Magazine Analysis

 

The cover

• The title stands for 'New Musical Express', it is called this because the magazine is about new releases of indie rock music, however, readers that have never before seen the magazine could potentially not know that it is a magazine if purely based on the title, the other content on the front page such as the picture and mentioning of musical acts would suggest to the reader that it is a music magazine.

• The main image used in this issue of NME is a picture of Florence Welch, her face looks sullen and serious which matches the general tone of her music/new album. She is at eyeline with the camera and her clothing matches the indie tone of her music. Her arms are in a position that shows off her birdcage tattoo on her hand.
  
• Only one other image appears on the cover, this is a picture of an Ian Curtis poster that is featured inside the magazine, this is aimed to make the reader think that they are receiving something that is free which gives them more incentive to buy the magazine 
• A Steve Jobs tribute is promoted by the cover lines, this can be an aspect that makes the reader buy the magazine because Steve Jobs was influential in the development of music and many people would want to buy NME so that they can read about this and pay their own respects. Also a review of Noel Gallagher's new album, an interview with Florence Welch and a revelation of the best track of the last 15 years.
  
• The simplicity of the fonts on the cover suggest to the reader that the content will be simple and to the point. the colour scheme consists of 3 colours; orange, black and white. The white and black are used to make the photograph the main attraction to the audience and the bold orange 'FLORENCE' is orange because it grabs the readers eye immediately and matches the colour of Florence's hair.
• The language on the cover can be seen as humorous, "And, er, quite a lot more" this comforts the reader because it has a comedy element to it. As well as this, the phrase "the greatest" is used to describe a track, this suggests that NME has the status to decided what the 'greatest' track.
• NME and Kerrang! are both music magazines but the covers and content are very dissimilar. The cover of NME is very simple, there is a little amount of writing on the front page and the picture is the main focus whereas the front cover of Kerrang! is very busy, there are a lot of bright colours and this combined with the picture shows that there is too much fighting for the audiences attention. The colour schemes of the two magazines are very different, the NME cover only has one bright colour, orange, to attract the readers attention to the main feature in the magazine, but Kerrang! has several bright colours on its front cover. The two different front covers show different genre's of music, people that generally like indie rock music would more likely purchase NME whereas people that would prefer heavy metal would be more likely to purchase Kerrang! Another important difference between the two magazines is the paper that is used, NME uses paper that is similar to the paper that is used by newspapers, this is because the when it was first produced it was very similar to the size and shape of a general newspaper but its content was based around music, the magazine has evolved to having a glossy cover and being a conventional magazine size. The paper that is used in Kerrang! is high quality paper that you would usually associate with being used in a fashion magazine. The titles of the magazines are also very different in style, the NME is an abbreviation where as KERRANG! is an onomatopoeic word for the sound that a guitar makes when strummed, this relates to the genre of music that is featured in KERRANG! because it implies to the reader that it is a rock magazine.

                                                     The house style of Kerrang! is very modern and shows clearly what its target audience is, there are a lot of pictures featured in the magazine and the fonts usually represent the edgy undertone of the magazine.









                                                                          General

• IPC media produces NME
• The target audience is men that are aged between 16-34
• The magazine costs £2.40 and is released weekly or a years subscription is £74.99
• The circulation of this magazine is 29, 020, this has gone down by 14.3% over the past year, according to pressgazette.co.uk IPC media said that NME "continues to be an exemplar of a modern multiplatform media brand"
• The approximate monthly revenue streams from advertising and circulation are £495, 29920 a month and £67, 071 a month on advertising

                                                                             Inside

               

• There are 66 pages in NME, 14 of which are adverts, the advertised products are clothing, alcohol, music and live gigs.
  • "Does Rock'n'Roll kill braincells?" is a feature in the magazine, this feature asks musicians questions about previous albums/experiences and gives points for every question answered correctly.

• There are 14 double page spreads in this magazine, one of these double page spreads is about Florence which is the main feature in the magazine, this feature on Florence takes up 5 pages which shows that this feature is the dominant article in the magazine.
• The house style of NME is very contemporary and relevant to its target audience, there are a lot of pictures throughout the magazine which successfully breaks up the text and makes the pages more interesting for the reader