Title:

My head has been completely blank whenever I tried to think of a title for the magazine, and all I knew was that I wanted it to somehow connect with the music genres; pop, rock and R&B/Soul, but since pop is going to be the biggest part of the magazine, it was the most important one.
Recently I've been re-watching some of Charlieissocoollike's fun science videos on youtube. and last night was the Fun Science: Sound. In it he singing-ly explains what and how sound is sent through the air and how we hear. In one part he explains how sound literally touches people, because sound is a vibration that shake our eardrums to then move on to some tiny bones, that then sends vibrations to a liquid, and then the waves and the liquid bend some hair, and then the hair sends a signal to the brain. This gave me an idea: The Brainwave Signal. Since music is sound, and a sound is a vibration, and the vibration sends a signal to the brain telling the person what s/he's hearing, it fits. The only problem I had with the idea was it explained music, but none of the genres. But then my brain started working overtime and got another idea. Many magazines have a sentence under the title, a kind of catchphrase if you will, and working with the title and genres I got this: When Your Head Says Pop.
That was the story of how I got both a title and a catchphrase for my music magazine.

               The Brainwave Signal ~ When Your Head Says Pop

Questionnare, Target Audience & Some Magazine Planning

For my music magazine I wanted to create something for an audience my age, that way it would be easier to discover what that kind things they would like to read about, that they would find interesting. But as everyone should know, everyone is different, and so I made a questionnaire to get a bigger idea of what people would want to read, what kind of genre, and what would attract their attention that they would want to see in a music magazine and so on. I only asked girls, because like I said earlier I want to create something that I could feel would be something that I would find interesting, but as I myself listen to almost every genre of music there is, and this is meant to be a music magazine that would actually sell, I went out to see what people would want.

I asked 28 girls what kind of music genre they preferred, here are my results:

As you can see the Rock and Pop lovers out there won over the rest of the genres by taking over 50% of the pie chart under, where most of the girls I asked listened to pop music, followed by rock, and rock followed by R&B/Soul. I was expecting more people to listen to rock, but then again I only asked 28 girls, maybe I would have gotten a little more accurate results thinking on a national basis if I had asked closer to 100 people, but I will work with the results I found.

I will take the three most popular music genres, and I will make the magazine focus on those three. How big part of the magazine they will depends on the level of popularity it got on the questionnaire. Pop got the biggest piece of pie, and so gets the biggest part of the magazine. Rock and R&B/Soul gets less room than pop music, but rock gets more room than R&B/Soul.

 

 This pie chart shows the same results as the last one, but in this one you can only see the big three of the magazine, and their results compared to each other.

Research: Billboard Music Magazine

As a part of the making of a music magazine, I had to do some research, and so I decided to look at the music magazine Billboard, just because the covers are really well made and they have drawn my attention more then a couple of times.

Introduction:

The Billboard is one of the oldest trade magazines (professional magazine) in the world and is an international news magazine that's devoted to music and the music industry. It was founded on 1. November 1894 by William H. Donaldson and James Hennegan, and was originally a trade paper for the bill posting industry. Not too many years later the paper started to carry news of outdoor amusements, which led it to become the paper of record for circuses, carnivals, amusement parks, fairs and other live entertainment. In 1909 the magazine started coverage of motion pictures and in the 1920, the radio. With the development of the jukebox in the 1930’s the Billboard began publishing music charts, but back then only the 3 genres, pop, R&B and County & Western.  As the music part of the magazine grew bigger over time, the outdoor entertainment part was taken out and put together as a new magazine, and with time the motion picture part of the magazine was also moved to another publication. In 1961 the magazine was renamed Billboard Music Week, and the publication was now completely devoted to the music industry. 

Billboard Magazine is now owned by Promotheus Global Media, a diversed company with leading assets in the media and entertainment arenas, and is (according to their webside) the world’s most influential music media brand reaching key executives and tastemakers in and around the music business.

Content:

In the typical Billboard magazine you’ll get everything from the latest news and music reviews to Billboard music charts, music articles and more.On their webside: www.billboard.com

you can find new things in the world of music every single day and get access to exclusive videos and digital music, as well as the hottest new releases, music videos and more.

Layout & Readers:

The contents page of the magazine is neat, and easy to read. On the first 1/3 of the left side of the page is a music chart with the most popular songs and albums, and on the rest of the page we see what we typically get on a contents page, a little look into what you will be reading about, next to some pictures of famous artists that will be featured in the magazine. In the bottom of the magazine we see some information about the online magazine and events happening in the music world.
It's a very simple layout, but obviously it works for them, otherwise they wouldn't be as popular as they are today, especially amongst the young people in the world which would be their main and target audience. From what I gather that audience would have to be people in their teens and twenties. Artists like Lady Gaga, Adele and Taylor Swift are more artists girls listen and look up too, so I would say it would be more directed to girls than boys. The music genres represented in the magazine through these artists would also direct us more to the right track of the audience, because of course not all girls interested in music read this magazine, there are tons of different kinds of music genres out there and magazines that earn a lot of money from giving those genres of bands and singers a voice, but based on what charts Billboard have in their magazines they focus more on the R&B/Hip-Hop, Country, Rock, Latin and/or Pop kind of people.