Review on Kerrang article

• This article is from a media magazine and is written by Stephen Hill. It is an interview with Stuart Williams. I will be taking specific quotes out of the article and commenting them.
  


• "Kerrang! is very much written by the fans for the fans." this quote from the interview shows how kerrang have used the audiences responses to previous magazines in order to make the magazine likeable by the "average reader". With Websites such as myspace it makes it easier for magazines like Kerrang to get feedback from the fans on which articles and stories they would like to see more.
  


• "You never patronise your readers. You ca debate something but you don't slag off something you know people have come to the magazine to read about." This quote shows how kerrang use specific writing tecniques to draw certain people to the magazine. They make sure they don't "slag off" idles and celebritys who people want to see do well in their career and inturn creates a much more happy audience for this magazine.
  
• I think that until recently "kerrang!'s role has been about educationg and informing and passing the knowledge on to the next generation. Undoubtedly what you have found in the last 18 months to two years is that everybody knows more about music." This shows how much more people are getting general knowledge about history of music from the media and less from magazines. The younger generations use the internet and watch TV

Investigation into magazine industry and why sales are plummeting, concept of audience fragmentation

Newsstand sales of magazines fell by 6.3% in the first half of 2008.

This is obviously due to the rising of gas and food costs are causing people send less money on non essentials.

People are saying that it is just the "impact of the economy"

People are obviously shopping cautiously and less frequently, avoiding impulse buying (which magazines are).

There are many discussions as to why women magazines sales are plummeting.

There are said to be five main reasons.

1. not much variety in the magazine covers

2. photo shop is out of hand

3. alot of "news you can't use"

4. alot of people can't actually afford what is being advertised in the magazine

5. the internet is a much easier way of getting information thats in the magazines

Semiotic Analysis of a music magazine

• This is a picture of a front cover of an NME music magazine and I will be giving a semiotic analysis on it.
  
• The cover has quite a simple colour scheme using mainly red, black and white in order to contrast and highlight certain aspects of the magazine.
  
• The title and name of the magazine (NME) is at the top of the page in big red letters. This is the same in every NME magazine making the red letters with white outlining NME's sort of trademark. The title is very clear which is essential as it is a well known music magazine.
  
• The main article the magazine is aiming to interest the reader with is "the return of kasabian". Again the writing is highlighted by using red and white colouring, two contrasting colours to highlight how important this specific aspect of this magazine is.
  
• The picture of the band Kasabian in the background shows them literally leaning over one of the letters of their band name. The great big picture catches the readers eye and makes the reader really want to know about that particular article.
  
• The bands that are mentioned in the articles that are in the magazine are there to invite a specific audience to this magazine. All the bands mentioned are all types of indie/rock bands which in turn would interest a specific audience that listen to this particular music.
  
• The type of font for the word "INSANE" and the fact that in that specific article the font changes after every few words makes this article stand out as it is quite irregular. This inturn represents how big it is that this album has come out and creates a sense of suspense as the reader will want to know what happens in the article.