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.

Deconstruction

Looking at these two magazine cover’s different mastheads, you can see that they have some similarities, even though the covers themselves look nothing alike. Both magazine covers have their mastheads partially hidden behind the heads of the main feature of the magazine, possibly because they are already very well known, so people know their names anyway, and another very likely reason is that when the readers try to read the titles their attention goes over to the famous person on the cover instead, and if the person likes this artist it’s a big draw-in for them to buy the magazine. You can also see on both covers that the artist stares at you. I’m saying staring instead of looking because their eyes follow you no matter where you move the cover, as long as it’s not upside down, then you could probably escape, but the point is that when cover does this then (again) it draws more attention when you walk past it in a store. Another thing both magazines have in common is the genres these two artists perform. Both artists do R&B and soul music, but the magazine to the left also has more pop in in as Adele also performs some pop music, and the magazine to the right has more jazz in in as Amy Winehouse used to work with that kind of music.  But even with all these different things to make the reader choose which magazine he/she would like to read, the colour use is also really important, and the magazine to the right isn’t really doing anything special to really get attention, thinking of the kind of faded picture, but they did use a red colour to make people turn their eyes towards their most interesting/important stories. The magazine to the right used… a lot of colours, but did it in a way that made it really pretty to look at with a kind of modern twist that leads to their main story leading all the treads from other stories to the main story.