the headlines on the front cover seem to vary and be informal, with slanguage such as ‘gangster’ and ‘pimp’ on other editions which I have found. They want people to see this magazine as cool so they will use slang/cool words to appeal to the audience and make them feel hooked into this magazine. The use of interviews is informal as its wrote down in spoken and offers something other magazines cant do, exclusive interviews with famous rappers. They need to make the audience feel involved which is why informality appears in Vibe. From the Vibe magazine above I can spot features of informality where they are trying to grip the reader, the use of rhetorical questions “so are you a racist? ” This is a great technique used as it will immediately make you want too read inside the article about it.
Use of fonts & style of photos The fonts in Vibe magazine are simplistic, they are not too playful, neither too serious. In the three magazines on the slide, the celebrity on the covers name is in bigger, bolder and more stylish font than the rest of the fonts on the front cover. There names are Vibes unique selling point and I noticed that also in each of the three magazines front covers the less important/relevant information is in a smaller font size. So I can infer that the smaller the font size the less importance of the story, and the bigger sized font is used to draw attention. Their classical simple styled font gives them an up market status. The photo styles are close ups of the celebrity which has been studio shot. This is their style throughout most of their images in the magazine and they don’t rarely contain sub pictures on the front cover. The cover with Drake on is photo shopped and colour edited to set a serious mood and make him look powerful. They edit certain photos to fit certain stories.
Promotions Vibes style isn't too do everything they can to make the reader want to buy their magazine, they don’t post freebies or loads of offers around, they mainly make the reader know that they are getting their value for money by using various sub headings of important stories and by using words such as ‘exclusive’ to know that you wont get stories like these anywhere else. The cover with Rick Ross on has a scan barcode on it which is effective as scanning it via your smartphone/tablet will lead you to a freebie or some other benefit. This is a new effective technique. Due to their target audience they don’t offer many freebies such as posters as its unlikely for many adults to care about it, children are more likely to care about free posters than adults are.
How vibe links to my concept Vibe links to my concept because I don’t want it to be too playful or attractive towards children, I want my target audience to be like Vibes because I feel as it allows them to have a better layout and house style. I want to aim towards adults aswell as I think there is more of a market for adults than children for a magazine about grime music (a London based rapping genre) The cover with Drake on creates a serious mood and shows that Drake has power. The close up in the studio as well as the black and white edit has allowed this mood to be created and in my concept I want it to be serious and show power towards the image, which relates to the genre of grime. I will include many subheadings and some offers within the magazine, not on the front page just like Vibe do. The language they use is also catchy, its informal and formal at the same time which I find appealing, I want them to feel involved and feel interested in the stories the grime music magazine has to provide.
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