3) Target Audience of a Music Magazine

Target Audience

Rolling Stone music magazine is one of the most recognised music magazines worldwide and can be presented in many different languages for many different nationalities. This genre in particular can be targeted towards those with an absolute keen interest in heavy metal/rock/indie music genres, those of old age and young and those who were/are in the contemporary of this music style. I for one know this as I and many of my friends are into music as well as my family member who is into music magazines as he is a massive fan of bands of his youth. Although this magazine is often associated for simply those who are into ‘rock’ or playing heavy instruments, articles contained within it contribute to a wide range of different musical artists. Many can often contain graphical content. Not suitable for the young.

2) Contents Page

Contents Page
Typically on a contents page, you will expect to find on it; page numbers and article links, as signified from the front cover of a magazine. Most significantly, a contents page will firstly list the main article and secondary article of its content. These are the most appealing to the majority of readers and they will be eager to find from the contents page, its whereabouts in the magazine. Pictures may also be evident as they are used syntagmatically to further interest the reader involved. For example, here is a contents page I have picked up from a music magazine at random; it shows rather intriguing Syntagmatic images to signify the articles involved. Either as an overall collage of images or separate photos related to individual articles involved.

1) Analysis of Music Front Cover

Semiotic Analysis
On this magazine front cover, you should typically find the vital features that are presented on any magazine front cover, namely; a head mast, a main article, a secondary article, a plug, a main image, barcode, price, issue number and date. Although a barcode is not visible on the front cover of this magazine, you will notice that most of the important features are present. What particularly stood out for me when choosing this front cover was the saturated close up head shot of Britney Spears. The image in my view signifies her in an incredibly dramatic way and would influence me to read more as it seems that this picture is painting a very intriguing article. The way the head mast compliments the saturated colour is another interesting feature on this front cover (red over grey). There is an issue number evident along with the date and price printed very obscurely also. The main article is signified as syntagmatically denotative, although in my opinion, “Britney Spears An American Tragedy” is not clearly enough linked to the main image/main article due to the fact that; some people may not know who Britney Spears is, and the writing style is signified in a similar way to the secondary article and the plug lines.
Semiotically speaking, this magazine cover is very connotative as it is not very clearly laid out. The way the website link ‘perezhilton.com’ is randomly placed over the main image does not tell us what the website links to, but what is more noticeable about the connotations of this front cover is the whereabouts to the representation of the secondary article. Could it be where it says “How the democrats screwed the anti-war movement”? Or alternatively, could it be ‘Sheryl Crow’? The only way a reader could find this out is to look in the contents page. The head mast is presented in a very eye-capturing style in the sense that this genre of music generally links to bold, dramatic colours such as red and black, but also this head mast relates to the music band’s head mast format ‘The Rolling Stones’. The incentive to buying the magazine has not been very well presented as it does not stand out very well “Zep tour update”. With a massive fan base for Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones magazine may not have promoted their tour date information very well.

My Annotated School Magazine Front Cover

Here is my annotated school magazine cover with a semiotic analysis included.

Annotated School Magazine Front Cover

Here I have used paint to annotate each of the key features that should be present on the magazine. On this particular magazine there was no evidence of a date, a sell line or a price.

A school magazine cover example found on the internet.