NME Magazine Cover Analysis

NME Magazine Cover Analysis

I have decided to choose to analyse NME magazine. The target audience for the magazine is teenagers and young adults. So this magazine will help me find out more about what would be in a magazine which the target audiences are teenagers and what could be in the magazine. This will help me decided on the target audience for my magazine.
The masthead of the magazine that I have chosen is called NME (New Musical Express), this connotes that it’s up to date with the latest music and it also connotes quick immediate access. It is also called this because in the magazine it shows all the latest music, bands, and news on music. Making it obvious that the magazine’s target audience is teenagers and young adults, you can see this through the layout of the magazine, adults would want a more formal layout whereas young adults and teenagers would want a informal layout. They have shortened the masthead so that it is easier to read and doesn’t become boring if it is so long.
The publisher of the magazine NME is IPC Media. IPC Media produces over 60 iconic media brands. Prints reaching over Two thirds of UK women, and 42% of men, meaning over 28 million adults. IPC Media publishes a range of magazines and websites that cover all kinds of music, fashion etc. With the wide range of different magazines there is something for everyone, there are many magazines in which people can relate to with their age groups, for example you have: Look, Chat, Country Life, Nuts, Pick me up, Now, Sporting Gun, TV Times, Mountain Bike Rider (MBR), Yachting World, and Amateur Photographer, these are only a few of the magazines in which IPC publishes, so the producer is more established. IPC Media has been going for 150 years, and is owned by Time Inc., with it selling over 350 million copies a year. The cost of NME is £2.50 and it is published every Wednesday. The official website for NME is www.nme.com and you can also find out more information on the publisher site of www.IPCmedia.com.
The target audience of the magazine is for teenagers and young adults that enjoy the kind of genre that this magazine has to offer, which is indie/rock music. The magazine has a target audience of teenagers and young adults because this age group are very popular for magazines to sell to because, they enjoy buying magazines and reading about all the latest music and new on music related to indie/rock. There are many things in the magazine that the audience can read about and find out more information on that they might not find out in other places. Teenagers and Young adults have disposable income so are able to spend the money on magazines with no worries about having to spend it on something else.
The main image in the centre of the magazine straight away attracts your attention, which is of the group White Lies. When you first look at the picture you straight away look at the face of Harry McVeigh, the lead singer of White Lies, this enables you to know who the main story is about without having to read anything. All of the members in the band have direct mode of address, so it feels like the audience and relate to them. There facial expressions are very plain, they are not expressing any emotions in there facial expressions at all, They are all dressed dark clothing so that you are straight away attracted to their faces instead of what they are wearing. This image shows you that it would be suitable for the target audience of teenagers and young adults because of the kind of band and that they don’t have to have colourful clothing for the target audience, compared to a younger audience that would prefer a magazine with a lot of colours. There are no other images on the magazine so that all your attention is on the image of White Lies. There is a lot of text around and on the image so that you are able to know what is going to feature in the magazine and so people can understand what the magazine is about. The colours used on the front cover are yellow, white and black. Which attract the eye of the audience but no so bright that they attract a different audience. There are different fonts used on the cover so that is don’t look so boring and makes the cover more interesting to the audience. The title of the magazine is very bold and has a tiny bit of it covered, so you are able to still know what it is called, but because it is so popular and well known it doesn’t have to show all of it. This doesn’t look similar to other magazine because it is not as colourful as most magazines, this is because this magazine issue is very dark to others.
The magazine is not dark but darker than most magazines, the white and yellow are very bright making the writing stand out. The magazine uses different fonts which makes it more interesting for the audience to look at, and so that you are able to break don’t the different sections. Each article looks very different to the others in the magazine so that each one stands out and makes the magazine seem even more interesting. The magazine looks more expensive than it actually is, and because it is for teenagers and young adults it doesn’t have to look colourful and cheap, it has to look more expensive than most magazines because of the age groups would prefer to have a magazine that looks expensive, than to have a magazine that looks very cheap and tacky.
The NME magazine addresses its audience in a casual way, in a way that it is casually giving you information about things that are happening. The magazine uses a lot of slang as well as using swear words, this enable the audience to relate to the language used. The types of articles and features that the magazine uses are: latest music news, gig guide, information on albums, crosswords etc, fanmail, interviews with musicians, information and latest news on musicians. The subject of the magazine is all about music and musicians. Direct mode of address from the image of the band.
The magazine is more a reality than it is made up like gossip magazines, so that means most of the artists in the are represented in the same way because of the type of magazine it is which is indie/rock. The way that they are represented is powerful, superior, and successful.
The magazine has a lot of competition with other music magazines, for example Kerrang, Q, Vibe, and more. The similarities of the magazines is that they all relate to the same kind of music or similar music to indie/rock. All music magazines talk about latest music, latest information musicians etc, meaning that there is a large variety of magazines that people could read instead of NME magazine, because it has the same themes. The thing that separates NME with other magazines is that it concentrates on the real information and has more interviews with musicians, so that the audience can find out more about the musicians than they could anywhere else.